The Craft Sequence Buddy Read Book Four: Last First Snow, Review and Discussion

Elayne Kevarian by CoolCurry.

I need more Elayne images. There are so few. 

And NO bookcovers with Elayne. Why Tor, why?

So here we are at our fourth Max Gladstone's The Craft Sequence Buddy Read, for Last First Snow.  In a long glance back in time, we learn more about Elayne, about Caleb Altemoc's father Temoc Almotil and about the King in Red. First, let me offer you my review of this entry and then we can get to our Buddy Read Discussion where Alex, Jenni and I debate just how awful the King in Red is, why Elayne isn't on this book's cover (Boo!) and whether becoming Deathless is all that hot an idea.































































Last First Snow by Max Gladstone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The fourth entry in The Craft Sequence series takes a big step back in time and gives the earliest part of the Craft chronology, during a period called the Skittersill Uprising. We find ourselves in Dresediel Lex, with the King in Red, an investor named Tan Batac, and my favorite Craftswoman, Elayne Kevarian, trying to broker a deal for the gentrification of a run-down area of the city, the Skittersill. As is the usual issue with gentrification, there are poor people living in the Skittersill. They have lived there for generations and they can afford to live there. They don't want to leave. Their chosen leader and negotiator is Temoc Almotil, a familiar face from book two, Two Serpents Rise. We meet Temoc's wife Mina, and see a six-year-old Caleb, already an avid card player. But most of all, we see much more of Elayne, including her interior life. It's a life full of questions about the long-term effects of Craft on a person. Does Elayne want to become like Kopil, the King in Red? All I can say is, let's hope not.

The account of the Skittersill Uprising forms an excellent entry in the Craft series but a frustrating one in that characters I already wasn't too fond of (the King in Red, Temoc) are rendered in full light of day in ways that make me like them even less. The interplay between corporate greed, belief systems, and support of the marginalized is deftly handled by Gladstone. Although I like this actual story less than any of the prior Craft books, I love this story for what it tells us about Elayne Kevarian. As I asked my friends in the Buddy Read, why is Temoc on the cover of this book and not Elayne? She is the one true thing, the one good thing, railing against the injustices of the Skittersill situation. Testosterone clashes between a male skeleton and an unsteady Eagle Knight almost crush the people of the Skittersill. Elayne, the common thread through all the Craft books, is the one person of immense power who still seems to have a conscience and who shields them.

The first part of our Buddy Read is on Alex's Blog, Alex Can Read right here. I'm hosting part two of the discussion, below. Just remember there are HUGE SPOILERS in our discussions. With no further adieu...


Part Two: Alex, Jenni and Marzie's Buddy Read Discussion of Last First Snow

Marzie:  Alright, alright... Geez. So I found the topic of gentrification to be another of Max’s interesting and insightful issues in these books. The plight of Skittersill is one that has played out in the US and places with megacities like Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and Kolkata, where corporate interests are always trying to recover land for development, evicting the poor who have lived there for generations.

Alex: I had a hard time understanding gentrification as a concept before reading this book. I understood the theory, but not how it would look and play out. Last First Snow really helped me understand how it would affect people.

Jenni:  Guess you’ve never been priced out of the area you grew up in, huh?

Alex: Well, no. I couldn’t wait to leave where I grew up, and I am just at the start of my adult life.

Jenni:  I grew up in a town that’s gone from 50,000 residents to 150,000 residents in the past 30 years, and the cost of living has ballooned. I make a decent living and feel lucky to be able to afford to live here now.

Alex: I am feeling it now. Living in the Seattle area, I managed to buy a house with a lot of luck and a hope and a dream - but I honestly didn’t expect it to happen for another decade because of the cost of living here.

Marzie:  Max is also very good at explaining how unscrupulous the process of gentrification can be. It’s not a clean process of pricing people out of their living arrangements, however, humble those living arrangements may be. They are people's homes.

Jenni:  Pricing people out of their living arrangements is never clean.

Marzie:  I think it was clearly also strategic to affect these people. They were the rebellion, and still god-worshipping. The King in Red despises them. So it isn’t like Red King Consolidated and the others said here’s a bunch of money, let us buy your land and build something you can’t afford. It was obvious that a lot of dwellings were going to be conveniently rendered substandard, by hook or crook.

Jenni:  They didn’t even have to be rendered so. The crooks already owned the area; they just couldn’t unload it because of the insurance issue. As soon as the land could be sold, the tenants could just be evicted.

Marzie:  I think that Temoc agreed to the slimmest of protections.

Jenni:  (You really want him to be a bad guy, don’t you?)

Marzie:  What did he agree to that was so awesome? I think he had moments of really enjoying being the big man for his people.

Jenni:  That fact that he was able to even bring all those people to the table and get ANY kind of compromise hammered out was pretty awesome.

Marzie:  Who brought those people to the table? ELAYNE.

Jenni:  No, Elayne created the opportunity. None of the Skittersill people would have come to negotiate without Temoc.

Marzie:  No, Elayne sought out Temoc at the beginning. She knew she needed him at that table along with what he could bring- his followers.

Jenni:  I’m surprised that you don’t trust Elayne’s judgement more. She’s saved Temoc - twice. She must see something redeeming in him. (That said, I still want to strangle him. He’s not off the hook in my book, but for different reasons that you, I think.)

Marzie:  Either that or she doesn’t want to feel she was wrong to have saved him the first time. That could be a powerful factor here. And if we are on the subject of trusting Elayne, Elayne likes Mina. Why do you despise Mina since Elayne seems to think highly of her.

Alex: I think it was a mix of both of those things.

Jenni:  Oh, I like Mina. Doesn’t mean I think she was blameless, or that I didn’t want to strangle her, too...

Alex: Overall, it was a pretty awful situation. Max sure makes it easy to think lawyers and businesses are never to be trusted.

Marzie:  Which is funny since his wife Stephanie is a lawyer, right?

Alex: It’s hilarious!

Marzie:  So what other thoughts do we have about how this book fits into the overarching series thus far?

Alex: I think it adds a lot of context for Two Serpents Rise and The King in Red’s response in that book, as well as give us more insight into Caleb and Temoc’s relationship.

Jenni:  I think it paints the God Wars in a much more morally dubious light than they’ve been previously presented.

Marzie:  A very brutal light.

Alex: I really want to wait a couple of years and then come back and reread the books in chronological order, to see how the experience is different reading this and then moving into Two Serpents Rise.

Marzie:  Another question I have for Max is whether some of this world was already outlined with these events sketched out in all the various locations when he wrote Three Parts Dead.

Alex: I would be really curious to see how much of the series he had outlined when he wrote Three Parts Dead. This seems like a series that you couldn’t write successfully without carefully plotting ahead.

Jenni:  Is he a plotter or a pantser? ;-)

Marzie:  Some authors really get annoyed with the plotter vs. pantser thing nowadays. I’m trying to remember who it was that was ranting about that recently...

Jenni:  Really, how odd. It’s just a question of working style. Although I suppose people probably get theological about it. Or imply that one way is morally superior...

Marzie:  For some authors, there are no simple questions about writing anymore. Sigh.

Marzie:  So about the issue of the overarching series, does it seem like this fantasy world cannot function without a balance between the gods and Deathless Kings?

Jenni:  I don’t think it’s that it couldn’t, but more that the two systems serve as a form of checks and balances against each other. When one system is utterly ascendant, there’s nothing to check the power (and its abuse) by either gods or Deathless Kings.

Marzie:  The checks and balances idea is an interesting one. I could make analogies to our present government, but I might become despondent.

Jenni:  How very true...

Alex: I would be interested to see in a future book if there is a culture in this world that doesn’t have the gods present anywhere. Every place we’ve seen has had the gods in one form or another.

Marzie:  So you’re looking for a de novo Craft world culture that is secular at a minimum or atheistic?

Alex: Well, not a Denovo culture. ;) Kavekana was the closest to an atheistic culture we’ve seen, but even they were “waiting for their gods to return.”

Marzie:  GROANS. Bad puns, bad Alex. I didn’t really feel Kakevana was even close to atheistic, though.

Alex: That’s kind of what I’m saying - we haven’t seen a fully athiest culture. Though I’m not sure that we CAN have one, the way the gods and religion is tied to the economy.

Marzie:  I wonder if Max can’t envision a world culture in which faith has played no role. I am not sure that one exists even now in our world.

Jenni:  It seems like it would be a little hard to be a full-on atheist when you know for a fact that gods exist.

Alex: Agnostic then. One where the culture doesn’t have religious ritual at the core.

Jenni:  If you supplant religious ritual with commercial/legalistic ritual, is there really a difference? It seems semantic to me.

Marzie:  I’m with Jen. And I was really kind of stunned when Elayne reached out for the gods. 

Jenni:  I don’t think she reached for HIS gods. I don’t think she reached for anything she knew how to define. I think she reached for anything that would hear her, and was shocked when she got a response. The Mystery of the Voice!

Marzie:  Yes, I just reread that and you’re right. She reached for "something," and that something spoke back to her.

Alex: Ehh, I have a hard time being surprised that someone responded. In a world where gods are obviously real, and there are tons and tons of them.

Jenni:  Oh, I’m not surprised that someone responded, I just think Elayne was!

Marzie:  Yes, she was. I wonder if that will be explored further later?

Jenni:  I certainly hope so! It was one of the most intriguing things that happened in the book!

Marzie:  I’m always intrigued by Elayne-related things.

Jenni:  She seems such an unlikely Craftwoman. Like she doesn’t fit the mold it keeps trying to force her into. She keeps on remaining stubbornly human and compassionate, against all odds.

Marzie:  I think she was a reactionary Craftwoman when she was young because they tried to kill her in her village. She seems so much wiser than many of the others and still… a person, a human being of sorts.

Alex: She is the central thread tying all five books together!

Marzie:  Which is why she should get a damn COVER.

Alex: Do we have any final thoughts?

Marzie:  This book makes me question the whole plan to become Deathless, okay?

Jenni:  Kopil is NOT a good salesman for the condition...

Alex: I think Elayne is questioning that as well. She does seem to like her fleshsuit a lot.

Marzie:  I want to see her stop short of that, even if it means real death. She’d be giving up too much of her essential nature if she becomes anything like Kopil.

Jenni:  I very much agree.

Alex: This is an important book for context in the series, but ultimately is my least favorite. I am looking forward to Four Roads Cross. It’s been long enough since I read it last that I don’t remember what it’s about AT ALL!

Marzie:  Actually me either, as I read it in my Hugo haze last year.

Jenni:  I definitely don’t “remember.” ;-)

Marzie:  LOL! Thanks so much for sharing with us Jenni!

Jenni:  My pleasure!

Thanks for joining us! Next month we are reading book five, Four Roads Cross, where we reconnect with Tara Abernathy and a handsome gargoyle named Shale.

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