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

I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel that this book doesn't really take off until negotiations turn to crap, but I'll say it anyway. :) The book REALLY takes off after the assassination attempt and that's also the spark that turns all the powers in the city upon each other. The Soul-Rich versus the Soul-Poor.

And it's not easy to negotiate with ourselves, as readers, just who is bad and who is good. It's very complicated, but more than that: it's vivid. We start out ten years before the events of Two Serpents Rise and we get the back story for Tamoc and what he did to Caleb. We get the re-introduction of all the gods into the city, too, and the slight diminishing of the King in Red's power. (Or it's enhancement, if you consider the return of the gods.) But either way, this is the book that changes the world. (Maybe not as much as 40 years prior with the war against the Gods, perhaps, but this is the book we've got.) :)

I'm continually amazed that the wide tapestry of the story. Not just the individual novels that are fantastic in themselves, but the over-story that encompasses the whole world and all of the events.

I've seen this before and have told myself that a full re-reading of this series is absolutely in order, but it's even worse now. The chronological order of books is all over the place. The numbers in the titles tell us that much. This is the earliest but its also the fourth book in the series.

That's fine. I actually prefer it that way. I love having already gotten to know and love so many of the personas that have center stage in this enormous mindfuck of a civil war fought in the skies, of gods and mortals and necromancers bloodying the streets of this oddly modern and recognizable town very much like our own.

Seriously, this writer is amazing. I'm still blown a way. :)

And yes, I probably will jump on a chance to re-read it all. I'll even do it again in publication order, too. The threads that keep intertwining are pretty awesome. :)

This fantasy series is rapidly becoming one of my absolute favorites. :)

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