Review - The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Lies of Locke Lamora is very different from other fantasy I've read in the past few years. Substitute a lot of morally questionable characters for the hero and his sidekicks and put them on a quest for money/power/revenge instead of to save the world, and you have some idea of what you're in for. Lynch is particularly skilled at making you root for the less-bad characters against the more-bad characters, an impressive feat; this could easily have been an unreadable story due to the repugnance of the characters involved.

Things I liked:
-The cussing/invective everywhere. Very atmospheric and helped with the world-building by reminding me of the unique religious elements of this society. I also enjoyed that the society/geography was loosely Italian, rather than English or French.
-A daring choice in narrative as there are no "good guys" here. No moral philosophers trying to better humanity, just people out to gain and keep their own little enclave of power.
-I have no idea if Lynch will develop it but the world-building was interesting. I would love to see more discovery of who created the Elderglass and why, as well as more concrete information about the bondsmage magic.
-While the book is typically about male protagonists, Lynch's female characters are well done. They have interests, hobbies, thoughts and inputs into the situation in Camorr. This makes me especially curious to see what he eventually does with Sabetha.

Things I disliked:
-Way too much description for my taste. Skimmed whole passages with no loss of storyline.
-Plotline isn't terribly clever. It's not stupid either and holds together well, it's just that the "big reveals" of the plot don't have much emotional impact (oh look, another character out for revenge/greed/maintaining-the-status-quo!). It's also less about foresighted planning and more about Locke Lamora barreling through and forcing events to conform to his design.
-Reminds me a bit too much of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series, in that there is lots of stomach-churning violence but the two buddy-leads of the story are strangely immune from lethal blows, despite heaps of corpses provided by secondary characters.
-It needed a better map (larger scale) and a list of the gods and their realms.

Overall, something a little different for the fantasy reading crowd. If you can stomach descriptive violence and lots of morally challenged characters, this one is worth a look. This does work well as a standalone novel but I'll probably go on to read the next one of a projected 7 book series eventually.

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