The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1) in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

Mar 29, 2017 Joseph rated it really liked it · review of another edition

OK, I remember becoming aware of this book back not too long after it was first published in 2006 or so, and hearing good things about it, but for whatever reason I was always reluctant to actually pick it up, no matter what I had heard about it. (Truth be told, I think it was something about the title -- the name Locke Lamora, specifically -- that I always found just a bit off-putting.)

I'm happy to admit: I was wrong.

As was already known to almost everybody but me, this was an awful lot of fun OK, I remember becoming aware of this book back not too long after it was first published in 2006 or so, and hearing good things about it, but for whatever reason I was always reluctant to actually pick it up, no matter what I had heard about it. (Truth be told, I think it was something about the title -- the name Locke Lamora, specifically -- that I always found just a bit off-putting.)

I'm happy to admit: I was wrong.

As was already known to almost everybody but me, this was an awful lot of fun -- a lengthy caper book, sort of like a sword & sorcery version of Ocean's Eleven. Locke Lamora is an orphan who, at the book's opening and at a very tender age, is sold by an admittedly desperate Thiefmaker of Camorr (fair Camorr where we lay our scene; sort of a fantasy Venice, if Venice were littered with magical glowing glass towers and other remnants of a fallen, non-human people) to a "blind" priest whose temple has some rather ... unconventional liturgical preferences. We then alternate between the present day (at the beginning of which Locke and his band of Gentlemen Bastards are beginning yet another glorious confidence scheme) and flashbacks to Locke's training and his introduction to Jean Tannen, Bug and the Twins, the other members of his merry little band.

As always, in a caper book (or film), half of the fun is watching the would-be con men going about their business, never quite certain if they're actually quite as clever as they think they are, and never quite certain whether their marks are quite as befuddled as they think they are. There's plenty of that, and plenty of bits where somebody on one side of the equation or the other does something really remarkably clever, only to find out that their actions actually played right into their adversaries' hands.

And of course there are complications (not least the mysterious Gray King, who's waging, for entirely unknown reasons, a war on the chief of Camorr's underworld, and who decides he could really use some assistance), and when things start to go wrong, they do go horribly, horribly wrong in all sorts of unexpected ways ... ...more

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Aug 13, 2020 Josh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Imaginative setting, snappy dialogue, and some excellent characters. Amazing set up. But, several major characters have a tangible lack of development, some have motivations that are lacking or weak. It began to fall apart for me about 150 pages from the end. The interludes began to disrupt the flow of the narrative, particularly when elements of worldbuilding were crammed in. Overall it's fine, but the setup was so great and the ending just didn't live up to my expectations. Still, absolutely w ...more

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