This one was just too tough for me to get into. The characters didn't keep me interested and the story fell flat. But, I will say that I loved This is How We Lose the Time War, so I suspect that this author just isn't meant to write this kind of book or this kind of book and this author's writing of it just isn't for me. Something didn't work here.

Tara Abernathy is on the way to her hometown to attend her father's funeral. On the way home, she rescues a young woman named Dawn from raiders, who becomes her apprentice in the Craft.

For some reason I could not get into this, and I'm not sure if that's because I haven't read The Craft Sequence. I don't think it was a bad book, and I think a lot of people would really enjoy this, I just didn't really know what was going on. I found it a bit boring for the most part, the action doesn't come forth until quite late in the story.

I do have the sequel, but I think it will be awhile before I have the urge to pick it up.

The new characters feel mostly flat, and the action doesn't pick up until the end, whereupon it abruptly stops and hangs you over a cliff.

This book feels like it serves as a sort of prelude to the new series set in the Craft universe. It introduces us to Tara Abernathy, one of my favorite characters in this setting. It goes over the ground of her backstory again and it also does a bit of work explaining Craft and how Craftspeople can affect the universe with their magic, which is sort of a cross between contract law and eschatology. It lays out the threat that will presumably be faced in this series and sets up the philosophies that will clash as character work to meet this threat.

It's also a book about trust, connection, and loss. Tara starts off the book by going home (from which she fled after some witchery that she performed was more than the town could countenance) to her father's funeral. She meets a girl named Dawn and saves her from a Raider. These Raiders prowl the Wastelands trying to curse other people to add to their numbers. What their ultimate goal is remains uncertain.

Dawn has some talent for the craft and wants Tara to teach her. Tara is ambivalent about this although she enjoys teaching, because Tara had a predatory teacher who abused his role, betrayed her trust and used her. Tara doesn't seem to entirely trust herself, a dangerous thing in a powerful magic user.

The Raiders were who killed Tara's father and they are attacking Tara's hometown more regularly. Tara, despite feeling unwanted by her former neighbors, feels obligated to help the town. This leads to further complications and the set up for the future series.

The pacing of the book begins slow, then information ends up coming fast and furious at the end. I was a bit bored at the beginning of the book but I was reading faster and faster by the end of it. I really liked the ideas in the book- I've always loved Gladstone's imagination. But I had a harder time caring about the characters. I've always liked Tara but had a harder time connecting to Dawn and the other people in the book.

I really wanted to get to this one, as it seemed interesting. This was requested when I first found out about NetGalley and I had requested so many ARCs that I could not get to all of them before they were archived. If I can find this somewhere for a reasonable price, I will try to get it!

This is a fantasy/horror novel following Tara Abernathy after being banished from her hometown and her journey after finding a young girl and trying to keep her safe from the world of Craft magic. I remember enjoying the story while reading it, but after a while it hasn't been very memorable.

There was a time when I thought Max Gladstone was the best thing since sliced bread. That feeling didn’t last and I kind of dropped the Craft Sequence.

Then I saw Dead Country on Netgalley and it sounded like he was taking a somewhat different direction. And, well, it would be rude not to, wouldn’t it?


The first thing to say about this is good fucking gods, Max Gladstone can write. You know the thing about good, cheap, quick, pick two? Well, with authors, it’s usually clear, lyrical, voicey, pick two, except for Gladstone who has all the gifts. I could eat his writing with a spade.

What else should I say about this book? It’s the story of Tara Abernethy, her of Three Parts Dead, back home for one funeral and swiftly finding out there’s going to be a whole lot more unless she does something drastic. For help she has Dawn, just as nascently powerful and screwed in the head as she once was, and an old crush, whose name I’ve already forgotten and who nobody on Goodreads wants to tell me. Also a wet behind the ears priest, a bunch of villagers who once chased her out, and her mother’s iron will.

Dead Country is as much Tara doing drastic things as it is Tara coming to terms with the place that cast her out but holds her father’s bones, not to mention the fact that her father is bones rather than flesh. It’s a good mix. It’s handled well too; well-paced, emotionally sensitive, considerate of many viewpoints. I like how Tara is there neither to apologise or continue the feud. She’s there to conduct business, do what works, and in terms of ongoing emotional ties, judge the place as she finds it.

So this is fantastically written, full of big damn action and interesting emotions, told with intelligence and sympathy… this is the good shit, right?

Right right.

But.

There’s something I can’t quite put my finger on.

I even had a chat with a Gladstone superfan the other day to find it. I talked about how my own private review scale has an A and S tier in place of the 5/5 that Goodreads uses. A is for excellent books that I want to give a ton of public support to but, which, nevertheless, somehow leave me not quite there. S is for books that are perfectly formed for my own private universe. A are the books you’d love to see again, S for the books where you’re wondering just how early you can propose marriage.

Dead Country is a textbook A and I don’t know why.

I reached a conclusion in said chat that I didn’t get Tara’s emotional arc but thinking about it, I don’t think that stands up. I did. Plus it was cool enough that who cares?

Maybe I missed the great metropolises of the Craft world? We talked that. I think we both felt we preferred Gladstone’s world to his characters (which is perhaps a tiny criticism of the latter but mainly a huge compliment to the former). But…

I didn’t like Dawn (I’m not sure I was meant to). Me forgetting the name of Tara’s man friend makes it sound like I don’t like him, but I did. I didn’t like the way the huge showdown was clearly going to go wrong. I’m not sure how much these things matter.

I should point out I read most of this on a plane, and the main thing I really want to do on a transatlantic flight is gnaw my own arm off out of boredom which tends to transmit to the boredom curing things. It’s incredible I read so much of it. Perhaps that’s why.

Whatever it was, something come the end didn’t sweep me away. I enjoyed the approach a whole lot but, come the landing, just wanted to get off.

But as I finish this review, I know that’s not quite true either. I can’t wait to see what Gladstone does next with the Craft Wars. I’m ready to hop right on that next plane.

In any case, I’ve already told you Dead Country is an excellent book. It is, and if anything, I’m underselling it. Ignore my private confusion, and go read and judge for yourself.

I unfortunately DNF'd this - the writing style just isn't for me.
I don't like to DNF books, so I'll likely try again at some point - but as of yet, I haven't been called back.

I went back to read some first ones in this world by the author, so that I wouldn't be out of the loop ebtirely when reading this.
I loved it. Max Gladstone has a particular voice, and these books have such a way, and it was really fun to see something newer in this world right after reading some of thr older.

So far I've loved every Max Gladstone story I've read, and this is no exception. I haven't read any of his other Craft books, so I wasn't sure if Tara is from the other ones (it's clear now she is) but other than some specific characters being referenced, it stands alone perfectly. Dense, rich, and complicated. A delightful read.

DNF at 5%. I had no idea what was going on, and I did not want to waste the brain power trying to figure it out.

I'm sure that this book is exactly what someone is looking for, but I am not that person.

Thank you to Netgalley, Tor Publishing Group and the author for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

When I found out there was a new fantasy series from one of the author's of "This is How You Lose the Time War" (which I LOVE), I was so excited to read this!

Unfortunately, I felt like I was missing a lot of context to enjoy this story to its fullest. Like 'Time War', you're dropped into a world with very little worldbuilding. Nothing is fleshed out, but feels like little vignettes of info and battles mentioned that you'll never get context for. It feels both futuristic and post-apocalyptic. The desert, post-apocalyptic setting gave me major "Priest" vibes (the 2011 vampire movie with Karl Urban and Paul Bettany and Maggie Q--honestly it's great!).

Then there are just random creatures mentioned with no context, like gargoyles. She's riding a dragon as a train? Did I read that right? She's apparently all powerful and has fought all these beings and won in the past, but it feels like she's stretched to limit here fighting the Raiders (sort of Zombie creatures in a storm that apparently have it in for her village).

In terms of the magic system, it's cool. It seems like quite a hard magic system based on lots of logic rules, but we aren't given all those rules. 75% of the way in, Tara goes into snippets of how it works with Dawn, and the trip to the badlands for a rescue is used for a bit of worldbuilding exposition, but not enough for me to have a full grasp on it. Oh, and then there's the hint that the world is also ending, and there's a much larger issue at play (maybe in future novels), but we spend the majority of the novel in this decaying town full of curmudgeons that hate her.

"That's what she was made for, after all. The Craft was a way of seeing, a way of knowing, a structure for ownership. A Craftswoman took living, breathing things and made them hers, rendered their complications and particularity down to power, to the stuff of souls, like a bee's nest crushed to pulp and wax and honey."

For being a short novel, it also felt extremely long. Then there's Dawn, the young girl she saves and is mentoring. But that ending...yikes. There also was no closure for the town we just spent the whole book trying to save.

"How slowly could seconds pass, how could stars linger in their courses, how deep was the night in which she waited..."

It felt like it wasn't the first novel in a series. And come to find out, he's apparently written other books in this universe, so perhaps that's why I felt a lack of understanding of the world. While the writing is beautiful and reflective at times, I probably won't continue the series. If you've already read his other work related to this world, and you like more cerebral fantasy stories, I'm guessing you'll love this read.

P.S. The little bits of humor were great though: "Your ma let me in." "That is nine times of embarrassing." "I could go." "Don't."

Many thanks to Tor Dot Pub for sending me a copy to review. All opinions are my own.

I keep forgetting how fucking much I vibe with Max Gladstone's books, and this now has me reading the other books in the Craft Sequence (as I've still only read Three Parts Dead at this point). I think what I love most about this is that it's set up as Tara being thrust into a Seven Samurai situation with the Raiders who encroach on the edges of the world and her hometown, and is a reckoning with going home to a place that seems to absolutely despise you. How it ends up coming back to threads laid in Three Parts Dead is also a fantastic surprise, and god knows I'm intrigued as hell to see where the rest of this ends up going. Gladstone continues to be fantastic at description, and the magic fights and the descriptions of the edges of the world in here are superb. I'm in for the rest of the ride, let's see what's over this next hill...

I've been a fan of the Craft Sequence for years, so when I saw there's a new installment I jumped on the chance to read it. And it was a pretty great read! Thematically strong as all of his works have been so far, this book discusses themes such as sacrifice, family, love, and what we humans owe each other - do the ends justify the means? Is power really worth everything?

The story follows the craftswoman Tara as she returns home for her fathers funeral. On the way, she meets a young girl who has the potential to learn the craft. Their dynamic was my favourite part of the book - the way Tara tried to figure out how to mentor her, what to teach her, created an interesting dynamic that I really enjoyed. The way they both clashed with the other side characters led to interesting discussions of what it means to be a craftswoman, to hold as much power as these wizard-lawyers do.

The plot itself lost me at times though - it is a short book, but it took me way too long to finish. Honestly, I was bored at times. This was very much an introductory book to this new series, and as such it might be a good place for a new reader to start; or perhaps not. Gladstone doesn't hold the readers hand, and he hardly explains the worldbuilding and magic system, so perhaps its best to read some of his other Craft books first.

Either way, it was an interesting entry in the series, and I look forward to reading the rest of them!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

This is a super intricate fantasy story and it was lovely to read. The world was vast and overwhelming, action packed and mesmerizing. can't wait for more in this series!!

Max Gladstone returns to his world where craft workers fought and destroyed most of the gods.Tara Abernathy’s father has died defending his small village against raiders. So Tara hop a dragon and walks two days though Dead Country (paper from Tordotcom). Along the way she is wounded and picks up an apprentice. Her old village who had chased her out with pitchforks, is desperately in need of a craftwoman to save them from the magically enhanced raiders. The area is littered with dark magic leftovers from the war against the gods. I hop this finds it’s way to an award nomination.

In short: bloody hell. Meditation on mentorship and family and homecoming and sacrifice and life and death and love and *people* and what they are and do and why. And power and consequences.

Absolute gem of a book, right here.

Longer review:

I'm going to open by admitting that I'm a huge fan of Max Gladstone's work. I've talked at length about his standalone urban/portal fantasy, Last Exit, and the sci-fi/romance crossover he co-authored with Amal El-Mohtar, This is How You Lose The Time War, which won alllll the awards back in the pandemic. But it's his Craft Sequence that he's perhaps known for. The series takes place in a world broken by a magical war to overthrow very real gods, one which now blends the fantastical with the institutionally familiar. Lich Kings are more CEO's; those working magic tend to have the skillsets of lawyers or risk management consultants, except they can also bend reality to their whim. The soaring pyramids that once rang with screams of sacrifice now house the elevator chimes of corporately-driven magic.
It's an ingenious idea. It lets us look at a mirror of our own world, explore it, criticise and understand the systems and complexities that bind us...and do so under the cover of a world rife wityh fantastical elements, from soul-powered golems to fire-throwing mages. It's just that the golems are a police force, the mages are in suits and ties, and the fire-throwing is one part incinerating demons, one part pushing up the corporate stock price. It's some of the most innovative, tightly written worldbuilding I've seen, and it's a lived in, bloody, dangerous world, from the boardroom floor to six feet under.

An now we have a new story there. And the start of a new series, even, the Craft Wars, which sounds suitably ominous. It's been a delight, then, to dip into the book and find it like being in a warm (blood temperature?) bath. The well described, carefully constructed world is still there, still ticking away. And the people in it are as strange and familiar as they ever were. Fittingly for a new series, we're back with Tara Abernathy. Tara was the protagonist of the first Craft book, a recently graduated apprentice, thrown to her theoretical doom, but too stubborn to die. And she's turned up since, off and on, trying to do the best she can at any given moment, trying to make things right, with the fire and passion and energy that will be familiar to anyone watching the news these days. But Tara is older now, too, and if not wiser, at least more familiar with the world and how it works. And as the story begins, she's going home, back to where everything started, going to see family in a small town that don't know her or like her and may once have tried to burn her as a witch. And so she'll be there, in suit and tie and nice shoes, surrounded by faces old and new, in the depths of family tragedy. A fish out of water story, but with something more going on behind it. Still, it's something, to see the cocksure, stubborn Tara of Three Parts Dead now, becoming something like her own mentor. Trying still to work out who she is, what she wants to do, what she's willing to do in service of larger goals (and isn't that what every villain says?).

Tara is the heart of the story; sad and often alone and determined and sharp and human. But she's not alone. Her own family are there, and childhood friendships and grudges made manifest. There's threads, complexity spread all around, and you can feel old joys and old wounds laid out quietly in the spaces between words. The folk who live in the backwoods space that Tara once called home are familiar and strange, happy with who and what they are, perhaps (or not), but as proud and flawed and argumentative and terrible and beautiful as any other people. Though Tara's here on big city wings, it's not always her way that's right - or, indeed, her way that's wrong. Both she and those around her need to dig a little deeper, empathise and understand. But of course, they have other problems. Still, the characters, well, you'll remember them all long after you close the book. They're smart, funny, gentle, vicious, troubled, broken, in love, out of love....so many things. But for all that, they are. And the story makes them come alive for us, makes us care about them, about this little town and what happens to it, about Tara and her relationships, and her family. About what might happen next.

And that's the story, isn't it, what happens next. Because as the pages turn, it's clear that Tara doesn't jsut have a family crisis on her hands. Or a chance to drop in and one-up the local yokels with her big city ways. There's crisis here, fires to be put out before they become something new. Old scores to settle and old cuts to heal, or re-open. I don't want to spoil any of it, because honestly I was spellbound throughout, always looking to see the next turn in the story, watching the stakes go from intimate to epic life-and-death and back again, seamlessly, beautifully. Gladstone can write. he can give you people to care about, he can give you a beautiful, precision-crafted setting, and he can give you a compelling story that just. Won't. Let. Go. And he does. I don't want to spoil it, but I sat up all night reading it, and I don't regret a moment of it.

If you enjoy clever, thoughtful, emotionally raw, richly crafted fantasy, then this is a book you can't afford to miss. Much like all his other books, this is some of the best work I've read in years. Go get a copy, right now, and let me know what you think!

After starting Dead Country by Max Gladstone, I realized that I need to be more careful when selecting what books to review for the Arched Doorway. While Gladstone’s name sounded vaguely familiar to me, I had assumed that this was the start of a new series not the beginning of the final trilogy in an already established one. Fortunately, I found that it was still possible to enjoy this book without having read the previous installments. Despite my initial confusion, Dead Country drew me in from the start and I was hooked until the very end. Gladstone’s writing is engaging and his characters are well-developed, making for an enjoyable read.

Although I did enjoy reading this book and feel like I was able to follow it pretty well, I can’t help but feel like I missed out on some important details by not having read the previous books in the series. The protagonist, Tara Abernathy, is a fascinating character, but there were several flashbacks and references to her pat actions that left me feeling a bit lost at times. Despite this, I was captivated by the story and found myself eagerly turning the pages to see what would happen next. In fact, I’m now even more eager to go back and read the previous installments in the series, even if it means spending money I should be saving. I’m curious to see how Tara’s journey has led her to where she is now and to fill in the gaps in my understanding of her character and the world she lives in.

I’m thrilled that I decided to request this book for review and I highly recommend it to anyone in search of a new read. While it’s not necessary to read the rest of the series before diving into this book, I believe that doing so would enhance the reading experience. That said, I found the book to be well-written and engaging, and I was quickly drawn into the story. I’m eager to read the next installment in the trilogy as well as the previous books in the series, and I’m also interested in exploring other works by Max Gladstone. All in all, this was a satisfying read that left me wanting more.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Dead Country by Max Gladstone follows a craftswoman Tara who returns to her home village to bury her father. The village and Tara have a really complicated past and both feel endangered by the other. We meet raiders and old friends, ghosts of the past and new opportunities, reasons to give up, and things to die for.
 
The premise sounds really intriguing and promising. And I think that the story was crafted rather well. But sadly it didn't work for me.
 
One thing that didn't work for me is a vast and overwhelming world. Maybe it's my fault. I knew that it was a new series in an already existing world. So maybe if I read the previous series, things would work out better for me. 
 
The other thing maybe has the same reason – I wasn't attached to the characters too much and that is why I didn't care. Maybe it is because I didn't know Tara before this book(she was a character in the previous series too). Or maybe it's due to the book's length – it's relatively short and it's hard to build new relationships in such a short time. I can't be sure.
 
Nonetheless, the world and the magic system in Dead Country seemed fascinating to me – it's rather hard, but there was something poetic about them as well.
 
The prose is polished and exquisite(it's rather similar to the one I encountered in another Gladstone's book – This Is How You Lose The Time War). I think it will not work for everyone, but there will be definitely many readers who will appreciate it.
 
All in all, it seems like an interesting start for a new series and I can recommend it to readers who love hard but abstract magic systems and flowery writing style. (Also, maybe if you're intrigued, your best starting place is the first book in raft Sequence - Three Parts Dead)
 
I'm grateful to Netgalley and Tordotcom for providing me with this advanced reading copy in exchange for my honest review.

Gladstone's Craft novels have been hit or miss for me, exhibiting several different flaws, some of which did serious damage to my enjoyment in a couple of cases. This one, for me, was a huge hit, the book that finally fulfilled the potential that the other books hinted at but fell short of. I gave five stars to <i>Three Parts Dead</i> despite vocabulary glitches that were mostly not present in this one, and I happily give this one five stars again. I even gave four stars to <i>Two Serpents Rise</i> despite even more vocab issues and an alienated idiot protagonist, and to <i>Four Roads Cross</i>, despite the frequent absence of the past perfect tense (it's only missing a couple of times in this one); I dropped <i>Full Fathom Five</i> to three stars both because there were too many unmodified references to our world and because I didn't believe the protagonist could solve the story problem. Based on reviews, I haven't read <i>Last First Snow</i>.

There's still an occasional moment here when the secondary fantasy world is too this-worldly, like an office building full of cubicles, but they are fewer and further between. The protagonist is my favourite Craft protagonist, Tara Abernathy (who probably won Four Roads Cross its fourth star, to be honest), and she Granny Weatherwaxes through a tense plot with strong personal stakes, philosophizing with some depth and in beautiful prose about principle versus pragmatism and the dangers of both, without bogging the action down in angst or navel-gazing. The secondary characters are vivid, and all have hooks into Tara that she struggles against, sometimes successfully but other times not so much.

There's plenty of varied action that is never for its own sake, always about something important, and excellently told. I got a clear, strong sense of the threats already abroad in the world and the creeping cosmic threat that was on its way. There was also a resonance with our own society's existential struggles to solve crisis-level problems without making things much worse, and the hopefulness of people of goodwill that, by joining together, they can solve those problems, conveyed clearly without it being too on the nose or in my face and without preaching specific solutions.

The book also doesn't share in the flaw of many popular books being published at the moment of self-consciously and obviously performing the prevailing orthodoxy of this exact moment in history, despite the setting being another world entirely. Sure, there's a gay relationship, and nobody seems to have a problem with it, but it's not spotlighted or commented on. It's just there, in a way that makes sense in the story.

Overall, one of the best books I expect to read this year, an easy entry into the Platinum tier of my annual Best of the Year list, and a contender for my Goodreads Choice fantasy vote (and probably lots of other people's) for 2023.