Dead Country: Book One of the Craft Wars Series

Max Gladstone

Mar 2023 · The Craft Wars Book 1 · Sold by Tor Books

About this ebook

From the co-author of the viral New York Times bestseller This is How You Lose the Time War.

Discover the destiny of the Craft in Dead Country, the standalone entry point to Max Gladstone's beloved fantasy epic.

BOOK ONE OF THE CRAFT WARS SERIES

Since her village chased her out with pitchforks, Tara Abernathy has resurrected gods, pulled down monsters, averted wars, and saved a city, twice. She thought she'd left her dusty little hometown forever. But that was before her father died.

As she makes her way home to bury him, she finds a girl, as powerful and vulnerable and lost as she once was. Saving her from raiders twisted by the God Wars, Tara changes the course of the world.

Dead Country is the first book in the Craft Wars Series, a tight sequence of novels that will bring the sprawling saga of the Craft to its end, and the perfect entry point to this incomparable world.


Also Available by Max Gladstone:

The Craft Sequence
1. Three Parts Dead
2. Two Serpents Rise
3. Full Fathom Five
4. Last First Snow
5. Four Roads Cross
6. Ruin of Angels

The Craft Wars
1. Dead Country
2. Wicked Problems

Last Exit
Empress of Forever

This is How You Lose the Time War (with Amal El-Mohtar)

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

Another good novel fleshing out the Craft Sequence and the rules by which it abides. The setting is slightly less interesting for returning home to her birthplace, but it allows for a different exploration of faith vs Craft construction. The Craft sections are interesting, which is good because the diversions the books takes in other areas become a bit tedious. I don't need this much suggestive sex in my high fantasy, but at least it sticks to the suggestive. As usual I will read what follows.

The first five Craft books were really good. They told a great (continuing) story which was primarily about the external world in which Tara Abernathy lives. While this isn't the first time the reader gets to see inside Tara's head in the series, it's the first detailed, thorough, internal tour of who she is, how she's changed, how she meets challenges new and old. The death of a parent, facing the ghosts of a childhood home, becoming a reluctant mentor... all of it is new for Tara, but the rawness and power with which Gladstone writes all these suggest he has lived it all. Bravo!

About the author

Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award–winning author, MAX GLADSTONE, has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and once wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. He is the author of many books, including Last Exit, Empress of Forever, the Craft Sequence of fantasy novels and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the viral New York Times bestseller This Is How You Lose the Time War. His dreams are much nicer than you’d expect.