Tuesday 11 March – so what is it that makes us pick up a book from a shelf and decide that it would be a good read? I’ve no idea. I read the blurb for Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora, and thought “ah, yet another generic fantasy novel, how boring.” Book I of the Gentleman Bastard Sequence, I hate books in a series. I don’t like the idea of making an emotional connection to a set of characters just to line the author’s pockets with gold pieces. The cover looked interesting, very dark, gothic almost, complex, sort of like a twisted Venice.
Head: Shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
Heart: Buy this book.
Heart won of course, and I’m so glad it did.
Set in the world of the shattered Therin Throne Empire and its descendant states, the tale follows the antics of young professional thief and con artist Locke Lamora and his comrades. It’s a gripping read with a wonderfully detailed world and characters. Lynch’s writing style is very easy on the eye but extremely immersive. The last time I felt so engaged with a world setting was China Miéville’s excellent Perdido Street Station. Each time I had to put the book down, it was a real effort to tear myself away. The complexity of the scams pulled by the Lamora and his gang keep you engrossed, and there is a perfect sense of comic timing. The language is a bit pithy, and there is a degree of violence and gore, but nothing gratuitous. I cannot recommend this book highly enough - suitable for adults and older children.
Going off piste a bit, it seems that Lynch was discovered back in 2005 when an editor at UK Orion/Gollancz read some early pages of his novel on Lynch’s blog and promptly signed him up to a multi-book contract. The film rights to LLL were sold to Hollywood producers in 2006. The Gentleman Bastards is a sequence of seven books following the life of Lamora over 15-20 years, and Lynch has said that there will be a sequel series set some twenty years on, with new characters, that will also be seven books long. There’s forward thinking for you! In August 2006, Subterranean Press confirmed that they would be publishing three novellas by Scott Lynch set in the same world. The first two to be entitled The Mad Baron's Mechanical Attic and The Choir of Knives. Gollancz will be releasing them in an omnibus edition entitled The Bastards and the Knives in May 2009.
In the meantime, I was so impressed that I pulled out a handful of copper pennies and eagerly purchased the next book in the series, Red Seas under Red Skies. It certainly lived up to my high expectations. About half of this book is set on the high seas and one reviewer has likened it to a cross between Ocean's Eleven and Pirates of the Caribbean. Locke and Jean are set to pull off the perfect crime when their carefully laid plans are thrown off course by a dastardly plot to exploit their talents and they end up among pirates on the Sea of Brass. Where LLL was primarily about creating a colourful and viable world-setting, this is more character-driven with the relationship between the two anti-heroes pushed to the limits and a lashing of love interest to boot, but not in a soppy way. Another excellent book, and highly recommended.
Will Lynch be able to maintain this high level of freshness and interest over the remaining five volumes? Well, crime series fiction seems to work e.g. Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks, Ian Rankin’s Rebus, Colin Dexter’s Morse. But, it doesn’t happen very often in the fantasy genre. Time will tell, and in the meantime I’ve got five books for my ‘wanted’ list. The next books in the sequence are entitled: The Republic of Thieves, The Thorn of Emberlain, The Ministry of Necessity, The Mage and the Master Spy, and Inherit the Night.
Having finished RSRS so quickly, because I enjoyed it so much, I found myself without a book and was obliged to borrow one. Unfortunately it turned out to be Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress, oh dear. The fact that the front of the book is plastered in rave reviews for The Da Vinci Code should have set alarm bells ringing. That was a dire read and this was no better. The story revolves around the usual set of perfect people: Susan Fletcher, beautiful cryptographer with an IQ of 170, her boyfriend, David Becker (Brad Pitt) brilliant academic with eidetic memory and ability to speak six Asian dialects as well as Spanish, French, and Italian, and a motley crew of flag-waving patriots and lethal assassins. Once more, Brown has written a screen-play thinly disguised as a novel. There are 128 chapters in this book, I kid you not. The cryptology itself is very weak, he knows less than me. The end-game involves the hunt for a password to stop a computer worm (it was actually a virus, he doesn’t know anything about computers either) that I managed to work out seven chapters (that’s twenty-five pages) before the brilliant Ms Fletcher! If you want to read a book with credible cryptology then read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. The thought that Mr Brown has taught English and Creative Writing to anyone should be a worry to anyone concerned with the future of American thriller writing. Avoid!
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