{"id":1842,"date":"2014-06-12T20:30:37","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T00:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/?p=1842"},"modified":"2024-01-21T11:33:37","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:33:37","slug":"gladstone-two-serpents-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2014\/06\/gladstone-two-serpents-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"Gladstone, Max: (02) Two Serpents Rise<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next book in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, Two Serpents Rise<\/cite><\/strong>, is apparently<\/a> set a couple years before Three Parts Dead<\/cite><\/a>, though that’s not evident from what’s on the pages so far. Unfortunately I didn’t like it as much, because it focuses fairly tightly on a guy, Caleb, who spends most of the book doing foolish things because he was instantly attracted to a mysterious and dangerous woman—who calls herself Mal, even—which I found pretty boring. Even the lampshading of his foolishness in the form of his awesome best friend pointing it out doesn’t help. (I love her, but I wish there hadn’t been a point where I thought, “Oh. That’s why she’s a lesbian,” because I liked it so much better when she just was<\/em> for no particular reason other than that people are<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

So that was kind of hard on my engagement with the story. However, I do like that the books so far have focused, plot-wise, on city infrastructure (the problem here is water supply) and on different ways of dealing with religion, though I feel like the balance of the treatment of the latter was possibly not quite as strong as in the first book. Hard to say, though, when I freely concede that I wasn’t giving it my full attention.<\/p>\n

I will definitely read the third one, however, which is out shortly, though probably not until after I finish the rest of my Hugo & Campbell voting homework (since it’s not being published during Gladstone’s eligibility period).<\/p>\n

(Also: welcome to the latest iteration of this booklog, now running on WordPress instead of a two-versions-old Movable Type install. I hope that the shiny new digs will make it easier for me to actually post<\/em>, as well as reducing the amount of spam I have to deal with. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if anything isn’t working or if anything could be improved. Thanks!)<\/p>\n

(I will also now be announcing new posts on Twitter<\/a>, if you’d prefer that to RSS<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The next book in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, Two Serpents Rise, is apparently set a couple years before Three Parts Dead, though that’s not evident from what’s on the pages so far. Unfortunately I didn’t like it as much, because it focuses fairly tightly on a guy, Caleb, who spends most of the book doing … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Gladstone, Max: (02) Two Serpents Rise<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,48,57,15],"tags":[226],"class_list":["post-1842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2014-hugo-nominees","category-books","category-craft-sequence-sf-and-fantasy","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-gladstone-max"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2456,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842\/revisions\/2456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}