★★★☆☆ Dead Country, by Max Gladstone
This is not the beginning of anything -- it's the middle
Dead Country
Max Gladstone
This is not the beginning of anything -- it’s the middle
I read this book because it is the first book of Max Gladstone‘s Craft Wars series. The Craft Wars is a finalist for the 2026 Best Series Hugo. Dead Country is also, not incidentally, the seventh book in the Craft Sequence.
The publisher’s blurb for Dead Country ends thus
Dead Country is the first book in the Craft Wars Trilogy, a tight sequence of novels that will bring the sprawling saga of the Craft to its end, and the perfect entry point for this incomparable world.
I’m here to tell you that, as an entry point to the Craft Sequence, Dead Country stinks. That’s because it stinks as an entry point to anything.
Dead Country begins with our hero, Tara, walking through the badlands to Edgemont, the town she comes from. If, like me, you have never read anything from the Craft Sequence, you have no idea who Tara is. You know nothing about Edgemont. You know nothing about the world they inhabit. Gladstone ain’t gonna tell you.
Furthermore, the style doesn’t help. Gladstone seems to be an author who prizes stylistic fireworks over making sense.
In rating Dead Country three stars, I’m giving the Craft Sequence the benefit of the doubt. I’m assuming that, read as the seventh book in a series, it would make a lot more sense. As a standalone novel, I would give it two stars.
I will not read any more novels from the Craft Sequence, It will probably be last ranked when I submit my Hugo Best Series vote.