A review by bookslikegranola
Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone

4.25

A fun return to form in the craft sequence. 

 

Kai is priest of Kavekana, someone who builds artificial gods and uses them to invest in the stock market. When one artificial god appears to awaken to sentience and then quickly die, Kai must uncover what is really going on. I really love Gladstone’s mix of corporate (?) high fantasy and this is another great example. Also, the problems I had with book two’s romance are fully absent here, which I really appreciated, so if you had a rough time, I’d recommend giving this series another shot (as long as you liked the first one, of course). It did feel like it took a bit to get going, or perhaps that it danced around the plot a bit, but the end was super satisfying. I guess I just always want the main POV to be a craftsperson, as they really seem to be at the heart of this world, but Gladstone is interested in telling a variety of stories, which is fair. I just miss the high power lawyer craftperson vibes from book one. 

 

Highly recommended to fans of craft sequence books.