4.5 stars - it took me a little while to get back into Alt Coulumb, but Four Roads Cross - ostensibly book 5 of the series, but a direct sequel to book 1 - had everything I've come to love about Max Gladstone's writing. Twisty plot? Check. Smart and relatably flawed characters? Check. Creative and notably weird magical systems and creatures? Oh yeah.Tara Abernathy, the up-and-coming necromantic lawyer of Three Parts Dead is back. Turns out that resurrecting a god isn't enough to fix all her prob...

Tara is back!This book rocked.

Ohh, what a ride this book was!!! First, there are a lot of improvements from the previous volume. More characters, plenty of action, a more colorfull and intriguing world and and with a non linear action, this volume was trully a masterpiece for me. Second, the story had a lot of strong points, had more appeal than the previous one, was more centered and, maybe, this also happened because we had a healthy range of believable characters. Keeping it short, this series is one of the best urban fan...

I hate finishing series - the more I love the books, the more I hate to leave them. This may not be the last of the series, but every book finished is another step closer; and yet it only took me two months to miss this series badly enough to drop a book right in the middle - one I was really enjoying, too.But the Craft Sequence has worked it's way under my skin. These books are fantastic - a world that might feel familiar to Mieville fans but without the flourishes of language. The writing is s...

Sometimes you need a solid nearly two month ride through a world you know, with characters you like, and the promise of a good fight at the end. This was all those things.

Max Gladstone writes such fragile, badass and wonderfully human characters - be they witches, gods, gargoyles or undying animated skeletons. This is particularly awesome when it comes to his female protagonists because as a whole the fantasy genre often suffers from cardboard cut-out women. As a bonus Tara is my favourite character and Alt Coulumb is my favourite city.Some of the most beautiful bits:“Your once human Craftsmen, who style themselves masters of the universe, have slim regard for aw...

Be warned: May contain spoilers for earlier books in the series.Rating: Five crowns.All hail Max Gladstone, King of Legal and Financial Fantasy. Raise your cocktail glasses. Cheers! *cue fireworks*Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence books are set in a most sophisticated, comprehensive and fascinating world. It is a world intricately weaving governmental, judicial, financial and religious systems into one cohesive, interdependent whole. Philosophical arguments may subsequently escalate into judicial c...

5 Stars 5 huge Stars.Four Roads Cross, book number 5 in the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone is nearly a perfect read for me. This is the best book in the series so far and that really says a lot since each have been incredible. As many others have said this series by Max Gladstone is simply stunning!"The song of Gavriel Jones, the Crier sang. Tells of a New Presence in our Skies. Oh, Tara thought. Hot Town nights burn silver. And Stone Men soar in the Sky Pray to the moon, dreams say And they’...

At about 70%, I needed to stop reading this and study for a test that I had to take in three hours, but all I could do was curse Max Gladstone for making me fall for a book so hard, AGAIN.Basically, if you loved Three Parts Dead like I did, this sequel has everything you wanted and more. I think I loved it even more than the TPD, because not only did it have the same character interactions and world, it also included interesting experiments with form, more crackling Craft, and so much more of th...

Another great entry in the corporate/legal-thriller-meets-fantasy Craft Sequence.Kos Everburning, God of Alt Coulumb, has long been seen as a very safe and stable investment. He rules his city of worshipers efficiently, providing him with a steady stream of faith (while providing them with low-cost heating as well - he's not called "Everburning" for nothing). He stayed home during the God Wars, and as such a low-risk/predictable growth god, his shares are a lynchpin to the international markets....

Originally published at Reading RealityThe world of the Craft Sequence is guaranteed to give any reader a lingering book hangover. This is a world that requires the reader to throw out all of their preconceived notions about religion, magic, gods, demons, law, order and chaos. Not necessarily in that order, and on a continuously repeating cycle.This world makes the reader think. And think. And re-think.In this universe where the gods are not only made real, but can be fought in real terms and ki...

I have quibbles with this series. Let's get them out of the way, before I start singing the praise of these books.The sequence of publication does nothing for the reader's enjoyment. For instance: had I read Last First Snow before I started Two Serpents Rise I could have connected better with the latter, for I would have understood Temoc. And that is just one instance.Whoever came up with the titles, should be fired on general principle for thinking that angry alliterations would communicate the...

Holy shit this is good. It's so good. It's so, so good. Here's a thing about the time-line in these books (re: publication order vs. internal chronology): I think you could read Three Parts Dead and Four Roads Cross as a duology and be fine. If you want more emotional weight, you can read Last First Snow and Two Serpents Rise as a separate duology. IDK what to do with Full Fathom Five, and I haven't yet read Ruin of Angels (but I will always be angry that there's not a six in that title. I will

Apart from the brilliance Gladstone typically shows in his world building, pacing, and stories, there is a subtle taste of poetry in his writing, that every once in a while, stokes from a quiet ember in the night to a flaring sun.Truth is, I have discovered how he does this.Max Gladstone is a Gargoyle, carved to serve Seril the Undying.Or, in our terms, he is a hidden poet.Reading Four Roads Cross, one can see how his masterful prose can be read as allegory to the real world, and suddenly, like

I had high hopes for the Craft Sequence. It came recommended to me by a friend of mine, and I had already planned to read it based on an article Gladstone wrote about how character drives story. The first book, with its integrated world-building and fascinating ideas, certainly impressed, but the more I read of it, the less interesting they get. With Four Roads Cross, ironically, I realized it was because the characters didn't resonate with me. They weren't two-dimensional, but neither could I r...

I read this on a tear. I just couldn't believe how good it was. EVERYTHING was perfect.I mean, I've read these books in publication order but they're all out of timeline order, and while that makes it seem kinda funky, it doesn't really matter because certain events HAVE to be well known before their significance can shine in the next.It doesn't exactly make for popcorn reading. We have to keep on our toes. But that's what's so brilliant about it. We're treated to an extravaganza of wonderful id...

So, this is where the four roads cross… an exceptionally well-chosen title as everything before came together in this story. Therefore, I would recommend to read the previous books. We meet a lot of characters from earlier books and this made the overall story much easier to understand and somewhat less complicated. Still, this author is such a genius that I am awed, overwhelmed, impressed and hopelessly lost: all at the same time. I think I should probably re-read the whole series to appreciate...

Five minute vacation review:Amazing. A bit of a rocky start since I've mostly read these as they've come out and have only re-read the first book one time. In many ways, this is a more direct sequel, although we needed other events to happen to other characters before this timeline. At any rate, Gladstone is a plotting genius and I can't even imagine how he kept it all straight. One of those wall charts, maybe. Love the glimpses into maturing characters from Three Parts Dead. Kept me up reading,...

I haven't been feeling well enough to write a good review, but the book needs to go back to the library, so here are just a few comments instead of a review. Sorry it's a bit of a mess.I love the way this guy writes, the descriptions are wonderful. And the world that he created, the bizarre mix of high finance, urban life, magic and religion is just too wild. The crazy plot involves a goddess who came back to life and the city hates her, and how that might cause a huge financial crisis because h...

The end of the series, or so I thought. It looks like the series will be continuing for a while, but maybe not in the same way that it's been going so far. So I'm counting this as an ending.First, observations on the series. This quickly grew to be one of my favorites, strictly due to its originality. I just haven't read anything like this. As the 5 book arc continued, though, the writing got better and the books really were able to stand more on their overall quality rather than just their orig...