K-SCORE: 65
Author: Scott Lynch
Spoiler Level: Major
Thief heists in a fantasy world - what’s not to like? Yet the promises made by The Lies of Locke Lamora are sadly unfulfilled as often as not. Locke Lamora is the leader of a small band of brotherly thieves called The Gentlemen Bastards that succeed by masquerading as other people and pulling large-scale cons on the nobles of their home of Camorr. Their schemes violate a delicate pact that exists between the crime kingpin and the aristocracy spymaster and so, of course, when some external threat comes to throw a wrench into the tightly wound machine of Camorri society and Locke’s world, the tenuous pact evaporates leaving many lives ruined. It’s got a lot of amusing dialogue, interconnected plotlines, many high-quality characters, a truly great world, and nice and even prose that takes you through the whole story. But for its successes, the novel goes off the rails by the end, disappointing more often than impressing once too many people have died.
“Lynch’s failures as a crafter of plot are profoundly sad because he’s so good at other key elements of writing a novel.”
Locke is a compelling protagonist for most of it. Despite my own sense of morality, I appreciated his gift for deception, and his loyalty to his comrades was enough for me to like him in spite of his lying stealing ways. The novel has flashbacks of Locke and his friends from when they are children, and the connections between the two timelines do a great deal to flesh out the characters, especially Locke. I really felt I understood him in the present because of his lesser conflicts in the past. He’s far from my favorite character in the novel though. Too often he’s confounded, tricked, and left otherwise totally confused as to what’s going on around him constantly, which is just not what you want from a story about masters of the epic heist. Other times he’s simply angry, seeking to solve his problems through revenge instead of trickery. Only when he’s pretending to be other people (the farther from his base personality the better) or pretending to pretend to be other people, does his uniqueness really shine through. When the conflicts with the Gray King and the Bondsmagi start to take precedence, these deceptions start to go byebye because they know his real identity. It’s way less fun from that point forward.
There are five Gentleman Bastards (six if you count Father Chains who dies before the present conflicts and seven if you count Sabetha who is alluded to but never actually shows up) and they’re all well crafted. Lynch does a pretty good job of making them fit fun archetypes for a thief band: the schemer, the agile young apprentice/lookout, the brawler dual-wielding hatchets, and the hive-minded twins that are masters of sleight of hand. He also gives them room to be complex and realistic people. The story is at its very best when they’re all living together, talking about their schemes and their collective pasts because they’re camaraderie is so deftly done. Yet Lynch, presumably seeking to shock or elevate the stakes of his conflict, chooses to kill off Calo, Galdo, and Bug all in the same terrible section. Furthermore, their cool underground hideout with their vault of riches they’ve never known how to spend is stolen and then burned. The Gentleman Bastard dynamic from that point on is shattered irreparably. You’re left to read about a revenge story, as Locke and Jean struggle to find out what happened to them and get some of what they lost back. For all their efforts, they can’t unburn their home or revive their lost loved ones.
And the revenge story is actually quite poorly plotted. It’s never adequately explained how The Gray King knew The Gentleman Bastards had a vault full of riches with which to pay his Bondsmage. It never makes sense that The Gray King and his band would announce to Locke and the others that he knows their identities given his take it all, kill them all plan. There is no consistency with what the Bondsmage can do, and he seems to be all-knowing and all-powerful until his rather brute-force demise. He’s my least favorite character by far because he feels like a cheap way to break down everything the thieves hold dear. And his secret motivations: money. The Gray King’s motivations for coming after Locke and his friends: money. Sure there is a connection between The Gray King and Capa Barsavi, but the reader isn’t privy to any piece of it until the whole thing is revealed so the reveal means very little. There’s no cleverness in the antagonist, only wickedness. Locke is so blindsided by their sudden appearance that I struggled to believe that he would even find a way to beat them by the end, especially because he didn’t have much of a counter-plan apart from warning the duke’s people of their presence, and then fighting them in close-quarters combat one at a time. I kept wanting to shout, “Do something clever!” and ended up shaking my head as the complexities of the plot and Locke’s lies with the Salvara family, the lies with Barsavi, the lies with The Spider, the lies that lie in the past all ended up obsolete because of character deaths.
Even the backstories left me unfulfilled. I kept thinking back on what I’d read and wondered what the point was because it so rarely wrapped around to matter. What did Father Chains die of and when? Why was Sabetha so often mentioned if she not only didn’t show up but never even had her personal history with Locke overtly explained? How’d they acquire Bug? Whatever became of the Thiefmaker and the other orphans? What was Duke Nicovante doing the whole time? What became of the other gangs that swore loyalty to Capa Barsavi and then Capa Raza (The Gray King) after Locke thwarted all plans? What’s the future for the other Bondsmagi that presumably are very protective of their members, even if their members are pieces of shit human beings? The last two are denouement problems and the others could have been answered anywhere. I’m not entitled to the answers though, so maybe the questions will come to be answered in the sequels.
Lynch’s failures as a crafter of plot are profoundly sad because he’s so good at other key elements of writing a novel. Camorr is great. The Spanish-inspired island city is a perfect canvas for the story. The river-roadways and shark-infested bays that divide distinct districts make the place seem like it could be explored were you to be magically transported there. The locations are unique and trigger striking visuals in the imagination, and they do a fantastic job (among the best I’ve ever encountered at this) of creating many different pockets of society so that various groups of characters can clash. I want to visit The Five Towers and The Wooden Wastes and see the city at Flaselight. Elderglass is so cool I wish I’d come up with it.
I craved a novel more complex than Lynch was able to provide. Lynch set up the story as if the resolution was going to involve some mind-blowing trickery on the part of Locke and The Gentleman Bastards, outwitting all his opponents, stealing things, sneaking into places, creating vital false personas, and blending truth and lies perfectly to leave everyone else confused. None of that actually happened. It goes to show how important plotting is. Stephen King says he writes, “one word at a time” and while that’s literally true, he has to have an idea of what future words will be down the line or else he’s like master painter idly making random brushstrokes. Lynch isn’t that bad, but he doesn’t know how to balance conflicts in his story nor did he do the work required to ensure that previously created story pieces fit well into the overall puzzle, so the whole beast falls flat leaving it’s great characters, witty dialogue, tempting complexities, and spectacular world in unsatisfying places. It held my interest, however, and I love the concept of the “bullshit box” alone so much that it would have been worth reading the entire novel just to discover that gem.
By the way Scott Lynch, I think I figured out that final mystery when Locke and Jean are on the boat, but, for some reason, at the present I don’t remember.