Four Roads Cross

This book may have supplanted Full Fathom Five as my favorite book of Gladstone's Craft Sequence (so far). While that one was a little tighter and more focused, this one was just so epic and complicated and perfect. Gladstone has referred to the first five book of the series as functioning somewhat like the first season of a television show. Using that metaphor, this was the perfect finale to a number of arcs, even though it's not the last book chronologically.

Four Roads Cross takes us back to Alt Coulomb, with Tara and Abelard and Shale. A big part of the reason I loved this book is that Cat and Raz are back, and they might be my favorite minor characters in the entire series. It also draws on every other book, tying off loose threads that I barely realized were hanging and deftly introducing a bunch of new characters.

With this book I feel like I finally have a handle on how this world works and how magic works in it. Gladstone has created a staggeringly complicated world, where no single event can be explained as simple cause and effect. There's a global economy at play, an uncountable number of stakeholders, and problems that don't have clear problems or solutions. Just people trying to do their best to make a better world. It's such a fantastic metaphor for our world because it is just as messy and complicated. It's just a bit more literal about the whole "selling your soul" thing.

There's one more book that's been released. And then I'm seriously considering going back to re-read the whole series so far. There's just so much going on in these books that I know a re-read will be rewarding. I'm sure I'll pick up on more stuff a second time through, now that I'm more comfortable in the world and know where it's all leading. And I think I'll even appreciate the Dresedial Lex stuff a bit more. Plus, it'd be interesting to see how a chronological reading affects the story.

In any event, this series is solidly one of my favorites, and Gladstone has become one of my must-read authors. Anything he releases, I'll be picking up as soon as I can get my hands on it.

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