alanajoli | Cover & Release Date for Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead!

I know I've mentioned here before that fellow Substrater and fantastic writer Max Gladstone (here at lj as

lyster has a novel coming out this fall. A few days ago (missed because I hadn't checked his blog or my Google+ feed until today), he shared his release date announcement: October 2nd of this year. (That's practically a happy birthday to me!)

He also posted the full, for-public-consumption version of his cover, which I got a sneak peek at during our last Substrate meeting and have been dying to share.

My reaction to Three Parts Dead, which I read in a couple of early drafts at Substrate, was that, even in manuscript form, it was one of the best books I read in 2009. (That year included some amazing titles by folks like Caitlin Kittredge, Mark Henry, Anton Strout, Nicole Peeler, and Neil Gaiman, putting Max in excellent company.) The world of the book is fantastic: it's a hybrid of magic and modernity in which wizards once challenged the gods for supremacy -- and largely won -- and where necromancers are organized into corporations and law firms. Main character Tara is on assignment to bring back a god from the dead (and uncover the conspiracy that killed him), accompanied by Abelard, a chain smoking priest to the dead deity. Max's agent Weronica Janczuk has the official summary here, and you can preorder the novel here. You'll certainly be hearing more about it here as the release date approaches (and once it comes out, after I've read the book in its final form!).