A lot can be said about Max Gladstone and his debut novel, Three Parts Dead. Max is a tricksy tease of a writer and the world he’s given readers a glimpse of in the first published novel in The Craft Sequence is wonderfully fascinating. He shows a world of Gods, Sorcerers, Lawyers and Politics through the eyes of Tara Abernathy, a young Craftswoman who literally falls from the sky in the opening pages of the novel after a less than smooth tenure as a student of the Hidden Schools. Well, rather, the novel proper begins there since Max shows us the God’s death which is the mystery of the novel’s plot before introducing readers to Tara.
After Tara falls out of the sky, she apprentices herself to an investigative/legal firm and seeks to uncover the plot behind the death of Kos the Everburning, the God found lifeless in the prologue. Tara finds work with the firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao where she is given the assignment of uncovering the death of Kos in the city of Alt Coulumb. Although Tara is concerned that her controversial past as a student might cause some problems, her direct supervisor and eventual mentor Elayne Kevarian intimates those issues are partially why she asked Tara to apprentice with her. Joining Tara and Elayne them is Abelard, the priest who was unlucky enough to discover the dead god. As if cities powered by gods, and devotion to them weren’t enough of a fantastical aura, Gladstone injects vampires and gargoyles into the fray. All these disparate elements could drown each other out as a chaotic mess, but in Gladstone’s capable hands, they come together is wonderful flavors of a superb whole.
The spine of the plot is fairly straight-forward as a whodunit/legal thriller, but like a great batch of chili*, it is the subtle, evocative spicing ingredients where the novel shines. The back-history which informs the current day events evokes a rich tapestry, especially when characters continually refer to events like the God Wars as a defining time in the world. As the world is powered by gods, the church surrounding the faith to these gods plays a large role in the governing and politics of the world.
The gargoyles, known by many as Guardians, are a race of characters which blur the line between militant and militaristic, but also trapped and tragic. The vampires seem more victims than prey as people can become addicted to their blood as if it is a drug – much like Catherine “Cat” Elle. Cat is a “Blacksuit,” essentially a police force literally possessed by the spirit of Justice.
Then there’s the magic, whose practitioners are called Craftsmen and Craftswomen. Max builds the magic in such a way that many details and intricacies we as readers don’t see make for a rigorous system of rules by which the Craftsmen/women adhere. Everything in this world, as it has thus far been revealed, is defined by the complicated relationship between the Gods and those who worship them; the economy, government contracts, and conceivable power. While the Crafstpeople are indeed sorcerers, they also write up the contracts that allow them (and others like them) to draw power from the Gods.
There’s a great balance in the characters who comprise the main cast; our protagonist is female, as is her boss. Another supporting character, Cat, has a strong character arc that parallels and intertwines with the main plot. These women have power in this world, or are the most forthcoming in their quest to gain a foothold with it. Despite the church’s power being represented by a man, Elayne exhibits no qualms about dealing with him and these people if not on an equal level, then a level on which she has a moral high ground. What makes these women such great characters, especially Tara and Elayne, is that they have agency of their own and are not defined by their relationship to men in the novel. Granted, Tara’s relationship with her former professor at college is an integral element in the novel, but it isn’t the only defining aspect of who she is. Cat, on the other hand, is a bit of a dependent character, but that dependency is not intertwined with her gender. She is, in essence, an addict.
In many ways, the world Gladstone has created reminds me of the cityscapes of China Miéville’s New Crobuzon (Perdido Street Station and The Scar), in large part, because of the mix of arcane, eldritch darkness and non-human races set primarily in a city. I should also point out that the cover is both accurate and misleading. Chris McGrath is one of the finest cover artists in the genre today, which is why his art graces so many covers. From my standpoint, I most associate his art with Jim Butcher’s wonderful Dresden Files so that played into my expectations that Three Parts Dead had strong Urban Fantasy leanings. (For what it is worth, I’ve seen other people with a similar knee-jerk reaction that this was a straight-on Urban Fantasy novel.) While it does have some elements in common with what is today considered Urban Fantasy, that is just one flavor among many in the sumptuous chili that is the novel. The accuracy lies in the depiction of Tara Abernathy, right down to her tattoo. White-washing is too common a practice in cover art, as the fine Book Smugglers blog has enumerated. Not so with the cover of Three Parts Dead, we clearly see Tara is a woman of color and not white. This is perhaps even more important because Max is a white guy, so to depict the protagonist as female and non-white is itself a major plus for the novel.
Of course, those issues with the cover might not matter as much had Max not written such a terrific novel, and one that is even more impressive in light of it being his first published novel. I’d been seeing people in the genre community speak highly of the book for the past couple of years, not the least of whom are the people who nominated Max Gladstone for the John W. Campbell Award. I can say they are spot on: Three Parts Dead is a wonderful novel that like many a great novel, is far more than the sum of its parts. What I find even more enticing is the open ended nature of the world Max introduced in the novel. I’m quite pleased to have the second and third books on my shelf waiting to be read and even more pleased Tor and Max Gladstone will be giving us more in this world to read.
Bravo and bring on more of The Craft Sequence.
Highly Recommended
I’d suggest that folks curious about the book check a couple of articles Max wrote for Tor.com, especially these two, which helped to convince me I needed to read Three Parts Dead:
In Defense of Indiana Jones, Archaeologist
The Ghostbusters are an Antidote to Lovecraft’s Dismal Worldview
*As a one-time winner of a chili cook-off, I swapped “chili” with “stew” for this metaphor.
© 2014 Rob H. Bedford
Excerpt: http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9780765333117
http://www.maxgladstone.com/
Trade Paperback (July 2013) 978-0-765-33311-7 | 336 pages
eBook (October 2012) 978-1-466-80203-2
Electronic copy purchased, trade paperback courtesy of publisher at New York Comic-Con 2014
