"Thieves prosper. The rich remember."
I'm not enthusiastic enough to say that the Gentlemen Bastard novels are great works in the genre of fantasy literature, but they are certainly a blast to read. The prose is very neat and descriptive and immediately accessible. I picked up The Lies of Locke Lamora on a bit of a whim (a small grain of sand had been planted by either hearsay or a glanced-at review), and found myself reticent to begin the first book. The story takes a little bit of a kick to get moving in the case of both novels, and likewise both novels hit a sort of phase line whereby the gravitas of the plots become inescapable. Though I inched through the first hundred pages or so, I ferociously gorged myself on the meat of it through til the end.
Both books are worth a sit down and a read. Red Seas takes a while to get going, but when it does - when the book takes to the high-seas, reading it occupied my every waking moment. The finales tend to, in a logical tradition, come down like stacks of cards around our protagonists' heads.
I'm worried that the series is going to grow to big for its skin. I like this whimsical tale about thieves and rogues and pirates, not as well put together a bildungsroman as Rothfuss' Kingkiller but endearing nonetheless. There enormous morale and ethical conundrums as to the motivations of the characters, conflicting largely with the period - but hey, it's fantasy, and that can be fun enough. If Lynch is to be commended for anything, it is the elaborate world he is creating - one city at a time, blending together artifice and alchemy so damn near anything is possible. The city of Camorr, specifically, still looms like a monolith in my imagination - with its crystalline cat-walks and glass bridges and canals. Part of me wants to suggest that, aesthetically, some of the Bastard books may borrow from Final Fantasy. Who's to say.
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