Ahoy there me mateys! So earlier in the year, wendy @ the biliosanctum set me on a series of adventures that led to me reading the first book in The Craft Sequence, three parts dead. I absolutely loved it. So when I saw the second book, I picked it up without even reading the blurb. I didn’t want to spoil any fun.So I was completely not prepared for what I found. Ye see, the first book centers around a first year associate named Tara whose firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao is hired to go to a cit...

I tried reading this book twice before with no luck, only getting as far as 10% before setting it aside. This time would have been my final attempt if I couldn’t get any further than that. Good thing I was in the right mood and frame of mind to appreciate it for what it is: a composite of magical legalities involving water distribution and municipality, and a short meditation on sustainable living and reconciling tradition and modernity in an uneasy post-revolutionary world where the gods are de...

Two Serpents Rise was a huge downgrade from Three Parts Dead.Two Serpents Rise is the second book in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence series but chronologically, this takes place before the event of the first book; look at the number in the title of each book, that’s the chronological order of the story line. Because Craft Sequence is a standalone series, almost every book featured different main characters and story in a different locale.Unfortunately, the changes in characters, story, and settin...

You know what it's like. You read the first book by a new author and you fall in love with the series. You know you shouldn't. You've been hurt before. Then the second book shows up and it's just... meh. It's called the sophomore slump. And all of us who have been burned by it learn to dread it. Especially when we *really* enjoyed the first book of the series. Good news. You don't have to worry about that here. If anything, I enjoyed this book more than the first one in the series. And that's re...

**This review is of an Advance Uncorrected Proof provided by Tor in exchange for an honest and fair review**A burgeoning desert city, Dresediel Lex depends upon Craft and the power of fallen gods to quench its ever growing thirst. When demons are planted in the city's water supply, Red King Consolidated, the utility that provides water to the city, suspects religious fanatics eager for the return of the gods or good old-fashioned corporate competition. Caleb Altemoc, a risk manager for the omnip...

The god wars affected Max Gladstone's incredibly rich world in many ways. In the first book in The Craft Sequence, Three Parts Dead, we learned about the death of a warrior goddess and what the hollow form that remained after her resurrection meant to those who loved and worshiped her in Alt Coloumb. Two Serpents Rise takes us over to the desert city of Dresediel Lex, where the storm god was defeated, and water is now supplied by Red King Consolidated. Caleb Altemoc works for RKC. His first task...

Max Gladstone has done something I haven't seen in a long time... well, two somethings. First, he's managed to make an excellent urban fantasy on a completely unique world. It's very much a modern-day universe, with tequila, poker, burlesque shows, pretentious performance art... but it's not Earth by any stretch of the imagination. The setting of Two Serpents (and it's prequel Three Parts Dead is a world where, sixty years ago, people rose up and literally killed their gods. Not metaphorically.

Sometimes I wind up blown away. It seems to happen more and more often with UF than I thought it would, but so be it. It happened again.Max Gladstone is awesome.We move to new characters in the Craft Sequence, but not a new world. The God Wars haven't really gone away and certain quasi-avatars are still a going concern. But wait... is this really a novel about Risk Management and preventing the world's power or waterworks from drying up because the great systems that plug themselves into sleepin...

Modern Aztecs, corporate takeovers, family dynamics and love; Two Serpents Rise has a lot going on, and a lot to tell the reader.I'm reading these in chronological order after buying the omnibus, but I'll be extremely interested in doing a reread following the title cues for order. Straight after the relatively straightforward Three Parts Dead, it's easy to get overwhelmed by this one at first; carol calls the kitchen sink the main resource for this book, and she's right. The characters are stil...

I love the Craft Sequence, but this particular book frustrates me. The world is as interesting as ever, and there are some potentially great concepts underlying the story, but ultimately I get stuck on Caleb and his storyline with Mal. Partly it's just that I don't like him as a character, but I actually think I could get over that if it wasn't for the fact that his obnoxious, inexplicable pursuit of Mal is basically the centerpiece of the whole book. I hate pretty much everything about this par...

~4.5My GR friends' ratings of Two Serpents Rise are all over the place, and I can see why. For me, the worldbuilding, the ideas, the questions, the pure conceptual brilliance not only saved the book but made it memorable. However, while the setup was promising, the first half of the plot was in desperate need of resuscitation. Caleb Altemoc, risk analyst, is called out to a gruesome death by one of the reservoirs he had assessed. ("The Wardens thought this was a homicide until the reservoir trie...

This is the second book in Gladstone's Craft Sequence series which I finally gave up on as it was just annoying. Everything I loved from the first book (Three Parts Dead) was here, but overdone, almost as though the author was trying so hard to create a modernized mashup Aztec/Maya Strange Civilization that he didn't have much left over for his disenchanted, and frankly boring, main character. He was too busy packing in oddness to pay much attention to either characters or plot. It all feels far...

oh my god this was SO BORING. i will continue with this series because thank goodness each book is a self-contained story, and i really love this mithology. but i hated this one. i hated caleb, i hated mal, i hated their stupid instalove and i hated that i already knew the ending at the 20% mark but kept reading anyway. ugh.

5 Stars Two Serpents Rise, book two in the Craft Sequence is one of those rare novelties where the sequel is far superior to the fantastic original. Max Gladstone has created a world to be remembered. In this the second book, we are moved to a completely different part of the world than in Three Parts Dead. We also have a completely new cast of characters and God's as well. The imagination and writing of Gladstone set's this series apart from the crowd. Gladstone has taken genres and smashed the...

Sometimes there are books that I want to re-read, almost from the first minute after turning the last page. Gladstone’s first novel Three Parts Dead was one of those select few. One of the more original fantasies I had read last year, it easily made my “Top Reads” list. So it was with some surprise that I finished Two Serpents and found myself avoiding it, unwilling to write a review and unwilling to read again. At the end of the book, my reaction was a solid “meh,” and yet there were intriguing...

I believe most people read this book (TSR) after they had read Three Parts Dead (TPD), as myself. I could not help myself comparing both books, and harshly judge TSR is a lesser book than TPD. But after finished the book, I am not so sure. Some points that I want to share comparing these two books:1. TPD has faster pace, the entire novel is telling stories in time length of days (without the background stories, of course). TSR story takes months, maybe a year. Maybe some readers who like the fas...

Fantasy Review BarnThere has been a twitter hashtag game going strong for the last few days where people have been describing movies badly. No doubt it has originated from an old Wizard of Oz description that ‘a young girl kills the first person she meets, then teams with three strangers to kill again.’ And after finishing Max Gladstone’s Two Serpents Rise I realized how much fun I could have with this game in literature. Because on the surface this has the ability to be the most boring book of

I really wanted to like this book. I loved Three Parts Dead and I knew that Two Serpents Rise changed locations and had a new cast of characters but it just didn't work for me.Two Serpents Rise introduces us to Caleb, a risk manager in the city of Dresediel Lex. He's enjoys gambling and... that's about it. I found him to be incredibly dull and he bored me to tears. He's your average white guy. He "falls in love" with Mal, a cliff runner (parkour, basically). He has daddy issues. Yeah, that's abo...

Executive Summary: This book is more of the so-so Urban Fantasy that has turned me off of the subgenre. It's not bad, but there are a lot of better books out there. Full Review I generally don't like much Urban Fantasy, but there are some exceptions. I'm a sucker for book deals though, and I'd heard good things about this one so I picked up the entire series on the cheap.I was happy to find that I rather enjoyed Three Parts Dead and was eager to jump into this one. Unfortunately I never really...

Tentative three stars. Rating may be lowered later idk. Also this review is a mess, I'm gonna come back and fix it up later, so just ignore how messy it is lmaoThis was... a disappointing read, to be completely honest. I really enjoyed Three Parts Dead because it was refreshing and different, filled with characters I grew to love and had an intriguing plot that drew me in. This novel had the world-building elements that I adored from the first novel, but the main character and his love interest,...