Two Serpents Rise Review

It’s been a bit since my last review. Blame that on the fact that I’ve been reading a butt-load of non-fiction recently. Or on the fact that I just haven’t felt like posting any reviews on account of the fact that a lot of the books I’ve read in the last few months have given me questionable feelings in one way or another.

I’m trying to exercise that old adage, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then learn to pantomime.”

Anyways, I finally read a book that left me with warm and tingly feelings (which could be a sign of congenital heart failure or of a really good book. I’m going to the doctor later this week so we’ll know for sure. Stay tuned).

I was listening to a podcast featuring Max Gladstone a few weeks back. He was chatting about fencing, getting bucked off horses in Mongolia, and his series of books called The Craft Sequence. In that chat, and on his blog, he talked a bit about storytelling as a craft. I scampered away from that interview betting I could learn a thing or two from this guy.

So I pilfered a short story he wrote for Tor.com called A Kiss With Teeth and gave that the old eyeballing. I wasn’t disappointed. Gladstone has writing chops, but perhaps more interesting than that was his unique take on vampires (a subject which has recently been beaten to death with a blunt stake).

That short story just goes to show something I’ve known for quite awhile, but bears repeating: You can take any subject matter, no matter how played out or boring or cliche or trite or whatever, and make it interesting, fresh, and original. Sure, it takes an amount of effort that might be better spent on curing cancer, but hey, I like to think this sort of innovation is curing the storytelling cancer currently plaguing popular literature.

Anyways, after being pleasantly impressed with Gladstone’s short story, I went on a hunt to pick up the first book in his Craft Sequence, Three Parts Dead. Problem is, I couldn’t find it. Anywhere.

I went to seven different bookstores spread across three different states. No luck.

Weird, right?

Well, needless to say, I was pretty bummed. Mostly on account of the fact that the covers for Gladstone’s books are pretty damn rad.

Oh well, c’est la vie.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Craft Sequence is that the stories are set within that a larger story arc, but reading the stories in order of publication isn’t strictly necessary. So it was with this in mind that I snatched up the second book when Amazon offered it up like a crack dealer fronting the first bump. Just a little taste to set the hook. And damn if it didn’t work.

Two Serpents Rise has some of the most robust and innovative world-building I’ve encountered since reading City of Stairs a few months back.

In fact, now that I think about it, there are quite a few similarities between the two stories. That can either be a good thing, or a bad thing. In this case, it’s a good thing, ’cause both stories are awesome.

I hate summarizing other people’s stories. Inevitably I leave something out, get a name wrong, or gloss over a subplot that is actually the main plot but I was smoking peyote and not paying very close attention so I completely missed the point. Anyways, I’m not going to do Max any disservice by trudging through an in-depth summary for ya’ll.

Instead I’ll just sprinkle a couple story nuggets into your fishbowl and you can take it or leave it.

First, in this world there are gods. Well, there used to be. But then the Craft’s Dudes and Dudettes came and killed them. This is an awesome launching off point. One of my biggest gripes is the fact that Two Serpents Rise doesn’t really explain how Craft works, who the CraftPeeps are or where they came from, but my gut tells me this is covered in one of the preceding books. It didn’t detract from the story in any meaningful sort of way, but it also didn’t add anything.

Some people won’t be able to get over that, which I understand. Maybe pick up the first book in the Sequence where this is *probably* dealt with more.

Anyways. Dead gods, check.

Now, the truly innovative thing Gladstone does in this story, is he uses those gods as an economic driver. God of rain provides the water for this desert city. Or at least, he did, before the Craftees killed him. So the Craftmen and women get together and form Concerns to keep the city running with their magic just like the power or water company.

What we end up getting are two very different sides of the same coin. On the one, we have magic and gods. On the other, we have a guy working for what effectively boils down to the power company. This dichotomy between fantastical and mundane makes for a world that should feel completely foreign (what with the water dragons and gods running about) and makes them familiar.

There’s also a lot of whizz-bang-boom sort of action, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into. For the most part these are done really well, with only a few occasions forcing me to take a second or third read through to get the gist of what was happening.

Character development is the most important aspect of any story, right? Well, most of the time. Two Serpents Rise is no exception. There is a shiny veneer of magic coating the story, but at it’s core, this is a story about a guy working an office job he doesn’t really love, with a father who is…complicated, and a girlfriend who is more bad-ass than him. Gladstone does a pretty good job juggling all this.

I say pretty good because for whatever reason I didn’t latch onto the main characters plight as much as I could have. For some reason he just didn’t do it for me. I’m not so sure this is a defect in the writing as much as it is a personal thing on my part.

Only way to know for sure is to pick up Two Serpents Rise and then stop back over here and tell me why I’m wrong. Or right. I definitely like hearing about how I’m right!