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Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Max Gladstone (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 2,669 ratings

Book 1 of 6: Craft Sequence

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From the author of the viral bestseller This is How You Lose the Time War...

"Stunningly good. Stupefyingly good." —Patrick Rothfuss

Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence chronicles the epic struggle to build a just society in a modern fantasy world.

A god has died, and it's up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis's steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara's job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who's having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb's courts?and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb's slim hope of survival.

Set in a phenomenally built world in which lawyers ride lightning bolts, souls are currency, and cities are powered by the remains of fallen gods, Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence introduces readers to a modern fantasy landscape and an epic struggle to build a just society.

For more from Max Gladstone, check out:

The Craft Sequence
Three Parts Dead
Two Serpents Rise
Full Fathom Five
Last First Snow
Four Roads Cross

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Editorial Reviews

Review

''Combining murder mystery, corporate intrigue, and thaumaturgic fireworks, Three Parts Dead gives us not just an excellent urban fantasy but a brilliant new world to explore. I can't wait to see what he does next.'' --Margaret Ronald, author of Spiral Hunt

''With his first book, Max Gladstone gives promise of being a true star of twenty-first-century fantasy.'' --John Crowley, World Fantasy Award-winning author

''Max Gladstone has created a fascinating universe and equally fascinating characters. It's a world in which magic is craft and religion has some very practical rules, and he shows it through the stories of some very interesting characters. This is his first novel. I can't wait for his second.'' --Jerry Pournelle, New York Times bestselling author

About the Author

Claudia Alick is a playwright, stage actress, writer, producer, and teacher. She is the Artistic Director of Smokin Word Production, a theater, recording, and small press company dedicated to building the new genre of spoken word and hip-hop theater. American Theatre magazine identified her as one of the twenty-five theater artists who will shape American theater in the next twenty-five years.

Max Gladstone went to Yale, where he wrote a short story that became a finalist in the Writers of the Future competition. He has been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2013 and 2014.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0085UEQDO
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books; 1st edition (October 2, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 2, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1402 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 334 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #141,345 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #350 in Contemporary Fantasy Fiction
- #1,630 in Action & Adventure Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- #4,914 in Fantasy Action & Adventure

Customer Reviews:
4.4 2,669 ratings

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Max Gladstone

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MAX GLADSTONE is a fencer, a fiddler, and Hugo Award Finalist. He has taught English in China, wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat, and been thrown from a horse in Mongolia. Max lives and writes in Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston. He is the author of the Craft Sequence (Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, Full Fathom Five, Last First Snow, Four Roads Cross, and Ruin of Angels).

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4.4 out of 5

2,669 global ratings

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Andreea Pausan

a feast

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2015

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I enjoyed this book immensely, not only because the author manages to create a whole new world around us, with incredible characters and magic and rules of engagement, but also because the arena is the court of law, a trial and a criminal investigation wrapped in an enigma: who killed Kos, the Everburning god of the city of Alt Coulomb? Everything, from the city of alt Coulomb to the characters and the action has such a strong impact on the reader that you do not know what impressed you most; in my case, it was the very clever and imaginative structure built with different characters (magicians, gargoyles, immortals, vampires, gods) in a court setting with proper documentation, pleas, proof and argument. All very originally done, packed with a lot of action, drama and surprising insights on the characters' pasts and motivation. Plus the essence of the word used to describe the magic: craft (meaning job, but also trade and wizardry). The main investigator/ advocate is Tara, a Black novice magician thrown out of school because she dared take action against a famous professor, the same who would be opposite council in the Kos trial, the same who sorted out the death of Kos's consort, goddess of the moon, turning her into blind Justice some 40 years before, trial won against his former lover and Tara's current employer and protector Craftswoman Elayne Kevarian. Tara is resourceful, determined, smart, fearless. She is also a beginner in a dangerous, many-layered multiple-trap game with a thousand players and high interest. She gets help from Abelard, a novice who witnessed the death of his god, who smokes incessantly to be reminded of his presence and looses his innocence as he follows Tara and is thrown into the pit snake opened by the god's death. The outcome is as surprising as the every twist along the way. This book was a feast.

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Mark

Incredible Amount of Worldbuilding Stuffed into Few Pages.

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2015

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“An author’s ability to solve conflict satisfactorily with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” — Brandon Sanderson

Three Parts dead could have benefitted from a bit more reader understanding of the magic system, before it was used to solve all of the problems. I spent large parts of the book being intrigued by the magic, but never quite getting enough explanation of how it works, and what it really can and cannot do, to satisfy me. I’m fine with vague magic not explained to the reader when it’s not used for many of the various plot events, such as in The Lord of the Rings, or A Song of Ice and Fire. But here, the Craft, as it is called, is one of the only tools the main characters use for solving their problems.

That’s not to say it’s a bad magic system, though. It seems, from the hurried glimpses we caught of it, to be internally consistent and intricately cool. I’m fully expecting to learn more about it in the future volumes in the series, and I hope that, once the rules are more defined, I will even come to enjoy the system. I just felt like the book wasn’t long enough for all the complexity we were supposed to get from it.

The plot is really cool, and I enjoyed how it was handled, with lots of twists and turns and unexpected happenings. And it felt very much like the bad guys were moving during the book, instead of having their plans set before the book began. This is a feeling that I don’t get from a lot of other books. There are several times where a scene happens, and we think it’s the climax of some kind of plot, but instead, turns out just to be another machination… I found this sense really cool, even though I can’t describe it properly. Perhaps the best description I can give is that the reaction scenes were also action scenes.

The characters in the book are an incredibly diverse cast of interesting people, not only in their physical makeup, but also their professions. Our main character is a disgraced student of the Craft school, trying to get a job with an imperious boss who is immortal. Her encounters include her old school teacher, a shape-shifting gargoyle, a bumbling underpriest with a smoking problem, a vampire, and a street-girl always searching for her next high—which she gets by either turning into an extension of the justice system of the city or having a vampire drink her blood.

The characters are incredible. The world-building is off the charts, and the magic system has so many cool intricacies.

I just felt like it was too much for the few pages the story fit into. This is one problem I’m really hoping will be fixed as we go along, now that we’ve had an introduction to the world, and I’m really excited about the later books.

The plot itself is really cool, and the climax was understandable, which surprised me in a good way. Everything is explained really well, though many of the events that happened I did not know were possible until they happened, giving it a slight Deus Ex Machina feel in places. Despite that, it had enough twists and turns to keep me suitably engaged, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In summary, Three Parts Dead is too short, and tries to cram too much really cool worldbuilding, characters, and intricate magic into its pages, but the parts that do come through are brilliantly done, and I’m excited to get more in this world in the reminder of the books, which I am going to be starting this afternoon. With the fourth book coming out soon after this review, now’s a great time to catch up on this series, and I give the first book a solid four of five stars for its really cool ending.

Review originally from my blog, Mental Megalodon.

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Alexander McCall

One of the most original books I've read lately

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 24, 2023

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The story begins with a reference to the God Wars, a god getting murdered and a woman being thrown off a floating university to slam into the ground, barely surviving.
Man, does this book know how to get my attention.
And it’s an intriguing world we find ourselves in. Magic has often been seen as about words and contracts and this book brings it to its logical conclusion. Mages are lawyers/accountants, creating contracts of power and selling and buying it to move it between themselves.
It’s an interesting system and lends itself nicely to the plot. The god Kos has died and the auditors are called in to sort out his affairs. I found it easiest to think of Kos as a sentient corporation of power. So all his debts have to be settled, all of the outstanding bargains and divisions need to be sorted and what’s left of him has to be carved up. And yet there’s still the question: How did the god die? And it’s that question that our story revolves around.
It’s got a good cast of characters too. There’s Tara, who is on probation for the necromantic firm she’s just been hired for. Her boss is an old hand at this and covers the bigger picture, leaving much of the grunt work to her assistant. There priests facing a crisis of faith, piratical vampires, drug addled cops and secret contracts. The world is alive, vibrant, a little confusing at times but enthralling all the same.
Also the plotting is just great. The mystery twines nicely around the action, with hints of the eventual reveal. And when all the cards are flipped it leads to an amazing, explosive finale. Seriously, I‘m a sucker for a good ending and this was an amazing ending.
I’ve not read a lot of books like this. It’s new, it’s fresh and it’s powerful. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

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Tanabrus

Prevedibile ma molto originale, interessante

Reviewed in Italy on August 26, 2017

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L'ambientazione scelta dall'autore per questo suo esordio è senza dubbio particolare e originale.
Un misto tra fantasy e urban fantasy, dove ci sono elementi di stampo moderno in un mondo però dove l'avanzamento tecnologico sembra arretrato se non del tutto bloccato, dove le divinità esistono e vivono nel mondo, nutrendosi della fede dei loro adoratori.
Un mondo dove esistono gli esperti nell'arte del Craft, dotati e ambiziosi umani che imitano le divinità piegando al loro volere il mondo. Maghi? Non proprio, sono più negromanti.

Già, perché in questo mondo descritto da Gladstone le tinte sono fosche.
La Guerra degli Dèi ha contrapposto decenni addietro questi negromanti (guidati dai re immortali) agli Dèi stessi, in una guerra lunghissima e devastante che ha visto umani sterminati ma anche divinità mutilate e uccise.

Ora la guerra è finita, gli Dèi restano dove la gente li vuole, altrimenti gli umani sono liberi di scegliere cosa fare. La gente comune è terrorizzata dai negromanti. I negromanti stessi non sanno bene cosa diventeranno col tempo, creature potentissime dalla vita lunghissima.
Che di lavoro svolgono una professione che è un incrocio tra la negromanzia, il lavoro di notaio (pare che i contratti siano fondamentali nei rapporti di forza e di dipendenze tra entità, qui) e quello di avvocato.

Come concetto è interessante, così come sono interessanti i personaggi presentati dall'autore.
Un po' prevedibili i colpi di scena, ma nel complesso il tutto funziona. E i gargoyles sono una piacevole sorpresa.

La cosa che più mi ha lasciato perplesso però è la parte da avvocato.
Con le prove che non vengono presentate, ma diventano una sorta di campo di battaglia supervisionato dal giudice, dove l'accusa cerca di mostrare grazie alla propria potenza i buchi nei contratti, e la difesa impiega se stessa per dimostrare invece che il tutto regge e non ha punti deboli?
Mi ricorda una versione leggermente più civilizzata del caro, vecchio giudizio divino "la giustizia sarà dalla parte di chi vincerà il duello, a prescindere dalla bravura dei duellanti".

Un buon esordio, sicuramente abbastanza originale da attirare l'attenzione.
Confido la prevedibilità di alcune cose e la parte giudiziaria migliorino in seguito, così come che si riesca a farci un'idea più precisa del livello globale (medioevo? Pseudo-ottocentesco? Moderno ma senza tecnologia?).

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Férial

Recommended

Reviewed in France on February 15, 2018

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A very good read. Original, disturbing (some), intelligent, a new magic, gods that can be killed, a nice vilain, a kick-ass heroin, a loveable priest, a sympathetic vampire, angry gargoyles, a new world barely explored (yet), a mystery to be solved and a good writing. Well, yes, I recommend this read.

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Frau M.

Neu, anders, wundervoll

Reviewed in Germany on August 24, 2017

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Max Gladstone gelingt, was in Fantasy sehr selten ist: Ein wirklich neues Konzept, eine Welt, die man so noch nicht kennt und deren Regeln schlüssig sind und funktionieren. Dazu Charaktere, die manchmal überraschen können und nur selten im Klischee hängen bleiben. Und Frauen, die unterschiedlich sein dürfen und nicht auf die Charaktereigenschaft "weiblich" reduziert sind. Macht Spaß zu lesen, ich freue mich schon auf die nächsten Bände.

Und ich wünschte wirklich, Peter Kenny würde die audiobooks machen, would be perfect ;)

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Jazell

Wonderful series started

Reviewed in Canada on July 12, 2016

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I am now a huge fan , well constructed world , fantastic characters, and a powerful and strong new vision... Loved it can't wait to start book 2 ... Thanks

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