The story so far... Dead Country
Last time on ‘Craft Sequence Story So Far’… Kai, Izza and Tara helped start a revolution in Agdel Lex, fought against a desert of dying gods, and went to space. Well, Kai went to space. And there, she heard legs skittering, coming for the Domain - the space spiders. And they’re oh so hungry.. Read the article here, and then join us for DEAD COUNTRY.
This post contains extensive spoilers for Dead Country, some spoilers for the rest of the series, and expects the reader to have already read all currently published Craft Sequence books (except Wicked Problems).
Dead Country
“She was terrified, and she was powerful. She was a Craftswoman. Or she would be.
Unsteady, Tara knelt, set her hand on Dawn’s shoulder, and breathed with her until she stopped trembling.
How long had the girl kept it secret? Tara looked down at Dawn and saw herself, unsure and thirteen, afraid of the power she sought. What had she needed to hear then, that no one was there to tell her? Tara herself had left her home and fled across the world and mortgaged her soul to evil men in high towers to learn the Craft. What could she say, now that time had brought her back around to this?”
“It’s okay,” she lied. “You’re going to be okay.”
Dramatis Personae
Our leads
TARA ABERNATHY - Rebel Craftswoman, reluctant priestess, weight of the world on her shoulders.
DAWN - Orphaned, frightened teenager with a terrifying natural ability for the Craft locked up inside her. Or is she? Lots of speculation here.
Important Edgemonters
VALENTINE NGOYE ABERNATHY - Tara’s formidable mother. Chased from her home in Alt Selene by God Wars horrors, finding peace in her husband’s small hometown. Teacher.
JOHN ABERNATHY - Tara’s gentle father. As a young man he left home searching for adventure, and found both love and war. Teacher. Recently killed by Raiders when saving Connor’s life.
CONNOR CAVANAUGH - Tara’s old classmate - and new love interest. A quiet, helpful, generous man.
PASTOR MERROTT - The relatively young priest of Edgemont. Open to Tara and the Craft. Appears to be in a relationship with Grafton.
GRAFTON CAVANAUGH - Connor’s father and John’s best friend. Loathes the Craft in general, and Tara specifically. Angry and spiteful, but has a softer side shown when he embraces his lover, Pastor Merrott.
Assorted others
ALEXANDER DENOVO - Deceased Craftsman, his influence unfortunately still widespread. He attempted to break Tara’s mind and she fought back, ultimately playing a key part in his downfall. Researched action networks and mindsculpting. More on him and his research here.
ABELARD - Priest of Kos, and close friend of Tara’s.
SHALE - Gargoyle, child of Seril, and close friend of Tara’s.
SERIL UNDYING - Moon goddess of Alt Coulumb, of whom Tara is a reluctant priestess.
EDGEMONTERS - Tara’s childhood neighbours. Key names include: Braxtons, Coopers, Dariens, Learys, Bakers, Coopers, Thibodaults. Lots of men called John.
What happens in Dead Country?
TARA ABERNATHY is pulled from her life in Alt Coulumb, and her work researching the end of the world, by a letter from her mother: her father JOHN ABERNATHY, whom she hasn’t seen in years, is dead. Grief-stricken, she immediately packs up what little she needs - including a small black folder - and heads home. With no airport near Edgemont, she uses Craft to leap from the dragon mid-flight and lands in the Badlands, still quite a walk from the small town.
On her journey, she comes across a farm, burning, and a Raider dragging a young woman across the dirt. Tara is able to shoot the Raider - through the girl. Nobody said the Craft was perfect. When Tara then tries to heal the girl, DAWN, Craft explodes out from her. Dawn in powerful, untrained, and needs help.
Together, they limp to Edgemont, where they’re confronted by a beefed up guard - the Raiders have been getting bolder, and Edgemont is a different place than the one Tara left all those years ago. Guards, led by GRAFTON CAVANAUGH try to stop her from coming in. Grafton was Tara’s father’s best friend, but he’s bigoted against the Craft and hates Tara. His son, and Tara’s old classmate, CONNOR CAVANAUGH tries to intervene, but it takes Tara’s own mother VALENTINE NGOYE ABERNATHY to get Grafton to let her in.
Tara heals Dawn with the help of Connor’s soul, and speaks to her mother face to face for the first time in a decade or so. The funeral comes and goes. Tara gets through it on autopilot, giving a speech she can’t even recall. She follows Connor into a glass canyon in the Badlands, one of many God Wars scars on the landscape, and he tells her that her father died saving his life from Raiders. The Raiders have changed since she left. They’re bolder. More purposeful. Led by a Raider known as the Seer.
Back at the wake, Tara prays (though loathes that word, Craftswoman down to her bones), but something is blocking SERIL from answering. The wake is then abruptly interrupted by a young man from Blake’s Rest - the town where Tara found Dawn - injured and on the run from Raiders. Dawn recognises him, and recoils. Tara doesn’t know much of her past, but knows she was ill-treated by the people of Blake’s Rest. The man grabs Dawn, and the Raiders’ curse bubbles out from him to attack her.
Tara tries to untangle it; she saves Dawn, the man crumbles into ash, and she herself is wounded. The Raiders’ curse worms its way up her arm under her skin. But there’s no time to figure it out - Raiders are coming. Tara borrows power from Edgemont’s wards to fight back with the Craft. She wins the battle, but warns the town that the war is still to come - they’ll be back and bring their leader, the Seer. However, whether they like it or not, they’ll have her to protect them.
That night she manages to contain, but not remove, the curse. It pulses in her arm, black rot and white curse strands trying to take her over.
How can Tara save Edgemont? First, she must learn it. In between teaching Dawn the fundamentals of Craft, she learns the land field by field, yard by yard. Connor tells her stories of the town, legends and family tales shared over a pint and a song. With this, Tara can translate the town, its people and its stories into Craftwork and claims it as hers, no matter her historic dislike of the place. She brings Dawn in, teaching her how to put theory into practice. Tara’s a conflicted teacher, having been badly burned by ALEXANDER DENOVO and the Hidden Schools, but she tries her best.
Gradually, Edgemont’s people begin to trust Tara and her powers. She’s allowed to use the Craft to save a man injured by Raiders. She speaks to her father’s grave. She teaches Dawn. She and Connor sleep together, and start something of a situationship by darkness, while walking the town by daylight. Edgemonters come forward to tell her the deepest secrets of their land, the secrets nobody outside their bloodline knows, and with that Tara is able to more fully learn, describe, and claim the land.
Eventually she reaches the Cavanaugh land, and Grafton goads her. He tells stories woven with her father’s life, how much he missed Tara, how much she hurt him, twisting the knife in her loss.
He’s an absolute twat, let’s be real. Gladstone does a good job of humanising all his characters, and Grafton gets a semi-redemption but by Seril and Kos he’s a twat.
Ahem. Back to the story.
The backdrop of all of this remains Tara’s research into the end of the world, all her findings secured in that black folder she took with her from Alt Coulumb. Finally, she shares it with Dawn.
You guessed it. Skazzerai.
There is way too much to say here, and I wrote a whole series on it, so check out the skazzerai masterpost for more information. For now, all we need to know is that there is something bad at the end of the universe, and it’s coming for the Domain. Tara has gathered as much information as humanly (or inhumanly) possible and still knows next to nothing.
Tara, lost and confused about her purpose and where should be, bonds with her mother for the first time as an adult. Valentine has guessed she’s injured, and Tara shows her the Raiders’ curse injury. Valentine, who Tara thought loved Edgemont, rails against its treatment of her daughter, and begs Tara to stay safe and come home to her.
And now, the battle. Raiders arrive with a storm on their heels, and the Seer at their helm. Tara uses all her work learning the town, the glyphs she carved into the glass canyon, and the strength she built by night to channel through PASTOR MERROTT, and fights. The Craft is clear on property rights: Tara named Edgemont in the Craft, its places and people, flora and fauna, and the Raiders have no place here.
But the curse is inside her. If she is part of Edgemont, so is it - and thus the Raiders. Her defence weakens, but Edgemont guards join the fight. In doing so, they leave the wards that mark Edgemont’s boundaries, and some of the power is broken. The Raiders leave, but they have Pastor Merrott.
Dawn wants Tara to leave the Pastor to his fate and leave Edgemont. But Tara won’t. She can’t. This is her father’s town, and whether she likes it or not it’s hers.
And so Tara, Dawn, and Connor make their way through the Badlands to the Raiders’ camp. Connor knows the Badlands like Tara knows the Craft, and can tell them how to find both invisible dangers and hidden oases. The Badlands are far from the dead country they seem at first glance. Gods died out there, and the land sucked up their power.
The trio walk through an edge storm and see the only possible future, one where the world ends at the maw of the skazzerai. Connor is injured, but Tara and Dawn make their way to the Raiders’ camp by the Crack in the World.
It’s not what you’d expect. An office park, painfully normal looking - and the planetside annexe of Alexander Denovo’s journal. Again, you can read about this in great detail in the skazzerai series. This is but a brief summary. In the building, Tara and Dawn discover that Denovo somehow managed to trap a godlike being of the Craft. It kept trying to grow a body, and he kept cutting it up. It hangs suspended in wires, seemingly dead.
This being and its power changed the Raiders’ curse, made them act differently.
Made them come after Tara’s father.
Tara and Dawn fight to save Pastor Merrott, and the Craft-god wakes. It tries to eat Tara, but Dawn saves her life. Back in Edgemont, Tara confronts Dawn about how she did that. Dawn stopped the Craft-god by melding with her, offering herself in Tara’s place. And now all that power is free in the world, inside Dawn. Tara nearly convinces Dawn to come with her, but Dawn-slash-the-Craft-god sees through her. Tara confirms her suspicion: the Craft god killed her father to try and reel in Tara.
Once again, they try to eat her. Yet, with the curse now gone, Tara can pray and Seril opens the moon road. Dawn flees, and Tara is transported to Alt Coulumb. She wakes there, with her mother at her side. It’s been a week. She’s lost her left arm up to the elbow, now Craftworked bone set in silver and glyphed.
It’s the end of this story, but the start of the next: how to save the world, both from Dawn and the skazzerai.
“You were everything she wished she was. Everything I dreamed. She had to learn how you were smarter than him, stronger than him. She needed you.”
“And that,” Tara said, “is why she killed my dad.”
“Yes.”
“Did she know who he was? Did she know what he meant?”
Dawn could not look Tara in the eye. “She—I—I don’t know, Tara. It’s so hard for her to see the world—she sees bonds, connections. She saw a strand that was your father, that led to you. And she caught it. Pulled. Tara, I’m so—”
“Don’t you dare say it.” The words came out gravelly and sharp and half-formed. “Stop saying ‘I.’ She’s not you.”
“She is me. I said yes, Tara. I let her in.”
The importance of Dead Country
I’ve written fairly extensively on this book, largely through the aforementioned skazzerai series, but also my sort-of review of the book, my wild speculation about Dawn, and parts of the Tara Abernathy deep dive (which is still very much in progress, paused for the story so far series). If you want more, I encourage you to peruse those.
For the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on two elements of Dead Country. Despite being the shortest book by quite a long way, it packs a hell of a lot in regarding Tara’s character and the overarching plot of the series.
We have quite a few main characters in the Craft Sequence, but Tara is arguably the mainest main character. If you read in the normal order (that is, publication) she’s the first protagonist we really meet. Over the entire series she has the most POV series, and features prominently in Ruin of Angels despite having little POV time. We know her well. We’ve seen her stand up for what she believes in, we’ve seen her go for the longshot solution time and time again and win, we’ve seen her go up against gods and powerful Craftsfolk alike. We’ve seen her from other characters’ perspectives, and they’re often in awe of her. Even her enemies describe her quite positively - Ramp says she’s a woman who does not know her limits.
And now, she’s brought low. She’s lost her father, lost her way, and feels she’s lost the battle against the Craft-god. The Tara of Dead Country is a Tara who HAS found her limits, and doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge.
This is Tara brought low, right before she needs to save the world. This is the part of the MCU when the Avengers lose against Thanos. The part of Lord of the Rings when Minas Tirith seems lost. One of our strongest characters who can always find a wild solution has lost a battle and is doubting everything about herself.
As for the overarching plot, we learn a hell of a lot about the skazzerai and how the series - and world - might end. We’re introduced to the Craft-god, who escapes into the aether with Dawn. She’s weak now, but will quickly grow stronger.
“We saw something, when we came through the bridge. A figure like a tower of light. She fought us briefly, but when Lord Kos set his weight against her, she fled. She was not ready to face Goddess and God and Guardians at once.”
“She will be,” Tara said, “Now that we know she’s there, she has no choice. She’ll move fast, grow faster. She’ll eat us to save herself, to save the world. She’ll do what she has to. That’s how she was trained.”
Abelard helped her when she tried to stand. “By whom?”
By Denovo. But that wasn’t the truth. Not the whole truth. “By me. She’s scared, and angry, and she has power—she is power. Maybe we can save her. Maybe not. But we have to stop her.”
Tara is back in Alt Coulumb with her friends and allies. They know what’s out there, even if they have no idea how to stop it.
And that’s where we end before Wicked Problems. Which is now out (in the US, and on kindle all over the place) so you should definitely acquire it and read it. It is hands down my favourite Craft Sequence book, and I’ve built an entire website and dedicated an alarming part of my life and energy to sharing my love of the series so far. If you’re reading this article, go get Wicked Problems then come and scream with me about it.
This is the end of the Story So Far, but the start of the endgame. The Craft Wars trilogy is now a series, so we have two more books to come. Stay tuned for more on everything Craft Sequence right here. And thank you for reading.
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