Book Review: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

Three Parts Dead
by Max Gladstone (downloadable audio)

Three Parts Dead is the first novel in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, though it works perfectly fine as a stand-alone novel that ties everything up neatly at the end.

I picked this book up based on (1) the gorgeous cyberpunk-looking cover, and (2) the fact that Max Gladstone is coming to Lincoln’s science fiction and fantasy convention, ConStellation, in Spring 2020. I was pleasantly amazed to find that it is — I kid you not — a fantasy world legal thriller!

In this world, gods are real beings who form legal agreements and reward worshipers in tangible ways. When the story opens, a god of fire who powered an entire city has died. His church quietly hires a magical legal firm to represent their interests in the aftermath. As readers, we primarily follow the engineer priest who was on duty when the god died and a just-out-of-school Craftswoman on her first assignment. Things get dangerous right away when a judge connected to the case is murdered.

One thing I really enjoy about this book series is that, culturally, their setting is contemporary or even slightly futuristic. It’s as if an alternate Earth had magic to power its mechanisms rather than electricity, but art, music, philosophy and the like developed in very similar ways. ‘Three Parts Dead’ a fun read, with smartly-written dialogue and lots of whodunnit suspense.

[For more speculative fiction legal thrills, I recommend Fuzzy Nation, by John Scalzi.]

[ official Craft Sequence page on the official Max Gladstone web site ]

Recommended by Garren H.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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