Full Fathom Five
Full Fathom Five, the third book in Max Gladston's Craft Sequence, was fully as wonderful as the first book. Maybe moreso. It felt a bit more focused than the first one, though that could be because I've learned enough about this world at this point to take certain things for granted.
This book mostly follows two different characters: disgraced priestess Kai, who made idols to order for investors before her boss sidelined her for a foolish attempt to save a dying idol's life, and street urchin Izza, who has begun to chafe at the way the other urchins rely on her, especially because she'll have to leave them soon, one way or another.
I spent a lot of this book thinking about The Good Place, which keeps asking what we owe to each other. Full Fathom Five is more concerned with asking who we owe it to. How do you define a community and how do you recognize kindred spirits.
Belief, the book says, is what defines a community. And that makes sense in a series about gods, though it doesn't necessarily confine that belief to a god. After all, the gods in this book are constructs, barely alive at all. The real gods are dead, or else they abandoned their people after the war. Still, Gladstone says, when people all believe in the same thing, really believe in it, whether that's justice or history or survival, they find themselves beholden to each other. Belief engenders duty, and thus are communities born.
Of course there's a lot in here also about the push and pull of the individual vs the community. Once a community has been established it will serve some of it's members better than others. And once you recognize that, what do you do? When your belief in something has given you a path to life you want, but you discover that that same belief nearly destroyed someone you love, what do you do? Can you alter your beliefs, reshape the community? Can you hold on to only the bits you like while discarding the harmful bits, or do you have to start from scratch?
Perhaps it's no mistake that this book is also deeply concerned with paradoxes, and the importance of being comfortable with them. Kai, to borrow from another fantasy series, has a rock-hard Alar. She has no problem believing two contradictory things at once, a skill that is becoming increasingly important in her shrinking world. Globalization means you have to be comfortable with contradictions, with people who are different that you, especially if you hope to work with them.
At this point I'm fully in love with this series, and I'll follow Max Gladstone pretty much anywhere he wants to lead me. These books are fun and fast-paced while also making me think hard about complicated things. That's a rare combination, and it's wonderful to have found it here. I hope he keeps writing for a long, long time.
This book mostly follows two different characters: disgraced priestess Kai, who made idols to order for investors before her boss sidelined her for a foolish attempt to save a dying idol's life, and street urchin Izza, who has begun to chafe at the way the other urchins rely on her, especially because she'll have to leave them soon, one way or another.
I spent a lot of this book thinking about The Good Place, which keeps asking what we owe to each other. Full Fathom Five is more concerned with asking who we owe it to. How do you define a community and how do you recognize kindred spirits.
Belief, the book says, is what defines a community. And that makes sense in a series about gods, though it doesn't necessarily confine that belief to a god. After all, the gods in this book are constructs, barely alive at all. The real gods are dead, or else they abandoned their people after the war. Still, Gladstone says, when people all believe in the same thing, really believe in it, whether that's justice or history or survival, they find themselves beholden to each other. Belief engenders duty, and thus are communities born.
Of course there's a lot in here also about the push and pull of the individual vs the community. Once a community has been established it will serve some of it's members better than others. And once you recognize that, what do you do? When your belief in something has given you a path to life you want, but you discover that that same belief nearly destroyed someone you love, what do you do? Can you alter your beliefs, reshape the community? Can you hold on to only the bits you like while discarding the harmful bits, or do you have to start from scratch?
Perhaps it's no mistake that this book is also deeply concerned with paradoxes, and the importance of being comfortable with them. Kai, to borrow from another fantasy series, has a rock-hard Alar. She has no problem believing two contradictory things at once, a skill that is becoming increasingly important in her shrinking world. Globalization means you have to be comfortable with contradictions, with people who are different that you, especially if you hope to work with them.
At this point I'm fully in love with this series, and I'll follow Max Gladstone pretty much anywhere he wants to lead me. These books are fun and fast-paced while also making me think hard about complicated things. That's a rare combination, and it's wonderful to have found it here. I hope he keeps writing for a long, long time.
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