Three Parts Dead

Max Gladstone, the author of the Craft Sequence series, (Three Parts Dead is the first in the series), is a young very intelligent author.  It would easy to be a hater, but this book is good so there's no hate. It's creative, smart and action-y.

Gladstone is a Yale graduate. This makes him a Yale-y. To say this properly you need to stick your lower jaw out as far as it can go then say Yale-y all up in your sinuses and in two syllables. He majored in Mandarin.  Now, who spends over $250,000 to major in Chinese except rich people?  People from money. I recently had a conversation with someone from money and these are the tell-tale signs: 1) the shoes are not flashy but seem spectacular nonetheless, 2) the high school they went to has "County Day" as in the name somewhere, as in "The Country Day school of the Village of Country Day," 3) they do not laugh with a great big guffaw where you can see their molars, and 4) they do not interrupt you mid-sentence point to the ceiling and loudly proclaim Awww, wait....this here's my JAM! and then do a kind of shrug the shoulders dance to said music.  If all of the above signs are apparent then you are among the landed gentry.

The first part of a fantasy series, there are already 5 books and I think I'm going to keep going, apparently he's going to write a dozen, but I mean, let's not go too crazy. He's got a couple of interesting characters already set up, a witch-lawyer, a chain-smoking monk that is an expert in HVAC (that's cool...I guess) and a "flawed cop." Ok, two of the three are unique.  Now, I like this series, it's fairly smart and it has a lot of plot.  The only flaw I saw was the "mystery" of the plot ends up in a Matlock-like courtroom scene but I don't remember quite so much fire in Matlock's courtroom.  I'm no expert in Matlock though and admittedly missed some (all) episodes.  

One of the witch lawyers loves vodka tonics.  This is a G&T but I mean--I've got use this recipe called a Witch Cocktail from Nigella Lawson.  Make your gin and tonic the ordinary way using dry gin.  Instead of a splash of lime juice use a (small) splash of creme de cassis.  If you want to get really fancy you can top it with a candied violet.