Full Fathom Five
core novel 2014 The Craft Sequence
Record
| First published | 2014 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.12 (5,160 ratings, collected 2026-08-20) |
| Page count | 382 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780765335746 |
Synopsis
Full Fathom Five is the third Craft Sequence novel, set on the island of Kavekana, a business center where Kai and her colleagues construct artificial idols for clients seeking a god-substitute without a true deity's demands. These idols are not conscious and cannot act on their own will, yet they can receive worship and offer spiritual protection to those who invest in them. When Kai attempts to save a failing idol from collapse, she is badly injured, and her superiors respond by sidelining her and dismissing her account of what happened as unreliable. Refusing to accept being pushed out of her work, Kai begins quietly investigating why her creations are dying one by one, a search that draws her toward a conspiracy of silence maintained by people determined to keep the truth buried, whatever the cost to her career or safety.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Craft Sequence
- Series: The Craft Sequence core; position 3 of 9 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Max Gladstone
Notes
- From the series record (The Craft Sequence): The first six novels are each independently standalone within one shared world rather than a single strict reading order (the author's own note); the final three, marketed as 'The Craft Wars', form a direct continuation that does run forward in time book to book. All nine are treated as one Core Canon sequence per this project's usual practice for a single author's continuous secondary-world project.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Craft Sequence: position 3 of 9: previous Two Serpents Rise (2013) · next Last First Snow (2015)
Sources
- Encyclopedic overview: The Craft Sequence
- Author's own series page: The Craft Sequence
- https://maxgladstone.com/writing/full-fathom-five/
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