Four Roads Cross, by Max Gladstone

[mrissa]

Review copy provided by Tor Books. Also Max is one of my Fourth Street people, so yay for people who show up and talk theory with me.

The Craft Sequence is pretty carefully designed so that you can start it at any point, but the titles tell you what the chronology is: the number is right there in the name. This is the fifth one published but the fourth in chronology, hence the number FOUR right there conveniently in the name of the book. But you can read it first, no problem. All will be explained. Well, all will be inclued, hinted at, etc., which is better anyway.

So. Four Roads Cross. You’ve got a city with a resurgent moon goddess and a bunch of gargoyles, and how the population will take it depends on how it’s handled by…a lot of people. The news reporters and their choirs. The official law. Some people in personally difficult transitions, because hey, who do the gods use? Who have they always used, any gods, anywhere?

This is a book with stone poems and nightmare matrices and gods in very–very–unexpected places. It has mining consortiums and implicit and explicit contracts fighting it out in courts. And fallen empires echoing down through history to produce characters in the current world who are who they are because of who they were aeons ago–not just gods, but…other things.

If you’ve been missing Tara Abernathy, or Alt Coulumb itself, or watching pieces of the Craft universe unfold–if you’ve been waiting for this book–then yes. This is the book you’ve been waiting for. With all the shiny bits that implies, worldbuilding-wise, interpersonally, all of them. Go and get it.

Please consider using our link to buy Four Roads Cross from Amazon.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Comments

[ellarien]

The series sounds enticing -- thanks for reminding me of it.

Also, happy birthday!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And yes, I do think the series is worth reading, starting somewhere. I'm always interested to hear people's reactions depending on where they've started. You could now start with Last First Snow and read the numbers in order. That would be very different.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

I'm a big believer in publication order for all series, of course.

Would it be a good idea to re-read Three Parts Dead before reading this one? I've been wondering if I should do that.

(I got Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise in the Hugo packet, and it got me buying Max Gladstone's books a good deal earlier than I would have otherwise.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't hurt. I think you would pick up resonances that way. But if your schedule won't allow for it, or if you're just not in the mood for a Maxtravaganza, I think that this one stands alone all right.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

So, I did re-read Three Parts Dead, and am now a little ways into Four Roads Cross. Seeing as Four picks directly up from the end of Three I think this was a good decision.

Interestingly to me, Three read a lot more smoothly and enjoyably this time out than it did the first. I'm not sure why; perhaps I was having trouble figuring out the worldbuilding while also following the plot, and on the re-read was a lot more comfortable with the world.