2024 will always be the year I remember getting my dream Craft novel. For those unfamiliar, The Craft Sequence is a confusingly laid out set of books set in a modern fantasy setting about corporate employees using magic to fight gods and horrors in a terrifyingly broken world. It’s truly one of a kind. Gladstone has built a world that feels both familiar and otherworldly with plots that feel very relevant to this day and age. The first five books of the series came out in random order and can be read how you please. They all have self-contained stories that build out the world’s identity with some overlapping characters but mostly stay pretty segregated. Gladstone has recently been adding some much-wanted chronological direction to his story. Ruin of Angels (2017), the sixth Craft Novel, was a standalone meant to be read after the original five novels that introduced some new characters and setup. Now we are on the second book in a trilogy set after Ruin that goes in direct chronological order, with the first book being called Dead Country. In sum, we have taken a long winding path through twelve years of publication, multiple timelines, and eight books to arrive at Wicked Problems, and it is everything I have ever wanted from the Craft Sequence.
If you read the back of Wicked Problems you would see something along the lines of the following:
“A deadly force has been unleashed into the world. With apocalypse on the horizon, a girl and a god have joined in order to turn back the coming end. Young, brash, and desperate, they will do anything to reach their goals. The structures of the Craft are theirs to overturn, with billions of lives in the balance. The battle for the world of the Craft is heating up, and the end draws ever closer, skittering across the stars to swallow the world.”
In short, everything is exploding and the end is coming. But, this world-ending catastrophe means one thing for our protagonists across the several previous novels. That’s right baby, this is the team-up Avengers-style novel. Finally, every beloved cool character from all the previous Craft novels is crammed into one novel and gets to interact, and it absolutely slaps just as hard as I always wanted it to. We get character drama, heartfelt reunions, powerful team-ups, character growth/progress, updates on everyone I cared about, and some of the best group chemistry I have read in a book in ages. This will easily be one of my top books of the year and if you haven’t started the Craft Sequence what are you even doing?
When I reviewed Dead Country (book 7) last year, I had a few complaints that frustrated my read. Dead Country felt like a pure setup and preamble that didn’t really narratively accomplish as much as I wanted. That is clearly because it was lobbing the ball up for Wicked Problems to smash it out of the park. While I was annoyed with Dead Country in a vacuum, access to Wicked Problems immediately made me like it more. Gladstone still has it baby, come get some.
I don’t really have much else to say about the eighth book in a well-established series that won’t be massively spoilery for those who haven’t read the series, so I will refrain. I am mostly here because I feel obligated to talk about books that are for sure going to show up on our best-of-the-year lists in December. But, I am also here to say that if you like the Craft Sequence then strap the fuck in because this is the best book yet. And if you haven’t started Craft, the horizon looks great and filled with spiders (you’ll understand soon).
Rating: Wicked Problems – 10/10
-Andrew
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
