Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Let’s Take a Hammer To It.

Dead Hand Rule by Max Gladstone

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No one can write a multi-character pile up the same way Max Gladstone does.  Back in 2024, I reviewed the second book in his Craft Wars series, Wicked Problems, which marked the start of the Craft World’s Infinity War Moment. Nearly every man woman and dog (or snake) that we had crossed paths with previously all managed to cross paths with each other. And it was quite explosive. Dead Hand Rule is the direct continuation of the events of Wicked Problems. All the great powers […]

Infinity War – But Even Better

Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone

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Earlier this year, I reviewed Dead Country, a newer installment in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence. Dead Country was an unusual entry in the series with its simpler parred back narrative and more personal focus— until we hit the end of course. That’s when a then-low lying series-spanning threat suddenly decided to make itself known. This leads us to Wicked Problems, which deals with the massive fallout. Tara had previously returned to Edgemont to deal with the aftermath of her father’s death, and while there, had […]

Something Skittering Just Out Of Frame

Dead Country by Max Gladstone

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Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence series is one of my favorite examples of fantasy world building. Gladstone took the core idea of ‘what if soul-stuff could be traded?’ and built a magical system—known as The Craft—out of it. He then expanded further and asked ‘So what if a world’s sole currency is well, the soul? What would this mean for the financial system? What kind of corporate world would develop around this? Imagine a metropolis or two arising out of this system? How would they operate?’ […]

Another great entry in the delightfully weird and difficult to categorise Craft Sequence.

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Like the Terra Ignota Series, I was first Introduced to Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence novels via The Hugo Awards. And like Terra Ignota, I’m going to start my book reviews with a book that sits right in the middle of the series, with book six. While The Ruin of Angels is told from an increasing number of viewpoints as it progresses, the narrative can be split into roughly two branches. The first branch follows Kai Pohala, who was the protagonist of a previous Craft book, […]



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