Press Release:
Celebrate the release of FOUR ROADS CROSS, the new Craft Sequence book from Max Gladstone, and hear Max discuss writing, worldbuilding, and science fiction and fantasy with INFOMOCRACY author Malka Older at Porter Square Books on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 7:00 PM!
From Max Gladstone, the new novel in the series praised by NPR as “sharp, original, and passionate.”
In FOUR ROADS CROSS, the great city of Alt Coulumb is in crisis. The moon goddess Seril, long thought dead, is back–and the people of Alt Coulumb aren’t happy. Protests rock the city, and Kos Everburning’s creditors attempt a hostile takeover of the fire god’s church. Tara Abernathy, the god’s in-house Craftswoman, must defend the church against the world’s fiercest necromantic firm–and against her old classmate, a rising star in the Craftwork world.
As if that weren’t enough, Cat and Raz, supporting characters from Three Parts Dead, are back too, fighting monster pirates; skeleton kings drink frozen cocktails, defying several principles of anatomy; jails, hospitals, and temples are broken into and out of; choirs of flame sing over Alt Coulumb; demons pose significant problems; a farmers’ market proves more important to world affairs than seems likely; doctors of theology strike back; Monk-Technician Abelard performs several miracles; The Rats play Walsh’s Place; and dragons give almost-helpful counsel.
Max Gladstone went to Yale, where he wrote a short story that became a finalist in the Writers of the Future competition. He is the author of Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Malka Older’s debut novel INFOMOCRACY has been hailed as the perfect book for election season, and a thrilling, insightful look into global politics and the nature of democracy. “Kinetic and gripping, the plot hurtles toward an electoral climax that leaps off the page,” says NPR, and the New York Times promises that “futurists and politics geeks will love this unreservedly.”
It’s been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global microdemocracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything’s on the line.
With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the “pax democratica.” For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?
Malka Older is a writer, humanitarian worker, and PhD candidate at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations studying governance and disasters. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than eight years of experience in humanitarian aid and development, and has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali.
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