Fantasy Review BarnHave you started reading the Craft Sequence yet? Because if not you are now four books behind in what is probably the best series running under the speculative fiction label. I come to this conclusion slowly. I have not personally five starred any of the previous outings despite finding them all highly enjoyable. And here is a spoiler for you; I will be giving Last First Snow four stars instead of five at the end of the review.Because what we have here is a series that is gre

Quality writing & world building. Extremely irritating protagonist. Couldn't get into this one on account of how much I hated Temoc. The fact that this book is a prequel to Two Serpents Rise, which is about his equally irritating son, didn't help.

We used to tell a lot of stories about gods. They got drunk, cheated on each other, held grudges, and fought long ruinous wars over small things. They had our problems, except bigger.Dresediel Lex used to have gods. Now Red King Consolidated runs the city, a necrocapitalist water consortium helmed by a skeleton, staffed by wizard lawyers called Craftspeople, and dead-set on making everything better for everyone (as long it's net profitable). If you get in their way, well — we'd say gods help you...

3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/09/28/b...The Craft Sequence is unlike many conventional fantasy series in that each book can be read as a stand-alone, their stories ping-ponging unapologetically all over time and place, focusing on different characters. It makes it an unusual, albeit very special series. That said, many of these characters and events connect to each other, and there is a clear advantage to reading these books in the order in which they are publ...

I blurbed this book:Brilliant, elegant, epic, astonishing, smart, gritty—that's just the zoning debate that starts the book. Last First Snow is another wondrous visit to the fantastic world of the Craft Sequence whose only flaw is that it is too short.

Ahoy there me mateys! So in previous times, wendy @ thebiliosanctum 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. This is a review that talks about the fourth published book in the series. Like the others, I read this one without reading the blurb first. Not that would have helped me predicament. No real spoilers aboard but read at yer own peril . . .So me hearties. I loved this book. But I found when I was

“…war always had been a chance for great powers to play with their most exquisite toys” These books are really hard to rate. On the one hand, I feel they’re too complicated, so interwoven that I hardly understand them and have trouble to keep focus. But on the other hand, there is a brilliance too them (that is just a little out of my grasp) and there is always just something that keeps me going. One of those somethings was the overall story of this series, that finally started to come together

It’s not a kissing book.I feel I have to mention that because both people who saw me reading it at work said the title sounded like a romance. Since one was reading A Game of Thrones, I was a bit surprised at her lack of knowledge about Gladstone’s standout fantasy series, The Craft Sequence. It deserves far more recognition among fantasy and sci-fi fans than it currently receives. My best guess is that Gladstone is such an unusual writer, he travels above and below the average radar. The serie...

I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel that this book doesn't really take off until negotiations turn to crap, but I'll say it anyway. :) The book REALLY takes off after the assassination attempt and that's also the spark that turns all the powers in the city upon each other. The Soul-Rich versus the Soul-Poor.And it's not easy to negotiate with ourselves, as readers, just who is bad and who is good. It's very complicated, but more than that: it's vivid. We start out ten years before the events o...

The God Wars are over, and the lower classes of Chakal Square sit in protests. The capitalist overlord monsters (literally, the King in Red is a living skeleton who runs a corporation) want to rewrite its laws, including the laws of physics, to prevent any demons from breaking through, but they have to be careful, as the locals getting too upset could wake the ancient gods and split reality open. They must negotiate peace before the crowd's anger itself triggers an apocalypse.You can't read "___...

Another absolutely brilliant and completely different entry in this series, Last First Snow is the earliest - and almost the last - entry in the series. Makes sense? Excellent!We're back in Dresediel Lex, back with characters familiar from Two Serpents Rise, 10 years before we met them last. It makes for the perfect recipe for dread - I know something happens, I know who we get to see ten years later, but not how we get there or what happens along the way. Gladstone found quite a different tone

I love this world, but the plot of this particular one didn't interest me as much as I'd hoped.

I don’t know, man

Honesty, worth five stars for the line about prophets.Who would have thought lawyer magical fantasy would be so good?

Good addition to the series. And impressive as the writer choses different stories for his books centered on the same world.Maybe this volume had some flaws, the late start of the whole action, not so much deity around and other crazy stuff like the others (for example the city, Dresediel Lex, in the second volume, has vampires, zombies, and more, more creatures and fantastic beings roaming around ), in truth this one has some golems and some others in the end, but, anyway, still, not complainin...

Characters: 5*Universe: 5*Plot: 3.5*After reading book 5 by accident this book was *slightly* spoiled for me by myself (and book 5 now makes a bit more sense).It was good to return to this universe and I greatly enjoy the concept of this series. What if religion and faith and miracles were based on math, science, and economics? You'd have the craft sequence.

3 Stars The Last First Snow was a huge disappointment for me. The Craftwork Sequence by Max Gladstone has up to this point been an incredible breath of fresh air. In this series he demonstrates how incredible an adult oriented fantasy can be. Max Gladstone is on top of his game. Each of the books in The Craftwork Sequence is an improvement on the last, with this book being a slight miss. Gladstone is rare in that he wants each book to be able to read alone, even though they are very connected. T...

What an amazing book. As ever, the world of the Craft Sequence is beautifully drawn and completely fascinating. I enjoyed Elayne's role in Three Parts Dead, but I like her even better in this book as a younger woman growing into her power and making some hard decisions. Fantasy politics are always my jam, and I think Last First Snow does an exceptional job of creating a political story full of people and nuance. There are a few minor things within the book that I don't love, but honestly my bigg...

If you're not reading this series, then it seems a bit silly from the outside looking in...maybe that's not the right word. Definitely weird.That's what I thought when I started the series. Even after finishing Three Parts Dead, I just kept thinking, "What a weird book." I really liked it, though. It was new and fresh and exciting. And every other book in the series has continued that. And now I'm here, four books deep, and it all seems normal. It's a series where characters range from skeleton...