Play Book Tag discussion

I read this early in the month so the details are unclear, but the impact remains strong. The novel is well constructed and more mature than others I read for the steampunk tag this month. This author co-wrote This Is How You Lose the Time War which is a weird and wonderful book I could reread every year. This book isn’t nearly as playful, but I can see some connections in the creative ideas.

The main character, Tara, was pushed out of her magical Craft school in the sky, for defending herself and other students from a professor who used his powers against his students. She eventually got a job with a prestigious law firm that practices the craft partly because of her brave actions in school. Her first case turned out to be bigger than any of them imagined. The first half of the book was difficult to get through, but it soon made sense and was quite exciting, I loved some of the revelations at the end. This is a complex book that likely rewards rereading.


Blurb

A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.

Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.