Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone

Look, I really liked Three Parts Dead, the first Craft novel published. I liked it a lot. But I loved Two Serpents Rise. In this book, Max Gladstone takes world-building I enjoyed a hell of a lot in the first book, and applies it to a plot and a set of political and social conditions that I was just absolutely captivated by. It's a book that takes itself absolutely seriously, in the best possible ways. (This doesn't mean that there's no humour, but more that Gladstone has really thought through his society and his characters and done such interesting things with them, taking all these aspects, and moving forward with the ramifications.)

We're in a different city in Two Serpents Rise, and I don't believe any characters overlap between the two books - or at least, if they did, I read Three Parts Dead long enough ago that they didn't pop out at me. We're in a time period somewhat before Three Parts Dead, but the laws and bureaucracy concerning the Craft in the world seem more or less the same. We've got some new nuance added to it as well.

Two Serpents Rise takes place in the city of Dresediel Lex, which is at least partially inspired by Aztec mythology - imagine a huge urban metropolis with water utilities, corporations, risk management, and a strong protest movement, integrated into both the aftermath of the major event in this world, the God Wars, and an older tradition of sacrifice as a source of power and peace.

The main character here is Caleb, a risk analyst and sometimes gambler, who summons a literal version of Lady Luck for his card games, who collects and disburses fortunes. She's not on his side - this is luck at its most literal. He works for the Red King Corporation, run by the King in Red, a man who, in the God Wars, when he led humans against the Gods he perceived keeping them captive and helpless, became only his own skeleton, with rubies for eyes.

When someone releases tiny serpent-like demons into the city's reservoirs, Caleb is sent to assess the risks of it happening again, particularly with a new merger on the horizon. His father is the leader of a faction of those who want to return to the old ways, being himself the last sacrificer on the block, the only one who knows how it feels to rip a living heart from a chest. Caleb' father is the obvious suspect in the attack on the reservoirs, but he protests his innocence, and Caleb believes him. Mostly. While at the reservoir, though, he meets Mal, a woman about his own age, a parkour runner, and immediately he wants to protect her.

We mostly see Mal through Caleb's eyes, which is deliberate, as he falls for her hard, and then interprets her through various lenses, mostly of his own devising. Caleb believes that she might hold the answers to the questions he doesn't know to ask, and the needs of the city now that, instead of killing someone dramatically a few times a year, the sacrifice is parcelled out throughout the inhabitants, hitting some (the poor), harder than others. None of what he applies to her, though, is necessarily how Mal sees herself, and his visions of what she is butts heads, harder and harder, with how she sees herself.

These characters are great (I also loved Teo, Caleb's best friend, and Teo's artist girlfriend who fancies herself on the front lines, and the King in Red himself), but what really got me is the underlying examination of the difficulties of revolution, particularly when revolutionary ideals are founded on a mythic time that never really existed, that is as much a romantic tale as those that the present rulers are telling themselves. It's about how it's easy to talk lightly of sacrifice when you're talking about someone else, with or without (mostly without) their consent. About the difficulties of working within the system against the violence that come from pulling the system down entirely. The book embraced all the complexity of protest, revolution, rebellion and power, and I was in love what was on the page the whole time.

Oh, also, there are two giant serpents that could awake and destroy the world, and if they're awakened at all, they'll want blood. Lots and lots of blood. I almost forgot to mention that part.