I was a big fan of Max Gladstone's work on This Is How You Lose the Time War with Amal El-Mohtar. Three Parts Dead is a lot more of the typical, heroes journey-ish fantasy than that book was, but with a lot of the same level of creativity and quality of writing I was hoping to find. I loved that Tara's arc here is less of the typical magical powers and growth kind, although she gets ample room to demonstrate her genius along those lines; it's more one of cleverness and brinkmanship as she digs her way out of a low spot in her life, set as a magical law thriller. Abelard, the other young protagonist, also starts out deep in a hole and has a great contrasting arc expanding his world beyond that of a low level religious technician. The world is just as weird and interesting as all that sounds; a lot of the ideas in this story aren't strictly new, but they're interpreted and combined and presented in ways that felt really fresh and exciting to me, and Gladstone manages to balance making all the characters just emotionally engaging and three dimensional enough at the same time. Three Parts Dead is on the quicker side of medium paced, and was just really fun for me; I tore through it extremely fast and enjoyed it the whole time.