This is the eighth book in Max Gladstone's acclaimed 'Craft Sequence' as well as the second book in what he's calling 'The Craft Wars', which I'm assuming is intended to be a sequel series, perhaps a trilogy, to wrap it all up. And this is the point where that kicks in with a vengeance. Even though I'd accurately guessed in the final paragraph of my review of 'Dead Country', the first episode in 'The Craft Wars' that "I'm sure the broader story will come a-knockin' at some point", which is exactly what happens here, I wasn't expecting it to go down at all like this.

That's because 'Dead Country' was notably different to the six 'Craft Sequence' books before it. It was shorter, for a start, and much more focused on a very small number of lead characters, two of them, who both appeared to be on the same side. It felt like a YA novel, which meant that it fit the more modern look of the cover art. Gone were the immersive noirish covers that decorated these books when they were published by Tor and in was the cleaner, simpler YA graphic design approach that came in when they shifted over to TorDotCom. And it was rural, set in the village of Edgemont out there on the edge of the Badlands, rather than in one of many sprawling cities.

So I expected 'Wicked Problems' to follow on from 'Dead Country' in story and style. What I found was that it only follows in story. This isn't short, it isn't rural and it isn't YA in the slightest. It's also not remotely focused on a tiny core cast; it trawls in what feels like everyone we've met over seven previous books. In many ways, this reminded me of 'Foundation's Edge', which marked the return of Isaac Asimov to his legendary 'Foundation' trilogy from decades earlier with a remit to trawl in not only what he did in those three books but in pretty much all of his other series. Suddenly, they all coexisted in the same universe.

It's not entirely fair to apply that to this book, because we already knew that all books in the 'Craft Sequence' shared a universe but they did it at a serious remove. 'Three Parts Dead' was set in Alt Coulumb, but 'Two Serpents Rise' shifted to completely different characters in Dresediel Lex. 'Full Fathom Five' did that again, moving to Kavekana. 'Last First Snow' returned to Dresediel Lex, but was clearly intended as a prequel to 'Two Serpents Rise'. I haven't read 'Four Roads Cross', which returns to Alt Coulumb, or 'The Ruin of Angels', which introduces new characters again in another new city, Agdel Lex.

In other words, those six books were set in four different cities and told five different stories with four different cultural backdrops and three different lead characters. Gladstone cross-pollinated to a degree, characters from 'Two Serpents Rise' playing supporting roles in 'Full Fathom Five' and the cast of 'Three Parts Dead' and 'Four Roads Cross' being pretty consistent, but he was building his world in ways that most authors wouldn't dream of doing. And he knew it too, because, while he'd carefully included numbers in his titles from moment one, they didn't appear to be in order, only for that order to manifest itself later because it reflects the internal chronology. So, 'Three Parts Dead' was the first book published but it's the third to unfold in time. The first is really 'Last First Snow', which was the fourth published. And so on.

Given that Gladstone must have seen that ahead of time and planned it, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to see that he planned this too. If so, 'Dead Country' isn't really the first book in a new series, it's the necessary beginning for what he wanted to do here. He needed one more character to flesh out where he wanted to go and so he wrote her into 'Dead Country' as one of the two core characters we focus on throughout. That book wasn't really about Tara Abernathy, a character we knew from 'Three Parts Dead' and 'Four Roads Cross', acquiring an apprentice; it was all the setup for Dawn, who takes a pivotal role here.

Relatively quickly, everyone bands together into what appears to be two sides. Dawn leads one of them, with the power with which she merged at the end of 'Dead Country', that pure craft being manifesting as a serpent called Sybil. She finds more of it at the beginning of this in the form of a stolen rose and assembles a team, tellingly including both Malina Kekapania and Temoc Almotil from 'Two Serpents Rise'; even though they fought on different sides in that book, along with a new batch of characters she acquires along the way, the Arsenal Company.

Tara opposes her, with the aid of Monk-Technician Abelard from 'Three Parts Dead', Temoc's son Caleb from 'Two Serpents Rise' and Kai Pohala from 'Full Fathom Five', which I've read, and 'The Ruin of Angels', which I haven't. That means that all the squid gods who show up here are new to me. They're easily the most enticing new nuance to how Gladstone takes existing culture and tweaks until he's generated a new fantastic direction for it, but I'd have learned that in Agdel Lex in book six. It shouldn't be new to me here.

Of course, other well-known characters from other books show up here too eventually, like Elayne Kevarian, who was the first real character we met and very possibly the most frequently returned to across the series; Teo Batan, from 'Two Serpents Rise' and 'Full Fathom Five'; and the skeletal Kopil, the King in Red, from 'Two Serpents Rise'. Add to that a whole host of gods, gargoyles and other non-human entities, each joining one side or the other as the book runs on and grows into truly majestic epic stature, and this is something very new for a previously focused series.

And, of course, it's not remotely that simple. Writers know that villains have to believe that they serve as the heroes in their own stories, just as heroes do. This is an impeccable example of what happens when both the hero, clearly Tara, and the villain, clearly Dawn, really aren't either. They both serve as hero and villain, both wanting to save the world from the impending devastation to be wrought when the Skazzerai show up but each having a very different approach to achieve that same goal.

This odd state of affairs is only underlined by having Temoc and Mal join the same side and, much later, other notable combatants. We know, if we've read earlier books, who fought who. We know from superhero movies that there are good guys and bad guys and they're always in opposition in whatever movie they might show up in next, so we expect those characters to fight the very same characters when they meet here, especially as their battles were often personal and featured an element of revenge. However, this isn't a superhero movie. This is much, much deeper than that and it all works very nicely as a reminder that, when it comes to saving the world that we live on, we're all fundamentally on the same side.

I have to admit to some confusion during the earliest chapters. This is an unusual series in that it's possible to start anywhere, with any book, and that holds not only for the half a dozen in the 'Craft Sequence' proper but for 'Dead Country' too. It absolutely doesn't hold here. I was lost for a while, partly because it's been seven years since I've read the first four and partly because I still haven't read the next two. I didn't have a problem diving back into this world for 'Dead Country' but it was too much all at once doing that again here. I'd recommend that new readers attack the series first in whichever order they choose: by publication date or internal chronology. With those six titles in memory, roll on into 'The Craft Wars'.

And, with that said, I'm going to go back to superhero movies, because, once Gladstone has set up his sides and got us onboard with where he's going, he ups the tempo considerably and has overt fun in throwing his characters against each other with the energy of a six-year-old playing with his collection of action figures but the skill of an established writer creating an immersive story. The action is epic and grandiose, starting with a prison escape sequence from Shenshan Prison in the Shining Empire. This is where a dead god rises and a mountain falls, as the back cover blurb has it, and the action meets that level of grandeur.

And it only escalates from there. The opera sequence is magnificent. The observatory sequence is pretty close. The final battle is as epic as anything that wrapped up the 'Infinity War' saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Somehow Gladstone keeps the level of urgency needed to make those scenes work flowing faster and faster, even when he's doing something as unlikely as documenting an entire university lecture within a dream sequence. Chapter 36 is surely the weirdest thing that happens in this book, even though it's fundamentally the most mundane, maybe because of that.

What I have to wonder is, what comes next. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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