Product Description
Subterranean Press is proud to announce the limited edition of one of the best fantasies of the past decade. The Thorn of Camorr is said to be an unbeatable swordsman, a master thief, a ghost that walks through walls. Half the city believes him to be a legendary champion of the poor. The other half believe him to be a foolish myth. Nobody has it quite right. Slightly built, unlucky in love, and barely competent with a sword, Locke Lamora is, much to his annoyance, the fabled Thorn. He certainly didn’t invite the rumors that swirl around his exploits, which are actually confidence games of the most intricate sort. And while Locke does indeed steal from the rich (who else, pray tell, would be worth stealing from?), the poor never see a penny of it. All of Locke’s gains are strictly for himself and his tight-knit band of thieves, the Gentlemen Bastards. Locke and company are con artists in an age where con artistry, as we understand it, is a new and unknown style of crime. The less attention anyone pays to them, the better! But a deadly mystery has begun to haunt the ancient city of Camorr, and a clandestine war is threatening to tear the city’s underworld, the only home the Gentlemen Bastards have ever known, to bloody shreds. Caught up in a murderous game, Locke and his friends will find both their loyalty and their ingenuity tested to the breaking point as they struggle to stay alive… The Lies of Locke Lamora will be illustrated with a full color cover, and four full page illustrations by Edward Miller.
Jacob G Corbin @ 6:27 am
THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA is a fairly-well-hyped fantasy debut about the charismatic leader of a gang of con artists in a city that does (or tries to do) for renaissance Venice what PERDIDO STREET STATION did for Dickensian London. Overall, I enjoyed it – the prose was technically proficient, the plot hummed along efficiently, the setting was considerably more interesting than the usual plate-mail-and-offal-carts business, and there was a good deal of welcome humor. As debut novels go it’s a promising start.
On the other hand, it really doesn’t amount to much more than an entertaining confection. The book’s apparently been optioned for a movie already, and I can see why: the dialogue’s relentlessly effervescent, occasionally stretching credulity past the breaking point (characters have one-liners for every occasion even while collecting broken bones and concussions like trading cards) and the screenplay-friendly three-act structure is too often embarrassingly visible underneath the flesh of the story.
It’s difficult to articulate my feelings on books like this. On the one hand, Lynch’s technical talent clearly elevates him above the great gormless herd of modern fantasy writers already. And there’s no denying that the book is very likeable indeed, while it seems unfair to fault it based only on what it could have been. On the other hand, it’s just *too damn safe*. Lynch is going to be a major player in the genre – that much is obvious already – but he has it in him to do something Seriously Good rather than settling for being the next RA Salvatore. But it’s not gonna happen until he gets over his fear of failure. PERDIDO had parts that worked and parts that didn’t but Mieville wrote his ambition on every page in letters of fire, and the excitement swept me, the reader, away with him. Whereas LOCKE LAMORA felt like Lynch was parceling out his ideas and his talent and calculating every story beat based on whether it would make a good start for a franchise.
In short, it’s worth the money, even if you’re not big into fantasy – I’m emphatically not, aside from staples like Tolkien, Moorcock, and Martin, and I still enjoyed it. But it’s not a *necessary* book.
Scott Andrews @ 6:30 am
Scott Lynch’s much-heralded debut leads readers on a dashing thief tale in the best classic fantasy vein, through a vivid Renaissance-inspired fantasy city. Locke and his companions are clever rogues who must outwit not only their marks but also the city guard, their own underworld leaders, and a new vicious underworld faction.
The plot surges into high gear in the second act with the appearance of this new faction, which could have been introduced sooner. The Grey King and especially his mage are so shockingly well-informed and powerful that Locke seems helpless against them. This keeps the reader turning the pages, but it also makes Locke’s eventual victory seem implausible and rushed.
The climax abandons the clever thief scheming in favor of a super-villain plot out of a James Bond movie. The villain’s plan is far-fetched and poorly justified, Locke’s response is oddly benevolent, and the other characters’ reactions to him are unrealistic bordering on authorial wish-fulfillment.
The constant interlude chapters covering Locke and Jean’s boyhood distract from the exciting heist plot. Lynch does relate them to the present story, but this material could have been shown more quickly and less disruptively in short flashbacks. In addition, the narrative’s shallow point-of-view makes the characters feel distant. Only their most basic internal reactions and emotions are described in a point-of-view that shifts through different characters in the same scene, includes constant descriptions of the point-of-view character’s own facial expressions, and artificially hides from the reader much information that the point-of-view characters obviously know. This leaves them feeling shallow, like movie characters on a screen rather than fully internalized novel characters.
Lynch’s strengths, the vivid setting and his constant heaping of conflict onto his characters, pull the reader through this ripping thief yarn. But _Lies_ is less than it could have been if the novel had gone deeper into both the personalities of his heroes and the justifications of his villain.
Andrew Gray @ 8:31 am
Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch is the first book in the Gentlemen Bastards series. Not only is it the first in the Gentlemen Bastards series, but this novel happens to be the first novel published by Mr. Lynch as well. When I first heard that this was a debut novel I was slightly hesitant, but it came with a glowing recommendation so I took the chance. Let me say right off the bat that I am very thankful that I took the chance on this new author as this novel is absolutely fantastic.
There are several aspects of this novel that I think need to be reviewed.
The characters really allow this novel to stand out and shine. The characters are well developed and vivid. Each character is done in such a way that they all appear unique, anything from their look to their dialog. While Mr. Lynch has added many curse words, which at times, for me anyway, shocks the reader out of the dialog, it also seems to bring a grittiness to the characters. There are quite a few characters in this novel, but I didn’t find any difficulty in keeping them separate and knowing what each was doing. The main character, who I would struggle to call a hero, is a rogue who is bent on stealing from the nobles of the cit. A Robin Hood type character if you will. Mr. Lynch goes to great detail to explain and develop Locke throughout the book, and he pulls this off very well. The other assortment of characters are developed at varying degrees. This just makes sense or else the book would be huge. In my opinion the supporting cast of characters are done perfectly, not too much and not to little. There are many truly memorable characters in this book.
The plot, on the surface anyway, seems rather simple in that the main character is a rogue set on fleecing the nobility out of their wealth. However, there are many things that Mr. Lynch tosses into the mix to make this a much more complicated story than just your typical steal from the rich story. This story follows Locke from when he was a very young boy all the way up to his involvement with the Gentlemen Bastards and the escapades that he routinely pulls on the noble class of the city. There are several twists and mysterious characters that are slowly added to add more depth to the story. Even though there are multiple elements added throughout the book they are not done so to cram things into this novel. It has a very steady pace and was obviously well mapped out. It’s a well written plot and one that certainly leaves room for further development in later books.
This novel is set up in an interesting way, in fact I have not seen a novel like this to my memory. There are regular chapters, but interspaced between these chapters, or sections really, there are flashbacks or as Lynch calls them interludes. Were he harkens back to past events that helped shape the characters actions and choices. This is certainly a unique way of putting a novel together and at times it works beautifully, but there is at least one point where I read an interlude and was a little unsure why it was included in the story or at that point in the book. For the most part though, this idea works rather well and adds a certain depth to the book.
There are a few things that I wish would have been better developed, such the way magic works as well as a little more explanation of the `thirteen’. Since this is the first book in this series I expect that these things may be explained in greater detail later.
Overall, this is a fantastic book and one I am sure to recommend to many other people. It really is a gem and a surprising first release from a new author. I wonder just how good Mr. Lynch will become if this was the first release from him. I am eagerly looking forward to the second book in this series as I am sure many others will be once they give this novel a chance. Have no fear in picking this up, I think it will appease many a different fans. Certainly fantasy fans, but also others will probably like this as well.
LW Jolly @ 10:20 am
Somehow this book managed to be lush *and* gritty and completely absorbing. The characters are real, the pace doesn’t let up, the setting is three-D and colourful and dangerous. It made me laugh aloud and gasp and, in one place, cry. By the end I wanted to cheer for Locke, the lovable rogue of the title.
The action centers around organized crime in a Venice-like fantasy city, focusing on the Gentlemen Bastards, a ring of young grifters who fleece nobles for fun. It’s a right laugh until the new mob moves in and things turn deadly serious, setting them up for their biggest caper ever. Provided nothing goes wrong, of course.
This is interspersed with the backstory of the Bastards themselves, which only adds to the richness of their characterisation and the darkness of the city and its cultures.
I can’t recommend this book enough. If you enjoy fantasy or crime books, it’ll be a good time. It just didn’t seem to have any weak spots: the characterisation, the setting, the plot were all dead-bang-right.
Shawn Saavedra @ 12:35 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed this book – it was rich in every way – characters, place, history, magic mixed with the mundane, stories waiting to be told around every corner.
This is a four-star book, and not a five, because it is like the best ‘pop’ music, in that it is very good for a very wide audience, but nothing is absolutely fantastic literary work that will be remembered indefinitely. If you’re looking for a wonderful distraction – like a great romp of a movie, this is it.
I only hesitate in that I think (and hope) that in his future efforts, we will see improvements in the following ways:
**generalized spoilers follow**
1. (and this is the foremost one that I struggle with) Locke may be the heroic villain, but there is no true transition from immaturity to maturity. In the beginning, he’s a terrible knave and in the end he’s a noble knave, but we have little reason to believe he’s gone from being utterly immoral and self-centered to being loyal and somewhat principled. We are told through the narrative that he is, but the implication is that if you’re an evil genius you naturally become loyal to your compatriots and have what everyone would agree is a basic approach to morality – but not absolute immorality. But in the real world, people who start out like that have to be forced into realizing they can’t and shouldn’t be evil. Unfortunately, I couldn’t love the character as much as I might because I couldn’t believe he’d really learned to be ‘good’ even to the small degree that he was.
2. Unfortunately, Lynch did have the habit of creating ‘Rocky’ scenarios where the ‘good guys’ are totally beaten down and then suddenly out of nowhere are able to come back with a whalloping series of punches as if they’d never been down. (Granted that not everyone who we are supposed to care about works out so well, still it seems awfully fortunate time and again for Locke, in particular.)
3. I personally couldn’t suffer (the way I think the author wanted me to) along with Locke, through which the suffering was channeled. This is because Locke is the one responsible for everything bad that happens to him and those around him (except, I suppose, for the final dastardly plan). If, perhaps, I saw the suffering through the eyes of those who followed Locke to their doom then I would be in more pain, but of course, I might despise instead of sympathize with Locke, mightn’t I?
4. Unfortunately, the main foil to Locke’s otherwise unimpeded genius and success comes off at the end as nothing more than a desperate and obsessed common criminal since his bankroll is apparently promises rather than genuine wealth and genius.
**generalized spoilers end**
But, to close on a proper note, this is a very fast-paced, FUN read. (I distinctly recall particular moments when I had to force myself to slow down so I could take in the scene properly since I wanted so badly to discover what craziness was transpiring.)
1. The landscapes of the book are absolutely wonderful in every way.
2. The customs and peoples and histories are rich and complete (while creating in me a desire to read whatever more may be written about them).
3. The lore of magic and magicians is a wonderful unusual method that makes them unusual and exotic while not being inaccessibly legendary.
I absolutely will read further installments.