Written by: Scott Lynch
Where other people in my house have been waiting for the last book featuring some wizard I have been looking forward to the new book by Scott Lynch, a sequel to his debut “The Lies of Locke Lamora”.
The previous book was an Oceans Eleven –like tale of skulduggery and magic in a fantasy setting in a Venetian style city. It introduced us to Locke Lamora, a con artist, priest and legend within his own city, who would lie to anyone to get ahead in life. This is a man whose best friend still does not know the real name of (nor do the readers). A charmer with many long cons running, this is a man either waiting for a fall or a major breakthrough.
This book however sees Locke and his partner, Jean, indulging in some more larceny and heading out onto the high seas, a locale that they have no aptitude for at all. Starting out as an even more Oceans Eleven style romp, complete with Casino and vault, Red Seas quickly pulls the rug out from under our characters and lands them smack bang in Pirate business. As a result of the last book the boys have some nasty enemies who want to make life as difficult as they can for them. This leads to them being forced to play double agents and running one scheme, whilst their own scheme simmers menacingly in the background.
The best way to describe the book is that this is what Pirates of the Caribbean wishes it was. Double dealing, romance, pirate kingdoms and magic, but all done with such enormous fun (and kittens) that you will not be able to put it down. Lynch deals with some of the structure problems he had in the first book with too many flashbacks, by ditching them in the first half of the book after a few choice highlights, and then propels the book along. It’s worth noting that within a few hundred pages of the end you may wonder how precisely he is going to tie everything up, but he manages it brilliantly whilst still leaving plenty for our heroes to get into with the next book.
This book and its prequel are definitely ones to grab if you want fun fantasy with a brain that does not take itself too seriously. The Gentleman Bastard series just gets better and better.