Wait wait wait just a damn minute - so even Gods have debts? Man you can't get away from that debt-life even as an omnipresent deity???. SMDH No hay nada gratis, nothing for free I guess.

I was so worried this wouldn't live up to my expectations. I waited for almost a year to read it. Who am I kidding, the TBR kept expanding and I kept pushingnthis back by a month. But what a saga, snd the "Craft" *slaps table enthusiastically* Don't even get me started!

What a world Gladstone created. I can't even begin to break it down for fear it would just diminish it. Few books have this "hey you, yeah you lookie here - I built a whole world and you could pretty much survive in it but I gotta warn you, there's a couple of big things that might make life er let's see ... colorful. You're gonna love it." and love it I did.

Plot/Storyline/Themes:
To feel worry for a God's wellbeing, health and safety and then go on a mission to drag that God back to the land of the living (in deity standards) to keep a city of humans functioning. Selfless in the former, selfish in the latter - so very human, snake eating its tail and all that. If that isn't a perfect dissection of human nature, what is even the point of psychobabble? The point here? This Book was a most delightful steampunkish fantasy.

Two Sentences, A Scene or less - Characters:
There are a ton of characters I was this close to drawing out a diagram to go with my reading.
■Ms Kevarian is this badass high Craftswoman (not high as in smoke, the other high).
■Tara Abernathy has this raw talent that'll surpass her mentor pretty soon.
■Kos is ever present, yet absent but his weight in deeds and misdeeds is a character on its own.
■Abelard poor buddy. Just put the cigarrette down dude.

Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Scene: :
Way to many scenes. I'll pic a few from Act 1.
Tara finessing the Blacksuits and stealing a f**e.
let's go to Kos' church:all the scenes with poor sweet bound-for- throat-cancer
Abelard.
Library of Kos: Standing inside the God

Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Quotes:
🖤 “He was not the type to wall Himself off from the world. You got a better angle on humanity from down here, He claimed, than from on high.” (Kos being a "hands on" deity)
🖤 “Some kind of imbalance almost has to happen for a god as big as Kos to die. If he expends much more energy than he reaps from his believers’ faith and supplication, poof.” (Tara on the death of a god)
🖤 “These buildings remembered the taste of blood sacrifice, and hungered for more.” (The City of Alt Coulomb)

Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Concepts :
■Kos and all his honorifics
■ The God Wars
■ The Deathless Kings
■ Prayer and Worship built into steam machine technology.
■Craft vs Soulstuff
■Crack in The World
■Agents of Justice: Blacksuits
■Mirrors as weapons

StoryGraph Challenge: 1800 Books by 2025
Challenge Prompt: 150 Steampunk Books by 2025