The Lies of Locke Lamora

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch


I mentioned this in my last post. It took me one week to read the first book, largely because I had school and work and some personal life stuff taking up a great deal of my time.

I finished on Tuesday, and it is now Thursday. I am over halfway through the second book (Red Seas Under Red Skies).

The Lies of Locke Lamora made me laugh. I really really laughed. Lynch's comedic timing is perfect. He could deliver a line that, without the previous paragraph, without the build of the character delivering that line, wouldn't be funny. The line, by itself, could be bitter or desperate (I have one in mind in particular, spoken by someone facing very probable death, or at least a whole pile of serious trouble) but in the context and where it landed on the page, was incredibly funny.

Funny, without losing any of that bitterness or desperation.

The characters are cavalier without being flippant or irresponsible. It's a trope that swashbuckling lower-class heroes have some sort of genius capability, that they are omni-competent or that their stoic bravado must be broken down over the course of the novel. Usually by a caring woman.

Lynch's characters are human, so very human. Of course they have strengths. Of course they are swaggering and capable and talented. But I started losing count how many times the main character cries, or vomits, or succumbs to physical weakness, or in some way exhibits a real human reaction to the violence around him. You love him for it. And the moments where he does hang on, and does exert himself beyond his character mean all the more for it.



Cheers, I've got 20 minutes to make a sandwich and read what I can before work.