Review: Full Fathom Five (Spoiler Free)

Poets, prophets and priests get mixed up in tangled web of murdered gods, bad investments, and nightmares.

Third published but fifth chronologically, Full Fathom Five is set on a tropical island where priests build gods to order as offshore investments and try to fend off neo-colonialism from gods and Craftsfolk alike.

Investment banker priestess Kai tries to save a constructed god from drowning, and becomes embroiled in a lethal plot threatening her island home. Refugee street kid Izza is trying to leave the haven that has become her prison, but when she rescues silver-winged mainlander Cat she is pulled closer and closer to the danger at the heart of Kavekana.

Gods are dying, poets are spouting prophecy, Penitents shape law-breakers into model citizens by all means necessary, and outside influences are trying to grab power on the island. Kai and Izza are from different worlds but neither can solve the problem – or save the island – alone.

Each time I read Full Fathom Five, it gets better. You can really see Gladstone’s development as a writer here, with some of his most beautiful prose alongside his brilliantly formed characters and stunning worldbuilding. While I have a personal attachment to Tara and Elayne from Three Parts Dead, Kai and Izza are undeniably some of his strongest characters yet.  

Izza is unique in the roster of Craft POV characters, being not only much younger than our other protagonists at 15, but also because of her distance from power and influence. Gladstone has been open about the fact that most of his characters are to some extent privileged in their societies and part of the power structures of the world – Tara and Elayne are Craftswomen, Cat is a police officer, Abelard a priest, Caleb and Teo employees of a major corporation slash city state government. Izza is a refugee, a street kid, someone who knows what it feels like to pass out from losing too much soul, someone who has experienced unspeakable trauma, and who exists on the margins of society. The Kavekana she knows is nothing like the Kavekana of Kai’s experience – Kai being local and solidly middle class.

That isn’t to say that Kai is by any means a copy paste of other protagonists. Whilst she has some characteristics similar to Tara (particularly her laser focus and determination – in a later book she is described as a freight train, while a character says that Tara is a woman who doesn’t know her limits) her voice and perspective are unique to her.

Kai is also our first trans character, a trait which is integral to who she is but not the only, or even main, part that is relevant to the story or her life. I cannot speak to accuracy of the portrayal, being cis myself, but I’ve heard from many trans readers that Kai is a strong representation of a trans experience. She’s also not the only trans character in Full Fathom Five, or in future books, making her neither the only token trans character OR the only representation of trans experiences.

(Sidenote: I hope to be able to publish articles on this topic by trans fans, so please do get in touch if you would like to contribute.)

Full Fathom Five also reintroduces some favourite characters from earlier instalments, with Cat Elle, Teo Batan and Elayne Kevarian featuring heavily. This was the first sign when reading in publication order that the anthology style stories were actually part of a greater interconnected plot, which THRILLED me on first read. Whilst these three don’t have POV chapters, they are crucial to the progression of the plot here and how Full Fathom Five factors into the other stories. I’ll save any detail on this for spoilerific posts, but suffice to say it’s VERY satisfying.

Kavekana is also a wonderfully wrought setting. Again, Gladstone’s writing only improves through the novels and Kavekana is the first city I could truly envision on first read. It feels like a real place being described by someone who knows it well – a writing style that Gladstone brings into future Craft novels to their benefit when we revisit Alt Coulumb and Dresediel Lex. From the caldera at the top of Kavekana’ai to the golden beaches and dangerous waters at the coast; from the dangerous parts of town frequented by Izza to the wealthy tourist hotels, Kavekana is immediately visualisable in full colour.

Gladstone also continues the very pointed allegories to our modern capitalistic society, showing the destruction that can be wrought by wealthy tourism both socio-economically and environmentally – and the dangers of short-sighted senior leadership in major institutions. There’s also a continued thread about police violence – as in all of the Craft Sequence settings, it is very much along #DefundThePolice lines. Although Cat does reappear as a ‘good’ police officer, she is clearly part of an attempted reform and the police officers we see on Kavekana (including Kai’s nice guy ex-boyfriend) are dangerously incompetent at best, and the Penitents brutally torture all ‘wrongdoers’ no matter their ‘crime’.

It’s hard to say much about the story without spoilers, so let me just say it’s amazing. The way the different pieces fall into place, the information Kai and Izza each hold slot together, the way that Cat, Teo and Elayne slot into the climax, and how the self-contained story of this novel expands the story, themes, and universe of the entire series – it’s wonderful.

Before I get onto negatives, here’s a non-comprehensive list of other things I love about Full Fathom Five:

• everything Mako does and says

• "You should see my inbox. Alt Coulumb keeps petitioning us to return a bit of their goddess they say we have. Same claim as all the others: back in the God Wars someone stole from them and stored it here. Their gargoyles ship us these big slabs of granite carved with their demands. Return the shards of Seril. I wish someone’d tell them paper was cheaper.”

• the debate Teo and Kai have about the origin of humanity, showing how multiple creation myths can co-exist in a world where every religion and belief is actually, tangibly true (but also evolution)

• everything that takes place in a nightmare (a wonderful expansion on one-off lines about nightmare telegraphs in previous books)

• slam poetry as a key plot point

• Elayne Kevarian from a non-Craftsperson perspective

• the descriptions from within the pool (please someone send me fanart of this)

And so, onwards to some of the negatives.

The ultimate villain of the piece was a bit predictable and one note, though the actions they take at the big reveal are on-the-edge-of-your-seat kinds of things to read. Better than the Two Serpents Rise villain reveal, however.

A big reveal isn’t really the point, however, in any of the Craft Sequence novels. What Gladstone seems to care about is how our characters respond to the reveal – here it is the final push for Kai to fully commit to overhauling the old ways of the island and build a better future.

I also wanted to see more of Kai’s life outside of her job. This is somewhat addressed in the text, with a key part of her character being that she is married to her work, barely leaves her office, and doesn’t talk much to her mother. However, it plays into a bigger problem I have with the Craft Sequence – that we so rarely see the wider lives, families and friends of our central characters. That’s fine with Elayne, who is meant to be mysterious and isolated, or Tara, who has broken from her old life. But Kai? Kai is still living and working on the small island where she grew up, and apart from an ex-boyfriend and a seldom mentioned mother we know nothing about her. Her sister plays a huge role in a future book but is referenced in a blink and you’ll miss it moment. She has no schoolfriends, no one other than Mako who noticed she vanished for a while. I’m writing a longer article about this part of Craft’s characterisation, but it felt relevant to include here too.

And finally, the biggest issue for those of us reading in publication order (enforced if you bought the omnibus ebook) is that it holds quite big spoilers for events in Four Roads Cross. When Cat showed up in silver it completely threw me, and undermined some of her character development when I actually read Four Roads Cross as I’d already seen the end point – same, in a way, for how Teo plays into the plot. It is jarring when you read it here, and even more jarring when you later realise that it was a spoiler for a later book. The reversed order of Full Fathom Five and Four Roads Cross is the biggest casualty of reading in publication order.

Ultimately, Full Fathom Five is an impressively strong addition to the Craft Sequence and showcases Gladstone’s developing skill as a writer. It has an essential role in the series, bringing together plots and characters from seemingly disparate stories and places, and demonstrating the potential of the series as a whole.

Each time I read it, Full Fathom Five goes up in my estimation. A fantastic addition to the series.