The Ruin of Angels
A Novel of the Craft Sequence
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From the co-author of the viral New York Times bestseller This is How You Lose the Time War.
Max Gladstone returns with The Ruin of Angels, the sixth novel in the Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence, which The Washington Post calls "the best kind of urban fantasy" and NPR calls "sharp, original, and passionate"
The God Wars destroyed the city of Alikand. Now, a century and a half and a great many construction contracts later, Agdel Lex rises in its place. Dead deities litter the surrounding desert, streets shift when people aren’t looking, a squidlike tower dominates the skyline, and the foreign Iskari Rectification Authority keeps strict order in this once-independent city—while treasure seekers, criminals, combat librarians, nightmare artists, angels, demons, dispossessed knights, grad students, and other fools gather in its ever-changing alleys, hungry for the next big score.
Priestess/investment banker Kai Pohala (last seen in Full Fathom Five) hits town to corner Agdel Lex’s burgeoning nightmare startup scene, and to visit her estranged sister Lei. But Kai finds Lei desperate at the center of a shadowy, and rapidly unravelling, business deal. When Lei ends up on the run, wanted for a crime she most definitely committed, Kai races to track her sister down before the Authority finds her first. But Lei has her own plans, involving her ex-girlfriend, a daring heist into the god-haunted desert, and, perhaps, freedom for an occupied city. Because Alikand might not be completely dead—and some people want to finish the job.
Also Available by Max Gladstone:
The Craft Sequence
1. Three Parts Dead
2. Two Serpents Rise
3. Full Fathom Five
4. Last First Snow
5. Four Roads Cross
6. Ruin of Angels
The Craft Wars
1. Dead Country
2. Wicked Problems
Last Exit
Empress of Forever
This is How You Lose the Time War (with Amal El-Mohtar)
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gladstone's powerful sixth Craft Sequence novel (after Four Roads Cross) set in a parallel world in which magic (or Craft) relies as much on complicated legal agreements as raw power shows the author taking narrative risks that pay off. Kai Pohala (heroine of Full Fathom Five), a priestess and investment banker, has come on a business trip to the city of Agdel Lex, which rose from the ruins of a city destroyed in the God Wars. She's soon pulled into a hunt for her little sister, Ley, who stabbed and stole the soul of her own business partner. Also joining the search are former street kid turned priestess Izza, visiting Craftswoman Tara Abernathy, and Ley's ex-girlfriend Zeddig, who hunts lost artifacts in the disorienting, war-damaged parts of the city. Gladstone packs a lot into his tale (including a brilliant sequence in which Kai encounters another trans person who lacked Kai's access to divine resources), and longtime readers may find some of his choices surprising. The intriguing future story lines opened up by some of these new concepts help make the world feel even more vivid and real than it did before.