The Book Plank

Last First Snow by Max Gladstone, Craft Sequence #4 Forty years after the God Wars, Dresediel Lex bears the scars of liberation—especially in the Skittersill, a poor district still bound by the fallen gods' decaying edicts. As long as the gods' wards last, they strangle development; when they fail, demons will be loosed upon the city. The King in Red hires Elayne Kevarian of the Craft firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao to fix the wards, but the Skittersill's people have their own ideas. A protest rises against Elayne's work, led by Temoc, a warrior-priest turned community organizer who wants to build a peaceful future for his city, his wife, and his young son. As Elayne drags Temoc and the King in Red to the bargaining table, old wounds reopen, old gods stir in their graves, civil blood breaks to new mutiny, and profiteers circle in the desert sky. Elayne and Temoc must fight conspiracy, dark magic, and their own demons to save the peace—or failing that, to save as m...

Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone, Craft Sequence #3 On the island of Kavekana, Kai builds gods to order, then hands them to others to maintain. Her creations aren’t conscious and lack their own wills and voices, but they accept sacrifices, and protect their worshippers from other gods—perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the divinely controlled Old World. When Kai sees one of her creations dying and tries to save her, she’s grievously injured—then sidelined from the business entirely, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability. But when Kai gets tired of hearing her boss, her coworkers, and her ex-boyfriend call her crazy, and starts digging into the reasons her creations die, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear—which will crush her, if Kai can’t stop it first. Full Fathom Five was one of my most anticipated books for this year. Last year I started reading the Craft Sequence with Three Parts Dead and Two S...

Guest Post: Nonfiction as influence by Max Gladstone Writers are quick to name other writers as influences—often writers working in the same genre.  I've done this time and again, and I could do it here—talk about how important Zelazny and Dunnet and McKinley and Pratchett and Simmons have been for me throughout my reading and writing life.  But some books and writers more rarely get a mention: writers of nonfiction—cultural criticism and history and anthropology and economics—who have caused me to see the world where I live, and the worlds I write, in different ways.  So, here's a list of a different kind of influences: •Jonathan Spence, God's Chinese Son —Spence is a hugely influential and popular writer on Chinese history, and learning about the Taiping Rebellion in his class impressed upon me the utter weirdness of the real world.  Did you know that a (sort of) evangelical Christian (kinda) socialist movement arose in China in the 19 th century to rebel...