Archive for the ‘Max Gladstone’ Category
My Best Reads of the Year 2014
Posted on: December 19, 2014
2014 has been a pretty good year for me. Personally, I’m damn impressed with how many of these books were actually published in 2014. As a bonus, there’s even a few novellas and short stories in here. In no particular order, here are my favorite reads of 2014!
Favorite Novels:
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett (2014) – that this book is on my list should surprise no one. And if you haven’t read it yet, seriously, get with the program. This is one of those amazing books that defies genre categorization, it just *is*. To give you a big picture without spoiling anything, it’s about watching your worldview dissolve before your eyes, and understanding that games can be played with many sets of rules. Also? it’s simply fucking amazing.
Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter (2014) – This is probably the most important book I read in 2014. Remember when Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother took high school government classes by storm? I wish the same for this book. Gemsigns touches on enforced marginalization, building (and breaking down) cultures of racism and classism and fear, and religiously and politically promoted hatred, and handles it in a blunt and emotional way. Also? fucking awesome. And for what it’s worth, I cried at the end.
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (2014) – I’ve been a Vandermeer fan for a long, long time (yet somehow I can still eat mushrooms). Annihilation was strange, surreal, and seemed to be magnetically attuned to me. The words in the tunnel rang for me like a tuning fork. And there was just something about characters who don’t have names. I am a jerk, however, because I own but haven’t yet read the third book in the series.
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
Posted on: April 21, 2014
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
published in 2012
where i got it: purchased new
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What happens when your God dies? When your city, your world, depends on the protection of your patron god (in exchange for your prayers and devotions, of course) this suddenly becomes a very important question. I’m absolutely fascinated by cultures and stories in which the deities interact with normal people in a somewhat normal way. How would it change your outlook on life to have a conversation with someone who was all knowing and immortal? More on this in a future post, actually. It’s just too fun of an idea to leave alone.
In a bit of a mash up of Law and Order (or maybe Castle?) and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Three Parts Dead throws us into the city of Alt Coulumb, where exactly that has happened: The patron god, Kos Everburning, God of the sun, of fire and of anything that could burn, has died. The Church does the only thing they can do: they hire the best there is, the necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. Part lawyers, part investigators, part necromancers, and part thieves of godly powers, the necromancers job is to find out how the God died. And then the haggling over what’s left of him can begin. The contracts of a god aren’t unlike those of a corporation. When the contract holder dissolves, who gets the properties? Who gets the contracts? This isn’t the first time something this has happened in Alt Coulumb.
Three Parts Dead is easily one of those most unique novels I have read in a long time. It’s one thing to give us a fully drawn world full of living Gods who make bargains and contracts with mortals (so much protection for so much devotion, and the like), but it’s a whole ‘nother story to show us the dark sides of those bargains. What happens when the Gods can no longer keep their own promises? What happens when they are quite literally, dismantled, as corporate lawyers might dismantle a bankrupted business? In that way, Gladstone weaves a surface plot that’s nearly mainstream. Got a friend who enjoys James Rollins style thrillers and won’t touch a fantasy novel? This could be their gateway book.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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