#elayne kevarian

[hiddenschools]

Ms. Kevarian drew close to Tara, and her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “Beware of Alexander Denovo. I’ve known the man for half a century. I haven’t trusted him so far, and I don’t know any reason to start now.”

“I will do more than beware him,” she said. “I’m going to beat him.”

“Good.” Ms. Kevarian’s words were sharp and quiet, like footsteps in a distant passage. “But remember, your first duty is to our client, not revenge.”

“If I have to raise a god from the dead to defeat Alexander Denovo,” she replied, “I will raise a hundred. I’ll bring Kos back ten times greater than he was.”

“Well said.”

Three Parts Dead, first book of the Craft Sequence

[hiddenschools]

“You stopped the bleeding, but your Craft drained his soul. There was hardly any apperception left for me to save by the time he got here.”

“I did what I had to.”

“And thanks to you, he survived. Barely. We have drugs to keep him under, drugs to help him dream. Exposure to starlight will help his soul regrow. But if you shove around in his mind before he’s ready, you might break him so badly that the person who wakes up won’t match the one who went to sleep. Which is why we don’t usually let necromancers operate on living patients.”

Last First Snow

“So, your patron is the God of Death?” Yeah. “So, are you a necromancer? A great Warrior?” …Nah, I’m a Doctor.

[kebelesaurus]

you people are mistaken if you think that I’m awake and celebrating  anything that I’ve become

elayne is the best and i thank max gladstone everyday he introduced that wonderful, scary, fictional woman to me.

@pythionice here u are!

[boyangart]

a younger Elayne Keverian (LOL just a inaccurate character sketch, she’s confirmed blond lol) 

[adragoninspace]

I'm rereading THREE PARTS DEAD and Elayne Kevarian makes me think of Kathryn Janeway so much.

[hiddenschools]

Aragorn here is half the Craft Sequence characters I swear to gods. Tara. Izza. Kai. Teo. Caleb. Gal. Elayne. Temoc. "The dead will suffer me."

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

[tarcablog]

Max Gladstone regénye eredetileg 2012-es, nálunk pedig tavaly jelent meg. Ugyan magyarul a Craft-ciklusnak keresztelt sorozatnak csak az első része elérhető egyelőre, ezt az egyet nem kis hangzavar övezte. A Nagyrészt halott olvasása után azt hiszem, értem, hogy miért lelkesedtek érte sci-fisek és fantasy-sok is, és mit értettek azalatt, amikor társadalomábrázolást és friss vért emlegettek.

Igen, a Three Parts Dead urban fantasy, de nem véletlenül kerül elő a steampunk címke is vele kapcsolatban, ami csak tovább erősíti a sci-fis áthallásokat. Kos, az isten (tűz)erejét csöveken, kazánházakon és szerződéseken keresztül használják fel, és ezt, bár nem tudományos igénnyel, de legalábbis olyan részletességgel bemutatja a regény, hogy hihető, érthető alapokon nyugszik Alt ​Coulumb városállam infrastruktúrája. Csövek, csapok és riasztók felügyelik a papi imákat is, amelyeknek folyamán (jobb esetben, vö. első mondat: "Isten ma este nem válaszolt.") Kos válaszol. Ez itt a döccenő a steampunk szerkezetében: a gőz és tűz szolgáltatójául szolgáló isten létezik és él, beszél és szeret.

Ez az elsőre hihetetlen párosítás, hogy az éppen ügyeletes, kvázi fűtő egyben szerzetes is, ez a fantasy-ba ömlesztett vér. Még makarónit!

[abronzeagegod]

"A witch?" Ms. Kevarian said, bemused. "I'd think you'd give me more credit than that, Ms. Abernathy. Riding broomsticks, consorting with unholy powers. Who has time for sure pleasantries anymore? Why I haven't been on a date since the late eighties."

Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone; Elayne Kevarian laughing at Tara’s choice of insults

[veliseraptor]

hey, sorry if you've already made this but do you have a rec list for female anti-heroes? or anti-villains? or... just fiction centring morally complex women? I'd just really like to read more lit like that but I don't know where to start :/

I don’t remember if I have done this! And the answer is…fewer than I’d like, alas. But let’s see what I’ve got. (A number of of these are series, which I’ve listed by the first book and noted.) I’m always looking for more of these, though, so if anyone has recs…

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth Trilogy)

Really any of NK Jemisin’s work would qualify, but I’m going ahead and going with this one. The main character(s) is a remarkable piece of work, and this series as a whole is just…incredible. Her realization especially of mother/daughter relationships and the complexity and possible ugliness thereof is really…augh. I cried at the end of the third book. (It also does great things with themes of oppression and power and dehumanization while telling a great story.)

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett (The Divine Cities Trilogy)

Mostly I think the protagonist of the first book (this one) fits what you’re looking for best, but this whole series is aces and the second book also features an excellent protagonist who I think you might like. And the worldbuilding and thematics of this series are also just *kisses fingers* so consider this a general rec, too.

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone (The Craft Sequence)

I love this series, I really do. Taking place after the God Wars, in which the various gods of the world were overthrown by human sorcerers, not only is it super conceptually interesting with a lot of themes I’m personally really into (imperialism! religion and the relationship between humans and gods!) but also some really excellent complex female characters, especially the protagonist of this book, Tara, and my personal favorite, Elayne Kevarian. 

The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton

This is a retelling of King Lear and it’s one of the best retellings I’ve read in a while (I love reading retellings but I’m very picky about their execution). One of my favorite things about it is the way it brings Goneril and Regan (here Gaela and Regan) into prominence, keeping all their sharp edges while making them full characters, sympathetic and understandable. 

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

I love this book. I love Catherynne M. Valente’s prose, and this is probably my favorite of hers that I’ve read so far. It’s a retelling of the Russian fairy tale The Death of Koschei the Deathless blended with the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and it’s...really good, and Marya Morevna is a fantastic protagonist. It’s been a bit since I read this one, but from what I remember I think she fits the bill for what you’re describing.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade)

Fuck man, this book. Fair warning that it is brutal in a lot of ways - don’t come into it expecting to leave without some bruised emotions. But the main character is a glorious example of what you’re talking about. And I don’t want to say more than that, because this is kind of a book it’s good to go into without spoilers.

I’m just gonna go ahead, too, and throw in a couple of Ancient Greek plays that have two of my favorite morally complex women. Obvs they’re going to come with misogynist baggage because Ancient Greece, but I’d say they’re both worth a read.

Medea by Euripides

This was actually my first Greek tragedy and I fell in love hard and fast. It’s a seriously elegant piece of work - Euripides had a reputation as a misogynist but he writes really good morally complex women, imo. And Medea in this…dominates. She owns the stage and the story, and god damn does this do the work of making her ultimately murdering two people and her own children not…totally (at least for me) remove sympathy with her. And she gets away with it. In a motherfucking dragon chariot.

Agamemnon by Aeschylus

I wrote a paper about how Clytemnestra owns this play - she drives the action, she takes charge, the men around her are relegated to helplessness and impotence - the only person who stands against her at all is Cassandra (who, of course, no one listens to). I don’t like the rest of this play cycle nearly as much as the first one, but this one…hoo boy. I could talk about this play, Clytemnestra, and the gender stuff with Clytemnestra in this play for approximately forever. Also murdering Agamemnon with an axe is, as the kids say, a #big mood.

[greenteaghoststory]

This was just the start of Last First Snow... it got better and worse before crushing me into a pile of feelings through excellent writing and fucking tragic characters and basic human behavior.

I don’t know how this happened- you’d think I could stay calm since we start the book already somewhat knowing the outcome for Dresediel Lex due to Last First Snow being a prequel to Two Serpents Rise. I’m not over it!! I am not calm.

It also improved Two Serpents Rise for me, since I found Caleb such a bland, flat character reading that book first. Temoc’s son, now works for the Red King!!!! In a weird way, his insta-attraction to Mal which I hated in TSR sooooort of makes more sense, seeing his early childhood.Attracted to powerful dangerous women. Running after people who betray and leave him.

Skeleton necromancers and witch lawyers fighting over gentrification

Thank you Max Gladstone for giving me something I didn’t even know I wanted

[hiddenschools]

Wait, when does that happen? A Craft Sequence timeline

Being published out of chronological order has confused the hell out of many Craft Sequence readers, myself included. So I went through the series and figured out an approximate timeline and all the main characters ages YOU'RE WELCOME.

...and then I found an official version in the inside cover of the German translation but shhh mine's better

[rhetoricandlogic]

THREE PARTS DEAD BY MAX GLADSTONE

LIZ BOURKE

ISSUE:

26 NOVEMBER 2012

Three Parts Dead is a debut novel to make you sit up and take notice. In recent years I've read a bare handful of debuts as mature and accomplished as this one. I've read a bare handful of novels, debut or not, that succeeded not only in being this vibrant and this inventive, but in bringing the vast majority of their disparate and sometimes hectic strands together into a successful conclusion.

Three Parts Dead is a wild ride that sticks the dismount, is what I'm saying.

Novice Technician Abelard is on duty in the sanctum of Kos Everburning, the god whose divine power drives the city of Alt Coulumb, on the night when his god dies. We first meet Tara Abernathy plummeting a thousand feet to earth, after being cast out of the Hidden Schools for her Craft—although not before her teachers graduated her. She staggers back to her farm community roots for a time, the losing party in the fight of her life, before the timely arrival of Elayne Kevarian, senior partner in the firm of Kelethras, Albrecht and Ao, who whisks Tara away from the consequences of meddling in helpful necromancy too close to her neighbors. Kevarian is in want of an assistant, or an associate, because she has been engaged to deal with the business arising from the death of Kos. A god's obligations, in Three Parts Dead, don't end with death.

Gods, however, made deals. It was the essence of their power.

. . . When a goddess neared death, the needs of her faithful, and of those to whom she was bound in contract, stuck like hooks in her soul. She could not desert her obligations, nor honor them and remain intact. The tension tore her mind to shreds of ectoplasm, leaving behind a body of inchoate divine power that a competent Craftswoman could reassemble into something that looked and functioned like the old goddess. But . . .

Well. Much like Tara's revenants back at Edgemont, a being once resurrected was never quite the same. (pp. 66-7)

The power of gods is bound up in deals and contracts, agreements and promissory notes. Elayne Kevarian has been retained to look after the interest of Alt Coulumb and Kos's worshippers in the matter of his resurrection. Perforce Tara must assist, both in discovering how precisely the god met his end and in defending his remains from the claims of others—others represented by Alexander Denovo, a Craft practitioner whom Tara has met before, for he was responsible for her near-fatal departure from the Hidden Schools.

But there's more going on in this fast paced, tightly plotted caper. Where would a legal thriller—and Three Parts Dead is recognizably a legal thriller, of an astoundingly innovative, fantastic bent—be without dangerous undercurrents, complicated history, and unreliable allies? Soon after her arrival in Alt Coulumb, Tara finds herself an interested party to the death of a judge who had some past association with Kevarian. Investigating the judge's demise leads her to Shale, one of the Stone Men—gargoyles, who are now despised and hunted in Alt Coulumb, but who formerly enjoyed a very close relationship with the goddess Serit, Kos's consort before the so-called God Wars—and to Cat, Abelard's friend, one of the Blacksuits intimately connected with Serit's successor, Justice: a shell of power resurrected from the dead goddess by Craft practitioners much like Kevarian.

There is always more here than meets the eye. Dead gods and dead judges prove to be connected in unexpected ways. Alexander Denovo proves a compelling adversary, the more so since the depth of his involvement in what's going on in Alt Coulumb is revealed only slowly until the climax.

Gladstone builds an intriguing world, a secondary world fantasy that's both recognizably modern and imaginatively, invigoratingly magical. He does so skillfully, incluing rather than infodumping, revealing the depth of background naturally in service to the story. References that initially seem off-hand, a bit of color added to the scenery for color's sake, take on additional significance with each new revelation, creating the impression of a tightly plotted novel within an expansive world. His characters are real, complex, and human even in their inhumanity. Perhaps the most complex character here—apart from the intriguing and opaque Kevarian—is Cat. As a Blacksuit, when she's on duty, she's part of a single entity that thinks and acts according to one will—Justice's. Off-duty, she tries to fill the absence left behind via ever more dangerous highs: she's a vampire junkie. This too is important to the story, to what Justice is and what she isn't; what Kos was, and what he will be if Denovo gets his way.

Slowly, the reader is led to realize that Justice, as much as Kos, is at the heart of this story. Justice and the injustice done in Alt Coulumb at the end of the God Wars. The climax lives up to the build-up, and the payoff is worth the ride: this is a book which intrigued, thrilled, and delighted me by turns, and had me cackling in righteous satisfaction at the conclusion.

Three Parts Dead has some flaws, on balanced examination. The at times hectic pace and the author's refusal to spell out all his complications and recomplications make it necessary for the reader to keep her wits about her: too much inattention, and you'll be flicking back pages to make certain you've caught what's going on. But it ultimately rewards that attention: this is a seriously good book, and Max Gladstone is a writer to watch out for.

[craftworkaesthetic]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Craft Sequence - Max Gladstone Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Elayne Kevarian, Izza (Craft Sequence) Additional Tags: Nightmares of Drowning, Prophet Children, creation myths, New-made Gods, Legal Entanglements, Bureaucratic Labyrinths Summary:

In the beginning there was the Word, which burned. As Izza raises a new religion on the ashes of Kavekana's idols, she must learn to navigate the labyrinth of bureaucracy that could protects her new goddess--or entrap her.

[boyangart]

younger Elayne Keverian from the Craft Sequence 

[dragoncharming]

"Language, Elayne." "My apologies," she said after another sip of vodka. "One gets carried away when one feels one's dinner companion has made an inexcusable moral error."

Three Parts Dead - Max Gladstone

[bigscaryd]

"Since You've Been Gone"

Elayne Kevarian(Craft)/Alia(Dune)

Send me a title and a pairing and I will give you the summary of a fic I will never write.