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Well it had a rec from GRR Martin on the cover, and gods know I needed something to get my mind off Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater: The Rise the of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Because, honestly, try to picture the mindset that starts to inspire. Reading about globalization of tech firms and business and capitalism drawing the world markets closer and blurring the boundaries of the power of the nation-state and then oh look what these security companies can morph into when employed by the government...
More on those books later. For now:
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
It's like what would happen if you took A Song of Ice and Fire, Oceans Eleven, Robin Hood and a bit of the Sword of Shannara and stuck it all into a big old blender and then soaked yourself in tequila. But in a good way. Mostly. .
Locke Lamora and his band of wily rogue best friends are raised up to be the best thieves to ever thieve amidst the squalor and splendor of the city of Camorr (which is like late medieval Venice, with added remnants of alien technology- like late medieval Venice was actually 2074 Vegas but a thousand years later?). Their city is ruled by the Duke, but controlled by a crime boss who consolidated his power when Locke and his friends were barely babies, and it is administered allegedly by the Spider, who would be the Duke's spymaster if anyone were sure the Spider was real....
Many years earlier, a plague devastated an entire section of Camorr (not all that uncommon in ye Olde Medieval Worlds) and a man known as the Thiefmaker pays off the city guards to let him take a few of the young survivors off their hands. This merry old Fagin leads them all to an old, now-unfashionable graveyard which has become the Hogwarts for Thieves. It's like the movie Lionheart, really, but without Gabriel Byrne trying to enslave them all. And now the Littlest Cutpurse is Locke Lamorra, whose parents did not die in the plague but are nonetheless dead.
Locke is really good at surviving. He's brilliant at stealing, and he's got a flair for the dramatic. He's the kid that you used to play with who was known for the immortal words "I've got a great idea" which was always the greatest idea you'd ever heard but which inevitably led to you being dragged back home by an angry parent and being thrown to the crocodiles or sentenced to your room for eternity.... Not surprisingly the Thiefmaker's not prepared to deal with this sort of child. He finds alternate arrangements...
Having trouble folllowing? This is how the book is paced too: it jumps between the present, where grown-up Locke and the gang are in an increasingly intricate web of lies and cons, and back to the past where we discover how Locke was found and how the gang came to be. The gang, by the way, is called The Gentleman Bastards. I think this is the best name for a gang of con artists ever, and it totally beats Oceans Eleven to hell. Sorry, Sinatra.
Locke and the Gentlemen are in the middle of a perfectly fun and lucrative con on a smart but befuddled pair of nobles when a local serial killer starts getting a little too good. The Gray King is targeting the leaders of local gangs, and he's making the city boss, Capa Barsavi, nervous. So nervous the old man decides that just to control something he's going to give Locke the unasked-for permission to date/court/marry his daughter Nazca (who is awesome and wears glasses and sexy boots and will make a kick-ass boss someday).
And then the Gray King takes Locke, but not to kill. Not this time: he wants a chat about how Locke's going to do him a favor, because the Grey King has a Bondsmage. A Bondsmage is like a scary-as-fuck mercenary sorcerer who can kill and/or torture you beyond the realm of nature because they are that powerful. They're also so expensive it's unfathomable how the Gray King is keeping him on retainer for weeks on end. Yet there he is, and so it goes on. He's... if Bellatrix LeStrange and James Bond had a baby, and there was a whole guild full of them with a very one-for-all sort of mentality? Like that exactly. Oh, and the scary merc-wizard can do telepathy too. Of course.
Locke gets tortured, agrees to the GK's terms and is returned to his life... But the problems are only getting started.
And then mice fall and everyone dies.
I liked the flashbacks: Father Chains who raises and ultimately creates the boys' little troupe is one of my favorite characters. The glass garden may be the best training arena I've read of thus far, and the boys' development is fun to watch.
It's the present-times plot that got annoying. The book was like trying to read the script for Oceans Thirteen- everything's going so fast in circles that it's hard to keep track, and the stupid Bondsmage is just too much. He's too powerful, too perfect, too magical. And way too annoying. I won't even talk about the Grey King. Really, we couldn't come up with a better idea than that?
The Gray King is a James Bond Villain, even more than the Bondsmage. They're like... COBRA Command or something. It's dire.
It's the background of the story more than the actual story that held my attention. Camorr is a city built on the ruins of an ancient, possibly alien civilization whose writing no one understands, but who left fabulous palaces, aqueducts, and horrors beyond the abilities of the humans to understand (the crystal garden being one). There are five towers made of something called Elder Glass which is also scattered through the city in sculpted gardens, hidden cellars, etc. The glass glows after dark and has various other mysterious properties.
And there's this stuff called wraithstone that when burned, pretty much lobotomizes whoever gets caught in the smoke. Talk about a fun superweapon to leave laying around when your race abandons a city...
The mysteries surrounding the vanished elder race were way more intriguing than the Gray King's plots, and of course may never get answered.
Locke gets annoying at times, and he's too stupidly perfect every once in while. Never fails to come up with a plan, never gets confused or drops an accent...He's Danny Ocean in a tunic and tights. I don't care how much he loves the off-screen Sabetha, unless he's a half-elf he totally slept with somebody in the last four years. Or tried.
But his friends are awesome and Locke in his best moments really is made of solid win, and I love the Spider. I also love Nazca, Dona Salvara, and Steven. I'd love to see more of them. I'm curious about the oft-mentioned but never-seen Sabetha. I really want to know what's up with the wraithstone.
The book has faults. Big faults, but what it gets right it reaaaally gets right. So, there's that. I mean, you have to admire Lynch's setting, but his characterization gets flat sometimes and I couldn't help wishing he'd tried going through just one more draft before he handed it in. I really think this book could have been better with some restructuring and maybe rethinking the Super Villain plot device.
I'd still recommend it if you're bored, stuck in a plane or a waiting room. I can't say it's a must-read, but if you're there and you haven't got anything else to read, it's going to let you laugh some and get a little escapism in.
More on those books later. For now:
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
It's like what would happen if you took A Song of Ice and Fire, Oceans Eleven, Robin Hood and a bit of the Sword of Shannara and stuck it all into a big old blender and then soaked yourself in tequila. But in a good way. Mostly. .
Locke Lamora and his band of wily rogue best friends are raised up to be the best thieves to ever thieve amidst the squalor and splendor of the city of Camorr (which is like late medieval Venice, with added remnants of alien technology- like late medieval Venice was actually 2074 Vegas but a thousand years later?). Their city is ruled by the Duke, but controlled by a crime boss who consolidated his power when Locke and his friends were barely babies, and it is administered allegedly by the Spider, who would be the Duke's spymaster if anyone were sure the Spider was real....
Many years earlier, a plague devastated an entire section of Camorr (not all that uncommon in ye Olde Medieval Worlds) and a man known as the Thiefmaker pays off the city guards to let him take a few of the young survivors off their hands. This merry old Fagin leads them all to an old, now-unfashionable graveyard which has become the Hogwarts for Thieves. It's like the movie Lionheart, really, but without Gabriel Byrne trying to enslave them all. And now the Littlest Cutpurse is Locke Lamorra, whose parents did not die in the plague but are nonetheless dead.
Locke is really good at surviving. He's brilliant at stealing, and he's got a flair for the dramatic. He's the kid that you used to play with who was known for the immortal words "I've got a great idea" which was always the greatest idea you'd ever heard but which inevitably led to you being dragged back home by an angry parent and being thrown to the crocodiles or sentenced to your room for eternity.... Not surprisingly the Thiefmaker's not prepared to deal with this sort of child. He finds alternate arrangements...
Having trouble folllowing? This is how the book is paced too: it jumps between the present, where grown-up Locke and the gang are in an increasingly intricate web of lies and cons, and back to the past where we discover how Locke was found and how the gang came to be. The gang, by the way, is called The Gentleman Bastards. I think this is the best name for a gang of con artists ever, and it totally beats Oceans Eleven to hell. Sorry, Sinatra.
Locke and the Gentlemen are in the middle of a perfectly fun and lucrative con on a smart but befuddled pair of nobles when a local serial killer starts getting a little too good. The Gray King is targeting the leaders of local gangs, and he's making the city boss, Capa Barsavi, nervous. So nervous the old man decides that just to control something he's going to give Locke the unasked-for permission to date/court/marry his daughter Nazca (who is awesome and wears glasses and sexy boots and will make a kick-ass boss someday).
And then the Gray King takes Locke, but not to kill. Not this time: he wants a chat about how Locke's going to do him a favor, because the Grey King has a Bondsmage. A Bondsmage is like a scary-as-fuck mercenary sorcerer who can kill and/or torture you beyond the realm of nature because they are that powerful. They're also so expensive it's unfathomable how the Gray King is keeping him on retainer for weeks on end. Yet there he is, and so it goes on. He's... if Bellatrix LeStrange and James Bond had a baby, and there was a whole guild full of them with a very one-for-all sort of mentality? Like that exactly. Oh, and the scary merc-wizard can do telepathy too. Of course.
Locke gets tortured, agrees to the GK's terms and is returned to his life... But the problems are only getting started.
And then mice fall and everyone dies.
I liked the flashbacks: Father Chains who raises and ultimately creates the boys' little troupe is one of my favorite characters. The glass garden may be the best training arena I've read of thus far, and the boys' development is fun to watch.
It's the present-times plot that got annoying. The book was like trying to read the script for Oceans Thirteen- everything's going so fast in circles that it's hard to keep track, and the stupid Bondsmage is just too much. He's too powerful, too perfect, too magical. And way too annoying. I won't even talk about the Grey King. Really, we couldn't come up with a better idea than that?
The Gray King is a James Bond Villain, even more than the Bondsmage. They're like... COBRA Command or something. It's dire.
It's the background of the story more than the actual story that held my attention. Camorr is a city built on the ruins of an ancient, possibly alien civilization whose writing no one understands, but who left fabulous palaces, aqueducts, and horrors beyond the abilities of the humans to understand (the crystal garden being one). There are five towers made of something called Elder Glass which is also scattered through the city in sculpted gardens, hidden cellars, etc. The glass glows after dark and has various other mysterious properties.
And there's this stuff called wraithstone that when burned, pretty much lobotomizes whoever gets caught in the smoke. Talk about a fun superweapon to leave laying around when your race abandons a city...
The mysteries surrounding the vanished elder race were way more intriguing than the Gray King's plots, and of course may never get answered.
Locke gets annoying at times, and he's too stupidly perfect every once in while. Never fails to come up with a plan, never gets confused or drops an accent...He's Danny Ocean in a tunic and tights. I don't care how much he loves the off-screen Sabetha, unless he's a half-elf he totally slept with somebody in the last four years. Or tried.
But his friends are awesome and Locke in his best moments really is made of solid win, and I love the Spider. I also love Nazca, Dona Salvara, and Steven. I'd love to see more of them. I'm curious about the oft-mentioned but never-seen Sabetha. I really want to know what's up with the wraithstone.
The book has faults. Big faults, but what it gets right it reaaaally gets right. So, there's that. I mean, you have to admire Lynch's setting, but his characterization gets flat sometimes and I couldn't help wishing he'd tried going through just one more draft before he handed it in. I really think this book could have been better with some restructuring and maybe rethinking the Super Villain plot device.
I'd still recommend it if you're bored, stuck in a plane or a waiting room. I can't say it's a must-read, but if you're there and you haven't got anything else to read, it's going to let you laugh some and get a little escapism in.
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