Cover Reveal: DEAD COUNTRY, First Novel of the Craft Wars

Welcome back.

(If you’re subscribed both to my traditional announcements-only newsletter and to this one, apologies for the double-tap! This is mostly the same email, plus a bit more.)

For a while now, at events, people have asked me, “Max, when will there be another Craft book?”

I’ve answered, “Watch the skies.”

Well. If you’re reading this on your phone, maybe hold it overhead? Because I have news. And that news is a cover.

Cover of Dead Country by Max Gladstone, out March 7 2023

Since her village chased her out with pitchforks, Tara Abernathy has resurrected gods, pulled down monsters, averted wars, and saved a city—twice. She thought she’d left her dusty hometown forever.

That was before her father died.

As she makes her way home to bury him, she meets Dawn—a girl as powerful and vulnerable and lost as she once was, and hungry to master the sorcerous Craft. But she’ll have to learn on the job. Because something monstrous and strange is waking in the desert: a power that will change the world…

Dead Country is the first volume of the Craft Wars trilogy—a capstone project to the Craft Sequence, weaving threads from the novels and games into a single epic tale. I’m writing the last chapter of the (massive) second book at the moment, and I can’t wait to dive into the third.

If you’ve been with me since Three Parts Dead, thank you, and get ready for one hell of a ride. If you (or someone you know) hasn’t read the Craft Sequence, I think this is a good place to start. The Craft Wars are a self-contained driving narrative, with a widening scope, and what you need to know, you’ll learn on the way. We start here with Tara, and as the trilogy progresses we’ll meet old friends and enemies, put faces to familiar names, and press beyond.

I’ve been working on these books for a while now. My goal has been to get as much of the trilogy done as possible before release—for a number of reasons, including the joy of revising earlier volumes to reflect later developments—and as I close in on the end of book two, it’s a relief to be able to talk about all this work in public!

I recorded a small video about this project for tor.com—you can watch it on their website, and see me almost fall off my chair while trying to do the cool mastermind-spins-around-in-spinny-chair move. That was the honest, authentic first take. I couldn’t bear to edit it out. We do what we can over here at Happy Rock Industries.

Dead Country arrives March 7, 2023. I’m excited to share it with you. You can preorder the book at B&N, IndieBound, your friendly local book store, or, of course, Big River Omnimart. As per usual, preorders—especially early ones!—are a huge help, since they demonstrate interest in the book all up and down the value chain, from booksellers to the publisher, with all sorts of positive effects. But mostly, as always: thank you for reading.