Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes I wind up blown away. It seems to happen more and more often with UF than I thought it would, but so be it. It happened again.

Max Gladstone is awesome.

We move to new characters in the Craft Sequence, but not a new world. The God Wars haven't really gone away and certain quasi-avatars are still a going concern. But wait... is this really a novel about Risk Management and preventing the world's power or waterworks from drying up because the great systems that plug themselves into sleeping gods is malfunctioning?

Yes, in part, and the big action goes much deeper and much stranger than even that. But the real action and the part that really blows me away is the ROMANCE.

Yeah. You heard me. We've got two people who seem to be as different as night and day, a risk taker and a risk manager, and yet both seem to be coming toward the center in their own ways. They're drawn to each other despite career choices, logic, or common sense.

And yet they're both rather devoted to the idea of loving each other. There's not even sex happening. They're just smitten and trying to squeeze the very most out of each moment with each other that they possibly can before many millions in the city start going really thirsty.

It's sweet. It's tragic. You can smell it coming.

And then all kinds of hell breaks loose. And I cried.

I mentioned that I don't expect to get affected like this out of UF. I've read so many and they're generally fun as hell, but I don't expect *this* kind of reaction. And on a second book, either. WTF? I'm amazed.

Someone has just been tipped into deep fanboy status.

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