The story so far... Wicked Problems
Last time on ‘Craft Sequence Story So Far’… Tara goes home for her father’s funeral, only to find things are more complicated than they seem. Her new student, Dawn, melds with a Craft-god and tries to eat her before running off to end - or save? - the world. Read the article here, and then join us for WICKED PROBLEMS.
This post contains extensive spoilers for Wicked Problems, some spoilers for the rest of the series, and expects the reader to have already read all currently published Craft Sequence books.
Wicked Problems
“It was an odd assembly, Abelard thought: a Craftswoman, a priestess of Kavekana, a whatever-the-hell-Caleb-was, their billionaire host, and Abelard himself. Different values, different lives, their paths crossing and recrossing like the string of a cat’s cradle. Maybe they formed a pattern; maybe they made a knot.”
Dramatis Personae
Craftvengers Assemble
TARA ABERNATHY - Rebel Craftswoman, reluctant priestess, with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Having tutored Craft-prodigy Dawn, and put her in line to meet and then meld with Craft-god Sybil, Tara is trying to hunt her Dawn alone - but Tara’s friends and colleagues stand by her side against the existential skazzerai threat. She badly needs a hug.
KAI POHALA - Priest-slash-offshore-banker for the Sacerdotal Order of Kavekana, and kinda secret priestess of the Blue Lady. Sued by the priesthood of Ajaia after the whole spirecliffs incident, and joins Tara, Caleb, Abelard and Jax in hunting down Dawn and helping save the world. Oh, and she has a massive crush on Tara (which appears to be reciprocated).
CALEB ALTEMOC - General-purpose saint, thanks to his Eagle Knight father Temoc forcibly consecrating him to the Quechal gods. Gambler, founder of Two Serpents Group, still in love with his situationship from 15 years ago. His Plan A always seems to be to throw himself into danger as a sacrifice. He works closely with his friend Teo Batan and the King in Red, Kopil. He goes on a quest with Abelard, becomes a temporary priest of Kos, and reunites briefly with aforementioned situationship (and somehow wife??) Mal. Also, he calls Elayne Kevarian ‘Auntie Elayne’, which is everything.
ABELARD - Priest-slash-saint of fire god Kos. Now more self-assured but still adorably awkward (true cinnamon roll) with a deep faith in his god but an openness to new perspectives. He goes on a quest with Caleb Altemoc, which is a pretty fun dynamic all round.
SERIL UNDYING - Lady of Alt Coulumb, goddess of the moon, consort of Kos Everburning, thought to have been killed in the God Wars, revived in Three Parts Dead. She scared off Dawn and Sybil at the end of Dead Country, and has been hunting them down ever since (to Tara’s displeasure). Via her gargoyle and somewhat avatar Shale she intervenes in Chartegnon, rescuing Kai and Tara from the Opera House and catacombs respectively.
SHALE - Gargoyle, child of Seril, spy, poet, and fashionista. Uses his spy skills to protect Tara from behind the scenes in Chartegnon, ultimately saving Tara and Kai from the Iskari and helping them escape from Clarity.
Dawn and her flock
DAWN - Craft prodigy now melded with the Craft-god, appearing as a serpent called Sybil, on the run from Tara and Seril. Gains power and followers while Tara et al try to chase her down. She gets a massive power-up (kinda killing goddess Ajaia and eating a skazzerai shard) at the end of the book, and flies off with her followers (the Arsenals) into the Badlands to seemingly raise all the magical remnants from the God Wars.
SYBIL - Embodiment of the Craft-god that merged with Dawn, shaped like a serpent of various sizes, usually invisible to everyone except Dawn.
MAL KEKAPANIA - Thought to have died at the end of Two Serpents Rise after raining fire and damnation on Dresediel Lex, but survived and became a mercenary for hire. Hired to steal the skazzerai shard, but becomes a believer in Dawn and her power, leading the Arsenals. Captured by the King in Red at the end of Wicked Problems. Considered by the Quechal religion to be married to Caleb Altemoc. Much more interesting in this book than the last.
TEMOC ALMOTIL - The last Eagle Knight, father of Caleb. Locked up in Shenshan Prison in the Shining Empire for most of the ensuing time, until rescued by Dawn and the Arsenals. On their shared mission against the skazzerai, he becomes a fanatical devotee to her cause.
THE ARSENALS - Ragtag group of mercenaries for hire who become the first of Dawn’s followers after she wields massive godly power and saves their lives from Mr Brown. Variety of useful skills. Named Arsenals include: Valois, Burgess, Yan, Lopez, Chakrabarty
AJAIA OF THE GREEN - Nature goddess of Southern Kath, briefly seen in Choice of the Deathless. Trapped in an endless fight against the skazzerai shard that infected cliffs in her land. Ultimately devoured by Dawn (kinda consensually?)
Defenders of the Domain
GRIMWALD - Initially thought to be a family of literally shadowy businessmen types, we learn in Wicked Problems that in fact Grimwald is singular, and also incredibly ancient - he was here last time the skazzerai came, and has been trying to prevent their return ever since. Now properly deceased (it seems…)
SAINT TIFFANY - Squid, saint, sacrifice. Iskari Saint Tiffany (from Theophania, Gladstone is a millennial who grew up on the internet) captures Tara after the Opera House Thing to figure out what she’s up to, and then is attacked by Clarity and the grey men. Tiffany dies in the encounter. Requiescat in pace, Sancta Theophania. You did good, even though the Iskari squids are creepy af..
AQUEL AND ACHAL, THE TWIN SERPENTS - Ancient giant magical beings hungering for hearts and souls. Truly giant, a myth come to life (or true story turned myth?)
ZACK - Golem previously working for Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao making connections between world events and predicting likely outcomes. Now a paranoid conspiracy theorist, who also appears to be correct. Killed by gray men.
Friends in Dresediel Lex
ELAYNE KEVARIAN - Badass Craftswoman at Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. Cool, calm and collected - at least on the surface - with an underappreciated humour. Representing Ajaia’s priesthood in Wicked Probems and fights against the gray men. She hangs out with Mina and Caleb, meets Dawn, and flies in to help save the day at the climactic battle.
KOPIL, THE KING IN RED - Deathless King of Dresediel Lex and Chief Executive of Red King Consolidated, Kopil is a Craftsman who has gone full skeleton but not managed to rid himself of his PTSD or his drama queen tendencies. He’s been watching out for the skazzerai for years, and is probably one of the best placed to help fight back - if he can get over his ego and trauma long enough to fight the right enemy.
MINA ALMOTIL - Archaeologist / anthropologist who met Temoc in the wilderness and convinced him there was a place for him in the post-God Wars future. Raised their son, Caleb, mostly alone after Temoc went on the run after the Skittersill Rising. Still in love with Temoc.
TEO BATAN - Caleb’s best friend (and colleague) who will call him out on his shit (though he never listens). Survives a sacrifice attempt, which gives her access to some small amount of priestly powers. Dragged into Wicked Problems by Caleb showing up at her doorstep in the middle of the night to borrow her golem-wagon (car). Helps save the day, still wearing PJs.
RAN - Okay, Ran is not in DL but they’re friends with Caleb and thus fit here (I have nowhere else to put them). Part of the Shining Empire political apparatus, with some cool appearance / perception changing magic, they have a history with Caleb and are FUN.
You guys are bad guys and also connected but we don’t know exactly how
EBERHARDT JAX - Hot trans billionaire who seems ethically conflicted in Ruin of Angels, but is full on arrogant ‘genius’ in Wicked Problems. Uses his money and connections to appear to be helping our heroes, but clearly Up to Something Bad with Clarity and the gray men.
CLARITY - Ancient vampire working with Eberhardt Jax, taking down potential weapons against the skazzerai. Can fly.
MR BROWN(S) / GRAY MEN - A seemingly bland, seemingly human client of the Arsenal mercenaries. Turns out to be a seething mass of chains (skazzerai metal?) and almost unkillable until Dawn crushes him with a literal god. Other bland, seemingly human grey men appear throughout the book and are known as Mr Browns, but are not the literal same man. Def all have creepy chains going on though. Working with Clarity
What happens in Wicked Problems?
This book is probably the most complex in terms of different plotlines, so this summary is not chapter by chapter, scene by scene, but follows different character plotlines out of order from the actual book for ease of reading.
Immediately after Dead Country, Dawn runs from the might of Alt Coulumb’s gods and hides from the moon. She finds herself talking to a serpent, who is of questionable ‘realness’ and may be a figment of Dawn’s imagination, or an embodiment of the Craft-god powers she absorbed at the Tellurian Annex. Dawn names the serpent Sybil, and the two of them agree on at least the next step forward: they have to keep moving, they have to hide from the moon and Tara, and they need to go south.
An indeterminate amount of time later, between a few weeks and a few months, we find ourselves with Caleb Altemoc, a character we haven’t seen in several books and several years, and not as a lead character since Two Serpents Rise. He is at a Two Serpents Group site outside Ajaiatez in Southern Kath, and we see the Craftwork damage to the coastline known as the spirecliffs. He’s awaiting billionaire Eberhardt Jax and a horde of journalists; Jax is here to see the cause of the damage, a shard of metal with an unbloomed rose in its centre. There are considerable wards and protections, but everything goes wrong when Dawn, disguised as a journalist, reaches for the shard and Caleb leaps in to save her.
Dawn awakes in a cell on a ship, with an ankle cuff that stops her speaking to Sybil or using Craft. The ship is attacked by a kraken, and in the chaos Dawn picks the lock on her cuff - she can speak to Sybil again, but the rose and metal shard in her hand (stolen from the spirecliffs) try to eat her from the inside. Lovely Crafty visual there.
Dawn is rescued by a mysterious pirate with a silver and clockwork arm. As they row away, Dawn realises the pirate (who calls herself a courier) can see Sybil - who, of course, tries to eat her. The rose moves in Dawn’s palm, and tries to eat her in return. There’s a lot of trying to eat people and their souls going on. The pirate has a magical bag, which she uses as a glove to protect Dawn’s hand and stop said rose eating her.
Oh, the pirate is also called Mal. Mal, as in Caleb’s ex who tried to destroy Dresediel Lex with Serpents of Mass Destruction, and who was assumed dead a decade or so ago. That Mal.
Mal takes Dawn to a place called The Arsenal, an old mining facility (mining the remains of a dead god, Ixzayotl, who is still visible under the sea) that is now a place for mercenaries for hire to hang out. We meet a bunch of mercenaries, and a client known as Mr Brown - who, naturally, springs a trap of Dawn and Mal. He - or whatever weird spiralling steel creature inhabits his meatsuit - paid Mal for the rose / shard, which is now in Dawn’s hand. A fight breaks out, and Dawn manages to raise the dead god Ixzayotl to defeat Mr Brown.
A group of mercenaries, having witnessed Dawn’s stupendous power, sign a contract to support her. They are collectively known as The Arsenals, and for this summary that’s all you need to know so I shan’t be listing them all by name. They need an expert in gods to help deal with the rose/shard situation - Mal says she knows a guy, in With Ixzayotl’s corpse as their vehicle, they fly off.
Over in Alt Coulumb, Tara Abernathy is trying to sneak out of the city to chase Dawn herself, but her friends assemble to help her. Shale flies Abelard to the airport and acquires him a ticket using spy skills (relevant for later, remember Shale has been a spy for decades) and Abelard persuades Tara to let him come with her to the spirecliffs.
Down in Kavekana, Kai Pohala is on yet another unsuccessful date when she’s served notice that she and her clients are being sued. She flies to the spirecliffs and maneouvres past security measures (including Abelard, bless his innocence) to confront Caleb. She finds him literally holding together the spirecliffs, while Tara attempts to free him without dooming them all. Kai, who has a massive crush on Tara, offers to loan her some soul in order to pull Caleb free; Tara then gives herself wings using bones (this book is the most necromancy in terms of bones), and flies away with Caleb, Kai and Abelard dangling beneath her.
We next see Caleb in the middle of a bloody, fiery nightmare with the Twin Serpents Aquel and Achal in human form. There is pain, there is sacrifice, and then Tara appears making fun of Caleb’s kinks. Their dynamic is everything. They escape, and wake on fire. They’re on Jax’s yacht with Abelard, Kai, and an extremely attractive woman wearing a bikini despite the lack of sun. Remember her.
Tara ties Caleb to a chair (classic Tara) to go through his memories and see what the hell happened. Abelard is excited by a newspaper (classic Abelard), and Tara is flustered by Kai. In the memories they see Dawn - and they see Mal Kekapania, Caleb’s ex who was assumed dead after the climax of Two Serpents Rise.
Tara convenes a council of war and everyone gets up to speed with Dawn, the skazzerai, and Mal. They decide to split up: Tara and Kai will go to meet Kai’s client, while Abelard and Caleb chase Dawn. Jax will do billionaire stuff behind the scenes. That night, Kai sneaks around Jax’s ship and discovers a room with stars and the skazzerai recording she took from orbit at the end of Ruin of Angels. This is extremely Suspicious With A Capital S, and we absolutely should not trust Jax even though all these characters do right now.
Let’s return to Dawn and the Arsenals as they break into a prison in the Shining Empire. Shenshan prison is built into a god-mountain, and its captives imprisoned in living rock. Who are they trying to rescue? Why, of course, it’s Temoc Almotil, giving us a very good reason why he’s been absent from the narrative for so long. Realising Mal is his saviour, he immediately tries to kill her until she tells him the stars are wrong, an old Quechal prophecy. They snark back and forth, before having to work together to get the hell out - the escape has gone wrong, and the alarm has been raised. Despite an epic battle, they are still very nearly caught - until Dawn flies in on Ixzayotl to save them. All seems well until the clouds part, and the moon emerges, bringing Seril’s wrath upon Dawn. Temoc prays and saves her just in time. They need to get her more power.
Dawn and the Arsenals convene at a facility where people have been held in a not-quite-dead state for decades to extract soulstuff from them. The facility appears to have been forgotten by those who set it up. Dawn offers the victims mercy, ending their lives and taking thirty thousand souls to bring herself back from the brink. They need more.
On a lighter note, she overhears Mal and Temoc discussing The-Whole-Serpents-Over-Dresediel-Lex-Thing, and we learn that Mal and Caleb are religiously married, which leads to some great banter throughout the book. Temoc also explains more about the flower and the shard in Dawn’s palm: the flower is the goddess Ajaia’s heart, fighting against the shard.
The souls in the facility aren’t enough to fully heal Dawn or allow her to overpower the shard. Where to get more power than the Serpents? Shockingly this is Temoc’s idea, and Mal is the one arguing against it. They don’t need to approach Aquel and Achal themselves, however. Blood from the Serpents is stored in a research facility called Tlaloc Observatory. There’s no way this can go wrong, right?
Let’s jump to Caleb and Abelard’s bro quest. They’re on Dawn’s trail at the Arsenal, and bond. It’s cute. Caleb finds a death marker for Ixzayotl, clearly made by Mal, and tracks the gang through that link. They follow the trail to the Shining Empire - specifically Guang’an airport. They meet a friend-slash-spy-contact of Caleb’s called Ran, who has a cool appearance changing magic. The three of them walk through the airport, looking different every time Abelard catches them in the reflection. It’s a really cool kind of Craft that I want to see more of (also want to see more of Ran, they’re awesome). Ran is part of the political apparatus in the Shining Empire, and chooses to stay and try to help deal with the whole god-mountain-prison-break thing rather than leave with Caleb and Abelard. They do provide magical CCTV to show Dawn, Mal and Temoc at the prison. Time for Caleb and Abelard to go to DL.
We’re going to jump to a seemingly unrelated plot for a bit now: Tara and Kai cosplaying the French, and Tara crossdressing. It’s a great concept, and we should all thank Gladstone for it. If any artists are reading this, please draw these scenes.
RIGHT back to the actual plot.
Why are they in disguise? Well, if you remember the events of Ruin of Angels, you’ll know that Kai and Tara were instrumental in saving Alikand and kinda-but-not-quite destroying the future of the Iskari-held city of Agdel Lex. The two of them are now in Iskar proper (specifically Chartegnon, AKA Craft!Paris) and are on the most wanted list. They check into a hotel and Kai has the time of her life cosplaying a Chartegnaise (workshopping that demonym) woman out on the town, with jaunty beret and striped top. At a cheese stall in the market, however, she runs into the goddess Seril, in the body of a startlingly attractive man that we know is Shale, but she doesn’t. Seril is searching for Dawn and hiding from Tara. She gives Kai a silver lily, so Kai can call upon her in case of an emergency, and calls Kai ‘rabbit’.
Back at the hotel, the pair are dressing for the opera. Kai is drop dead gorgeous, and Tara is speechless. I ship it. It turns out Kai has always dreamed of seeing opera here, but unfortunately they won’t be able to take their seats for Kirst’s Godsgloaming as they need to meet Kai’s contact. Tara fashions a Crafty listening device out of bone so Kai can hear at least the first part of the act. While staring at Kai, she absently notices a woman with a large gold pendant go up the stairs to boxes. When Tara and Kai go up to the boxes themselves to meet Kai’s client - who turns out to be Grimwald - they find him deceased, with his throat ripped out. Cops immediately appear: they’ve been framed.
Kai freezes and Tara acts, as she is wont to do. She gives Kai Grimwald’s severed head, and her Mary Poppins-esque clutch bag, then temporarily kills Kai and leaps from the balcony onto the stage, beginning a sword fight with actors who become possessed by the squiddy lords of Iskar. She is, naturally, caught. The temporary death lifts from Kai, who calls on Seril for help. Seril directs Kai through the Opera House in a madcap scene from the best action film, culminating in Seril magically yanking Kai into an open elevator shaft, seemingly to her death.
We shall leave Kai and Tara in their respective predicaments to fly across the world to Dresediel Lex. Dawn and her Arsenals have snuck into the city on a container ship, helmed by a Scottish captain. That detail is irrelevant, but as a Scot myself I must include it. In hiding with some of Temoc’s contacts, he outlines the plan to get into Tlaloc Observatory and steal the blood. He will need around 30 minutes to sing some prayers, at which point Dawn will enter the dream of gods, face foes there and defeat them. They are not planning on a fight.
As anyone with a basic grasp of literary convention will know, this statement will come back to bite them. Of course there will be a fight.
Various religio-magic things happen to get them in to where the Serpents’ blood is held, and it all goes fine at first. Dawn is about to enter the dream of gods when a Mr Brown appears and attacks. She seizes the power of the blood to fight, and sets the Observatory on fire. Back at the safehouse, many of the Arsenals are badly injured. Dawn is connected to them as a proto-Goddess, giving them strength and taking it in return. She channels power through Temoc to heal them, and passes out. When she awakes, she says she must wake the actual Serpents and not just take some of their blood. They need to go to Heartstone.
While all this is happening, Caleb and Abelard were flying towards Dresediel Lex. Their dragonflight is interrupted as they enter DL, with the site of Tlaloc on fire. Caleb knows Tlaloc well - his mother, an academic, spent summers there with him. The pair leap from the dragon-aeroplane using Caleb’s magical scars to somewhat control their descent, smashing into a pyramid. They do, in fact, find Mina trying to save research. Abelard attempts to use Kos’ fire magic on the Serpent blood flames, but fails. All looks lost - then, deus ex machina Elayne Kevarian shows up. She briefly moves the Observatory into space to put out the fire (iconic). Abelard is awestruck both by her power and Caleb running to hug her with a shout of Auntie Elayne!
They have some Big Discussions at Mina’s house, catching each other up on how they all know each other, and The Dawn Situation. Elayne has been brought in by the priesthood of Ajaia. She sees a war on the horizon. Caleb realises why Elayne is actually there, and speaks to his mother on her behalf - she was how Temoc got into Tlaloc. He appeared at her door after decades of silence, and she gave him the guard schedule. Wardens arrive but not for Mina - for Caleb and Abelard.
Abelard is thrilled by the couatl ride over Dresediel Lex, asking the Wardens lots of questions. He gets a bit quieter when he realises they are going to the King in Red’s office, and Caleb takes over the snark. It’s funny. Kopil puts them under 24 hour arrest to keep them out of the picture while he goes to stop Temoc et al. Locked in an obsidian prison, Caleb is at a loss for how to escape. Luckily Abelard has the power of being a saint of Kos, and begins a prison escape prayer.
Back to another prison. Tara is in the midst of a torture dream that finds her back at the Hidden Schools with Denovo. It takes her a while to figure out what’s going on, but she’s Tara Abernathy so of course she does. She wakes in a tank, hanging from the tentacle of a squid saint (Tiffany, from Theophania, as Gladstone has spent too much time on the internet) for interrogation. Through the questioning, she realises that the Isakri squid saints know about the skazzerai, know Grimwald is dead, and that she’s been set up to take the fall and lead the unknown enemies to Saint Tiffany.
Meanwhile, Kai is in catacombs beneath the city with Shale, acting on Seril’s authority. He’s being particularly attractive and spy-like in a tuxedo. Kai recalls her earpiece link to Tara, and they follow it to her prison - where they find a metal hatch torn off the wall, with human sized handprints with claws denting the metal, and a dead Iskari Wrecker. This is not good news.
In the prison, two grey men enter with the woman from the opera, who turns out to be an ancient vampire with claws and WINGS. Wings, y’all. The vampire, Clarity, welcomes Tara to the oldest war, and begins to fight. Saint Tiffany is killed. Tara uses a holy lighter from Abelard to bring down fire, but sees Clarity heal. Tara is lifted by moonlight and passes out. She wakes half-naked in the catacombs, and slams Shale against a wall before recognising him and seeing Kai. OT3. Chartegnon is aflame but they need to get Grimwald’s information. Tara uses bones from the catacombs to make a flying skullbeast, and the three of them fly to the broken and cracked skyspire, using Grimwald’s severed head to enter.
They realise the entire spire (essentially a floating skyscraper) is empty other than a prism of bone hidden in the spire’s heart, with one metal chair and twelve crystal columns holding ancient artifacts. Tara attempts to interrogate dead Grimwald with Craft, and some of the artifacts explode. Kai realises she, with her Kavekanese priestess experience, may have a better shot at this than Tara; she kisses Tara, and dives over a ward circle that ought to kill her.
Instead, she is immersed in Grimwald’s memories. He is unspeakably ancient, a survivor of the last time the skazzerai came to the Domain and ate the world. He explains what the skazzerai are and what they do: they are hungry for desire. An entire world wakes at once, becoming a skazzerai, playing the passions of those around them. They then rise into the black of space and are eaten by older skazzerai. Grimwald lost everything. He learned sorceries beyond miracle, and it wasn’t enough. The skazzerai were kicked out by the Hero Twins of Quechal myth, giving their hearts to the Serpents. Skazzerai can’t afford a war of attrition, and left. Grimwald taught the remaining people fire, sowing seeds, helped the beginnings of rebuilding. He hid pieces of the old war and tried to slow and shape history to stop another skazzerai being born. It worked for millennia, until now.
Grimwald tries to take over Kai, but she is able to kick him out - or at least push him back. Kai opens her eyes to Tara giving her the kiss of life, and explains what she learned. Clarity and the grey men are taking pieces off the board that might be able to stop the skazzerai. They realise that the next target will be the Serpents. Clarity, now flying, attacks. Shale prays to Seril, who makes the three of them and the skullbeast vanish just in time.
And now, we return to the Serpents for the climax and denouement.
Morning of the big battle, Dawn sneaks out to see Dresediel Lex. She meets Elayne Kevarian on the beach, and they have a veiled conversation. Elayne then goes to meet Zack, her golem friend from Last First Snow, using his convoluted instructions to try to throw off any tails. They discuss existential threats, when a grey man knocks on the door. Zack fights back, and is immediately killed. RIP Zack. Sorry I asked for a cameo from you, leading to your death.
Dawn and the Arsenals are in the tunnels under Heartstone to find the Serpents. Temoc and Mal pray, and Dawn is able to enter the Serpents’ dreams and speak with them. She claims all Arsenals, including Mal, as her own, despite the Serpents having a prior claim. Then shit starts to go down as the King in Red arrives.
Caleb and Abelard blast out of their prison, and make their way to Teo’s apartment smelling of fire. Caleb wants to borrow her car, and she insists on coming with them to whatever they hells they’re doing. She neglects to dress first, and goes off wearing her bathrobe. Remember that’s what she’s wearing during the next bit. They reach the Heartstone facility in the hills. Abelard burns through the security glyphed fence, much to the Dresediel Lexers’ horror - it’s a drought! They stamp out the flames.
We enter the chamber of the Serpents. The Arsenals are fighting to protect Dawn. Temoc directly fights Kopil as per usual, and Kopil reveals he knew the stars were wrong and the skazzerai were coming. Dawn is losing her spiritual battle, and Mal offers herself to the Serpents as a sacrifice to allow Dawn to enter the time of gods. Dawn finds herself in a nightmare forest, stuck in the fight between Ajaia and the skazzerai shard.
In the cavern, Mal fights Kopil and the Serpents scream. There have been grey men hiding the whole time. They leap onto the Serpents and suck life from them. Caleb prays to Kos, who gives him fiery wings.
Teo drags Abelard and Dawn to safety using the sash of her bathrobe, and her mini version of Eagle Knight scars to gauntlet her hand and hold onto the two of them dangling from a platform. Caleb and Mal save each other and fight side by side while bantering. Temoc is saved from the grey men by lightning - Elayne has entered the fight after using cool-but-not-super-relevant-to-this-summary Craft to save herself in Zack’s hideaway and create a weapon from the remains of the grey man who attacked them.
Take it as read that everyone is fighting, getting injured, bantering, doing cool Craft things. If I summarised each one this would be as long as the actual book.
In the dream world, Dawn manages to speak to what is left as Ajaia and convince her to join as one - which essentially means Ajaia sacrificing herself to give all her power and responsibilities to Dawn. Sybil appears and eats the shard.
Now with the powers of a god, Dawn rises in the cavern. She and the Arsenals escape with Ixzayotl, but Kopil traps Mal before she can escape. Dawn tries to save her, but Mal sees that would doom Dawn and cuts the ties between them. Dawn collapses as Ixzayotl flies away.
Fire rages. Elayne’s wards, that she hoped would buy time, are burned through in mere seconds. Kopil is fighting back with all his power and talent, but it isn’t enough. Abelard, saint of the fire god Kos, walks into the flames. This time he listens to the fire and asks it to teach him. He is able to draw it into himself, while the others blast him with cold. The last thing he feels and sees is the cold of moonlight brought by Tara, who has been transported to DL by Seril.
Tara blames herself for everything Dawn has done. Elayne says they will stop her, together. Over in the Badlands, Dawn kneels by the Crack in the World and raises the War-scarred landscape as her own.
But wait. There’s a character we haven’t seen in a while. Wtf has Eberhardt Jax been up to? We haven’t seen much from him since he sent our heroes off on their quests, but there have been a couple of interludes with him in a dreamscape watching the world burn. Let’s be honest - he is clearly a bad guy, and not interested in saving the world. His people are analysing the Arsenal and Tellurian Annex, and he is listening to the market forces. As the battle in DL inflames, prophets are screaming, Jax is bleeding from his eyes, and blasted with light. He ends by asking ‘did we get it?’ The answer is yes. He laughs through his blood tears.
As I said: clearly a bad guy.
“Far away, a man blinked himself awake and remembered that he was Eberhardt Jax. The stars were gone. He lay on a tile floor surrounded by burned wires and broken glass. All around he heard the silence of dead prophets’ screams. He blinked blood from his eyes. Sonja knelt over him, scared, not quite touching his face. “Sir?”
He sat up and seized her arm. “Did we get it?”
She drew back, as she would have from a flame. On her clipboard, the worm-screen turned. He snatched it from her. Blood dripped from his eyes onto the worms. He heard a strange and broken sound, and realised he was laughing.”
The importance of Wicked Problems
In my previous summaries, I wrote a piece of the importance of the relevant book to the overall story. This was in large part due to their semi-standalone nature and the length of time since publication. Wicked Problems was, at the time of writing, published last year and really doesn’t stand alone.
Suffice to say, Wicked Problems continues with theme, plot, and character arcs that have been building across the series, and moves all of them forward for the next part of the Craft Wars quartet. I plan to come back to this book at the end of the quartet and reflect on its importance to the overall narrative.
For now, get your pre-orders in for Dead Hand Rule. Try not to have nightmares about the skazzerai.
“The whole world at once, suddenly alive. I’m not talking about planets, either, but worlds: worlds of people, culture, meaning, awake and self-aware and wanting. Desire is their heart, fear is their blood. And in some ancient age, on some distant world, they were given a name.”
Kai gazed into that maw. “Skazzerai.”
“When the young ones wake, they learn to play the passions of the beings from which they’re born, to stoke rage and strangle need like a body feeds and starves its organs. They don’t kill. They don’t like death, because death is an ending. They demand immortality. And when they learn, they rise into the black. Where they are eaten.”
This is the end of the Story So Far, but the start of the endgame. Dead Hand Rule is coming out 28 October in the US (and international ebook), and 4 December for UK paperback - and there’s one more book to come after that. Stay tuned for more on everything Craft Sequence right here. And thank you for reading.
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