History Literature / CraftSequence

There are also two {{Gamebook}}-style games, hosted on Creator/ChoiceOfGames:

* HundredPercentAdorationRating: Kos the Everburning benefits from this. He's a benevolent, friendly god and one of the few to avoid the mayhem of the God Wars. Even the anti-religious Craftsmen like him and he's seen as a trustworthy institution for global trade. And then he's killed [[spoiler:by his chief priest Gustave, who believed Kos was a going through a bout of madness and decided that killing and then resurrecting Kos is the best idea)]]

[[WordOfGod The author]] says the gods are metaphors for corporations (immortal, powerful inhuman entities) and the magicians for lawyers (drawing power from contracts, rare knowledge and dead languages). For example, resurrecting a dead god is bankruptcy restructuring. The books bring out the bizarre and fantastic aspects of our present-day existence. [[http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/10/29/2834951/serpents-rise/ See this author interview]]

* OurSoulsAreDifferent: You can sell just a bit of your soul for a cup of coffee. In fact you have to, as “soulstuff” is the currency of and basis for the whole economic system. One human soul is made of 2,000 units of soulstuff. You can actually have more or less than that (it’s like having cash in your purse), but having too much soulstuff in you makes you go kind of weird and having too little makes you increasingly less alive.

* DungeonPunk: In terms of culture, law, and economics, the world is almost identical to 21st century Earth — just with Craftwork devices for its technology. Alt Coulumb’s {{steampunk}} machinery is powered by its god of fire. Skyscrapers are cooled by harnessed air elementals. If two people share a god, prayer can take the place of telephones. Otherwise, they need to talk through something called a “nightmare telegraph,” which is exactly as harrowing as it sounds. The central MacGuffin of ''Literature/RuinOfAngels'' is [[spoiler: the world’s first space rocket, multi-stage, manned, and carrying a temporary satellite.]] But like 21st century Earth, these technologies come with dangers. Dresediel Lex will one day face a water crisis because its ruling Deathless King can't miracle it into existence like its late god of rain could. Materials required for Craftwork must be mined at cost, and inadequate safety procedures are causing irreversible environmental damage. And there are always people and nations exploiting such resources for their own gain, such as {{Undead Laborer}} companies using {{Technically Living Zombie}}s enslaved by predatory contracts to keep them at work indefinitely.

* {{Magitek}}: In terms of culture, law, and economics, the world is almost identical to 21st century Earth — just with Craftwork devices for its technology. Alt Coulumb’s {{steampunk}} machinery is powered by its god of fire. Skyscrapers are cooled by harnessed air elementals. If two people share a god, prayer can take the place of telephones. Otherwise, they need to talk through something called a “nightmare telegraph,” which is exactly as harrowing as it sounds. The central MacGuffin of ''Literature/RuinOfAngels'' is [[spoiler: the world’s first space rocket, multi-stage, manned, and carrying a temporary satellite.]]

* OccultLawFirm: Varkath Nebuchadnezzar Stone and Kelethres Albrecht & Ao so far.

* DeathOfTheOldGods: The God Wars saw most of the old pantheons killed off, and the infrastructural role of gods in society replaced by the sorcerers who did the killing. A handful of the old gods survived to the present day, with varying degrees of power; fire god Kos, for example, ended up a major player in the global economy thanks to remaining steadfastly neutral in the wars, while [[spoiler:Makalwe, originally TopGod of the Kavekana pantheon, is not much greater than human now and spends his days incognito as a beach bum.]]

The ''Craft Sequence'' is a series of novels by Max Gladstone, set in a world analogous to the present day but run using FunctionalMagic in general and MagiTek in particular.

* FunctionalMagic: The Craft and Applied Theology.

* YouKillItYouBoughtIt: After deposing the gods of Dresdiel Lex, the King in Red finds himself responsible for providing water to the citizens of that ever-growing desert city. Because he can't just miracle it into existence like the gods used to, this is a pretty tough job, and stated to be unsustainable in the long term.

See also ''Literature/EmpressOfForever'', an unrelated novel by Gladstone, which explores similar themes (parallels between myth/magic and technology, the balance of individual and collective power) from a more sci-fi angle.

See also ''Literature/EmpressOfForever'', an unrelated novel by Gladstone, which explores similar themes (parallels between myth/magic and technology, power and responsibility, individualism vs. solidarity) from a more sci-fi angle.

* OurLichesAreDifferent: The Deathless Kings. Some of them are literal Lich Kings ([[UnisexTropes and queens and other]]). Some of them are Lich [=CEOs=] or Lich Chancellors. They play the core tropes of lichdom pretty close, being fleshless sorcerous skeletons. The first major twist is that they don't come about through some dark ritual-- "lich"dom (they're NotUsingTheZedWord) is just a natural part of a Craftsperson's lifecycle. The second is that there's nothing inherently evil about it-- though the culture around the Craft has a wide Nietzschean streak that doesn't serve very well as an ethical foundation, so a lot of them are non-inherently evil anyway.

** Telomere appears to be Italy. Temoc referenced a telomere legend in which the [[Literature/TheAeneid founder of an empire carried his father on his back]]. The empire was formed next to the 'Ebon sea', and its language shares at least one word ("Altus") with Latin.

* YouKillItYouBoughtIt: After deposing the gods of Dresdiel Lex, the King in Red finds himself responsible for providing water to the citizens of that ever-growing desert city. Because he can't just miracle it into existence like the gods used to, this is a pretty tough job.

** ''Literature/LastFirstSnow'': Gentrification protest.

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