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Max Gladstone

Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence) Hardcover – October 2, 2012

by Max Gladstone (Author)

546 ratings

Book 1 of 6: Craft Sequence

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"Sharp, original, passionate." ―NPR

The first novel in the critically acclaimed contemporary fantasy series by Max Gladstone

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 justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, MAX GLADSTONE's Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.

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

Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

October 2, 2012
Dimensions

5.9 x 1.17 x 8.55 inches
ISBN-10

0765333104
ISBN-13

978-0765333100
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“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, author of The Mote in God's Eye and Lucifer's Hammer

“This has so many of my favorite things: an intriguing world, fun characters, a puzzle of a story that manages to be both funky fantasy and legal thriller. Three Parts Dead is simultaneously fast paced and thoughtful, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.” ―Carrie Vaughn, author of the Kitty Norville series

“With his first book, Max Gladstone gives promise of being a true star of twenty-first century fantasy.” ―John Crowley, author of Little, Big and The Deep

“Max Gladstone has evidently devised a necromantic steampunk machine that enabled him to channel the Roger Zelazny of Lord of Light, cathect the Neil Gaiman of American Gods, and subsume the oeuvre of John Grisham, all with the aim of producing loopy, metaphysically-minded legal thrillers. It you doubt my conclusion, consider Exhibit A, the author's delirious and delightful first novel.” ―James Morrow, author of The Last Witchfinder and Shambling Towards Hiroshima.

“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.” ―Maragret Ronald, author of Spiral Hunt

About the Author

MAX GLADSTONE went to Yale, where he wrote a short story that became a finalist in the Writers of the Future competition. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books; 1st edition (October 2, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0765333104
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0765333100
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.9 x 1.17 x 8.55 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,743,768 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17,208 in Fantasy Action & Adventure
- #18,197 in Sword & Sorcery Fantasy (Books)
- #48,687 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
546 ratings

About the author

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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).

Customer reviews

5 star		53%
4 star		30%
3 star		11%
2 star		4%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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mousewife

Rich in prose and detail, a heady genre cocktail

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2019

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An exquisitely phrased, almost poetic genre cocktail of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery are conveyed within a world of a religious driven science and soul sucking magic known as the Craft. Readers experience this through the characters driving this story’s plot; Tara, the capable, inquisitive, and somewhat independent thinking Craftswoman; her master and mentor Elayne Kevarian, a powerful and increasingly less human mistress of the Craft (whom Tara could become if she’s not careful); her enemy, the charming, compelling, and powerful Craft professor Alexander Denova; Abelard, lost and devoted acolyte of the machine which serves/makes up his god; and Cat, angry, unfulfilled servant of Justice, who seeks the vampire bite to satisfy her own emptiness. We follow Tara and Abelard through a maze of magic, science, and intrigue as the two of them work together to solve a mystery and a murder.

Intelligent, yet brimming with character driven emotion, this story takes us through a fast paced plot which doesn’t stint on its world’s development or description. For all of these things, I give this five stars.

4 people found this helpful

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Waites Family

*Review from The Illustrated Page*

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2016

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Three Parts Dead is the novel that started Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, which is proving to be one of my all time favorite fantasy series. Gladstone has created one of the most compelling fantasy world I’ve encountered and filled it with diverse and well developed characters. Although Three Parts Dead isn’t my favorite book in the series, it’s a good introduction to the world of the Craft Sequence.

One of the best ways to describe Three Parts Dead is that it’s where fantasy meets legal thriller. After all, this is a book containing the phrase “pro bono zombies.” Tara Abernathy, a recent graduate of the Hidden Schools, has been offered a place at the firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, but only if she’s able to prove herself in their latest case. Kos, the fire god of Alt Coulumb, has died under mysterious circumstances, and without him the engines that drive the city of four million people will shut down and chaos will ensue. Under the oversight of her new boss, Elayne Kevarian, Tara must work to resurrect Kos and find out how he died in the first place. And it’s looking like it might be a murder…

The reason I keep describing this series as “magical lawyers” is because the world of the Craft Sequence was inspired by the 2008 recession. In short, magic = the economy, gods = corporations, death of gods = bankruptcy, craftsmen/craftswomen = lawyers. With me so far?

This unconventional take on fantasy fiction leads to a highly original world and series. It’s inventive and imaginative at every turn. More than that, it feels vivid and life like. There’s clearly been lots of thought put into its development, and I love the connections that span different stories in different parts of the world. There’s even two text based games in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure, if you’ve gotten as obsessed with this world as I have.

The originality of the world extends to the protagonists as well, who tend to be equivalent to attorneys or risk assessors or financial investors. They also tend to be diverse in race, gender and sexuality. Tara is clearly described as black, and I love that the mentor type figure, Elayne, was female (especially that she was an older, childless career women, since you don’t see many of those depicted positively in SFF).

Elayne was probably my favorite character of the book, but I liked the others as well. Tara felt young and sort of naive. She’s ambitious but hasn’t yet given up her humanity in exchange for power. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops in future books where she leads, as I think she’s got a lot of potential character development in front of her.

On this second read through of Three Parts Dead, I noticed a lot more of the details of the world. I’m pretty sure that it’s a highly alternate version of our own, so far apart that there’s more differences than similarities. I’d previously been thinking that Alt Coulumb was somewhere in Europe, but now I think that it’s somewhere on the east coast of North America. Likewise, the timeline is probably earlier than I’d initially thought, with the technology level being more equivalent to late 1800s or early 1900s. I’d love to see a map of the series world, but I haven’t found one so far.

While I’d probably point to Full Fathom Five or Last First Snow as being my favorite Crafts Sequence novels, Three Parts Dead remains a strong start to the series, and I look forward to returning to Tara and Alt Coulumb in Four Roads Cross. Three Parts Dead is a book I’d recommend for anyone looking for well written female characters or original fantasy fiction.

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

Zesty, but also Convoluted

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2018

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Very interesting choice of words and I enjoyed the unique perspectives on how characters think and behave. I sort of got the plot of how a god can die (loved the scene where the investigators conjure up a gigantic model of a fallen god and examine it, like a crime scene re-construction) and how there's a trial conducted over said downfall.

However, it was very convoluted. People do things, like go to a bar, and flee or fight there just because the author tell us. People are attacked, just because it happens. For example, a dead victim is found mutilated in a very odd way and then the investigator blabs made-up rules about how witchcraft can be deduced by the way the victim died (with nothing grounded in reality or logic). Hmm. Magical beings such as craftspeople, guardians, or stone men can be dealt mortal blows which makes you think they've been killed, but... nope. Don't know how anyone dies in this book, really.

But for a fresh take, and stirring prose, this book is worth reading, if you blink away the plot or any inherent logic.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

liminal fruitbat

Fun thriller with real potential

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2016

Verified Purchase

I’d seen Max Gladstone’s name come up in various places in connection with Seth J Dickinson, whose work I discovered last year and quickly became a huge fan of, so once I’d cleared out my reading backlog I decided to give this a try.

The premise in a nutshell: Tara Abernathy is a sorceress (or Craftswoman in this setting’s terminology) who’s lucky enough to get offered a job with a prestigious firm of necromancers straight out of university and unlucky enough, once she takes up the offer, to be saddled with the task of resurrecting a dead god in a form acceptable to his worshippers before the city powered and sustained by that god collapses into chaos. Someone in another review called it “low fantasy”, and while I’ve always understood that term to mean fantasy where supernatural elements are rare or non-existent (which this book definitely is not), I can understand why someone would apply the term here: Three Parts Dead has a very pragmatic, unglamorous approach to its fantastic elements and one of those wannabe-noir atmospheres common in fantasy that is a little bit sabotaged by the tying-up of all the injustices the plot addresses at the end. Which isn’t a bad thing: given recent events, an optimistic ending involving the beginning of the end of the persecution of an ethnic/religious minority and women defeating a man who exploited and preyed on those beneath him was highly welcome.

The nature of gods in this setting, the covenants and pacts they make with their worshippers, makes the book a legal procedural, with the apparently-obligatory shift into a detective/thriller novel once Tara discovers that Kos Everburning did not die of natural causes. It’s mostly a fair-play mystery: the magic (or Craft) and the rules of the setting are demonstrated sufficiently clearly for the reader to understand the nature of Kos’ death, and twists such as what’s going on with the gargoyles and what Elayne does in the epilogue are organically derived from what’s come before. (Elayne’s rationale for her action feels a little contrived, but if I’m feeling generous I can accept it as a demonstration of her not-quite-human outlook.) The use of Craft is fairly well-integrated into the setting’s culture – the Blacksuits in particular, people who can become avatars of Justice, trading free will for superpowers and a sense of purpose so strong it borders on addiction, were a particularly cool concept – though the visceral, detailed acts of zombie-raising and face-stealing are more impressive than the rest of it, and placing them in the earlier sections front-loads the sense of wonder and leaves the rest of the book a little unbalanced. Still, it’s a good concept, and the matter-of-fact way in which Craftspeople drift apart from humanity with age is a fun aspect of the setting and provides a nice bit of implicit characterisation for everyone who chooses to study Craft.

The characters are good enough for what the book requires of them, though the novice priest Abelard felt like the weak link, and I think that’s connected to the occurrence of my pet peeve with many fantasy religions: the cult of Kos Everburning feels very much like Christianity with a new coat of paint. The internal lives of the other major POV characters are all entangled with specific aspects of their world, while Abelard is just dealing with a fairly standard-issue crisis of faith and some limited political intrigue in the Church. He’s less interesting than Tara, Cat, and Elayne, and I wish the blurb talked about Cat and Elayne rather than Abelard because they deserve it more.

The setting’s good and feels original, and, like the characters, is well-drawn enough for what the book requires (this may sound like damning with faint praise, but it genuinely was an enjoyable read). It’s no Perdido Street Station, but if you’re a big setting nerd I suspect reading the other books in this series will probably allow you to build up a better picture of the world. Gladstone’s made an effort to give us a gender-equal setting (it’s not perfect, but it’s better than many secondary worlds), and in-universe racism is directed against the gargoyles rather than any analogue to real-world ethnicities. Everyone seems to be straight and cis, though I’ve heard that improves in later books.

In short, it’s a fun fast-paced thriller with smart, competent characters (barring a certain large brain-fart on the part of one character whose name rhymes with Rabelard), and while it lacks the sheer delight and numinous aspect of something like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the baroque inventiveness of something by China Mieville, or the strong blend of plot and character of something like The Traitor Baru Cormorant, I think it’s definitely worth reading if you’re into this kind of fantasy. Three-and-a-half stars rounded up to four because I think there's promise here.

4 people found this helpful

SC

A solid, if unspectacular, series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2019

Verified Purchase

Bought this plus the 5 others that make up the "Craft Sequence" whilst on offer from Amazon (6 books, £10). I'd say at that price these books are definitely worth the read. They're fast paced, slightly steam punk and filled with some good characters and world building. I find the magic system to be fairly convoluted and at times difficult to grasp, at times this leads to an ex machina situation which ruins the plausibility of the plot

One person found this helpful

James

Excellent and fresh take on fantasy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2017

Verified Purchase

Really surprised by the original take on the fantasy genre and a genuinely smart murder mystery. It did have a slight tendency to obsess over world building here or there but thankfully it didn't break the pacing of the book. Also some welcome dry humour kept things fun. I would recommend this to anyone who loves a good murder mystery, a good fantasy novel or just a solid, entertaining read.

Mr. B. J. S. Liddle

An interesting and fresh fantasy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2017

Verified Purchase

Very nice fantasy with a hefty dollop of detective fiction. An actual review would take a long time - this book is well layered and merits careful picking apart - but I would definitely recommend it, especially for people who have read Borges and gone "Hmmm, needs more shadow monsters"

Rev. Andy

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2017

Verified Purchase

Corporate magic - a very nice twist in the fantasy genre. Good characters & nicely written.

One person found this helpful

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