Series: Book 2 in the Locke Lamora series
Rating: ****
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Epic, Swindlers and Swindling, Lang:en
Summary
Like its roguish protagonists, Lynch's colorful sequel to
2006's
The Lies of Locke Lamora is charming, unpredictable
and fast on its feet and stands surprisingly well on its own
given its convoluted plot. Initially poised to rob the
Sinspire, the notoriously thief-proof casino where the
penalty for cheating is death, Locke and his partner, Jean,
are unwillingly sidetracked into joining and then leading a
pirate crew, swindling their way across the sea as they had
previously done on land. The cinematic influences on Lynch's
fantasy setting are evident, the borrowing is mostly
ingenious and the prose frequently enthralls, but tone and
pacing suffer from odd inconsistencies. A handful of dark
moments clash uncomfortably with the overall devil-may-care
atmosphere. Most frustrating of all is the handling of key
secondary character Ezri Delmastro, who shines too briefly as
an energetic romantic interest for Jean. The ending promises
at least one more installment, but fans may be unhappy if the
saga strays too far from its amiable roots.
(Aug.)
Starred Review The science-fiction caper novel
constitutes a small genre to begin with (Keith Laumer and
Harry Harrison may be its best-known names), but Lynch added
something entirely new to it with his debut, The Lies of
Locke Lamora (2006). That novel, which told the story of a
young boy taken under the wing of a master thief, was set on
a distant planet but at a stage in the planet's history
roughly equivalent to our own pirate age. Now Locke, the
talented boy who became a world-class thief, returns with a
caper so big it defies all reason—to penetrate the
vault of the Sinspire, the most protected casino on the
planet, and take its contents. If the first novel had
undercurrents of Oliver Twist, this one is more in the vein
of Ocean's Eleven or The Sting: fast paced, colorful, funny,
with a fiendishly intricate plot containing plenty of
right-angle turns. Locke and his partner, Jean, trade banter
like Redford and Newman and work their light-fingered magic
with charm and panache. Lynch hasn't merely imagined a
far-off world, he's created it, put it all down on
paper—the smells, the sounds, the people, the feel of
the place. The novel is a virtuoso performance, and
sf/fantasy fans will gobble it up, though they'll have to
fight with caper novel aficionados for every crumb. Pitt,
DavidFrom Publishers Weekly
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