Last year I read Max Gladstone’s debut, Three Parts Dead. I’ve finally seen an accurate description of his genre: “a combination of legal thriller and steam-powered fantasy”. Whatever you want to call it, I enjoyed it enough to pick up his second book, Two Serpents Rise, which is set in the same world, but different characters, different city, different gods, same great combo of tight plotting and, well, legal thriller and fantasy. Less steam this time around, though, and a lot more human sacrifice, since the cultures he’s drawing on are those of the indigenous peoples of Mexico.

Since I went to Mexico for the first time over the winter holidays and spent a fair amount of time in the museums and archaeological sites marveling at the pyramids, pottery, and skull collections, it was a great book for me to pick up at the beginning of January. (I spent the actual trip rereading Bulgakov’s Master & Margarita, which is a whole ‘nother take on supernatural in the city.) I liked the inclusion of feathered serpents (hey, I saw those at Teotihuacan!) and obsidian ritual weapons (which I could have bought many of at Teotihuacan…), and the more modern touches of a skeleton-decorated hot chocolate shop. My understanding of Nahuatl and/or contemporary Mexican culture is pretty shallow, admittedly, but I caught enough references to feel somewhat proud of myself for noticing.

Then, of course, there are the more universal themes, applicable to many other places in our world. At what price do we keep desert cities lush and green? What happens when aquifers are depleted, where do we turn? And from whom is water (or other resources) taken to feed cities? I’d go so far as to recommend pairing this fiction tale with the nonfiction book of Cadillac Desert.

With my background, of course, I’m a sucker for water related environmental themes. I was a little jealous at the beginning to find that there were supernatural beasties living in the city’s water supply — that’s something I’ve wanted to do a short story around, but haven’t come up with a plot to go with the idea yet. And I get excited when characters discuss risk management.

“That’s risk management for you. Anything that can go wrong, will—with a set probability given certain assumptions. We tell you how to fix it, and what you should have done to keep it from happening in the first place. At times like these, I become a hindsight professional.” He pointed at the blood. “We ran the numbers when Bright Mirror was built, forty-four years ago, and thought the risks were acceptable.”

I’m a dork like that. But Gladstone is good for quotes with a more general appeal, too.

“I apologize for hitting you.” Temoc bowed his head. “I do not relish striking women.”
“Thank you,” Teo said with a cold edge, “for your condescending, sexist apology.”

I’m going to put that one in my pocket and hope I never have to use it. I’ll point out here, too, that I picked up Three Parts Dead after seeing it listed as a book with a realistic female character on the cover. In Two Serpents Rise, I’d like to give some props to Gladstone for having a main character who is a lesbian. And “lesbian” is not her main defining characteristic. And, of course, someday that won’t be worth commenting on, because it won’t be unusual or surprising.

I’m not as enamored with the cover of Two Serpents Rise, though. Unfortunately, despite definite descriptions in the text of the main characters being “Quechal” and being of a non-Caucasian phenotype, the dude on the cover looks like a frat boy who’s trying to figure out how to skip out of his summer internship at Dad’s firm. Tor, or maybe cover artist Chris McGrath, dropped the ball on that one.

I point this out because another quote that caught my attention was one on colonialism, a theme I find repeating itself in my own work, even when I think I’m writing about something else.

“How many Craftsmen and Craftswomen in this city are Quechal, do you think? Twenty percent? Thirty, at most?”
“Something like that.”
“In a city that’s eighty percent Quechal.”
“I don’t see your point.”
“We’re occupied. We don’t talk about it that way, but we are.”
“We’re not occupied. We’re a world city. There’s a difference.”
“Are you sure?”

 

Anyhoo, the cover art for his third book, Full Fathom Five, has been released, and does not feature white boys.* The teaser says it involves “Skulduggery, slam poetry, offshore banking, spy shenanigans, the nightmare telegraph, and more,” so consider me signed up. I’m curious to see where Gladstone takes us next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*There’s a comment, actually, on that post in which a reader links to this article on diversity in speculative fiction and asks if Gladstone had to do any fighting to keep the covers from being white-washed. Two outa three ain’t bad, amirite?