Book Log 5/2014 - Scott Lynch: Red Seas Under Red Skies - Gentlemen Bastards # 2

[jacey]

I really enjoyed the first Gentleman Bastards book, The Lies of Locke Lamora. This one picks up where that one left off – though some of the story is told in flashback and you gradually piece together everything that's happened. Locke and Jean are out on their own, exiled from Camorr, bitterly missing dead comrades, running a major con against the powerful owner of what appears to be a mega-casino, a heavily-guarded elderglass tower full of many ways to part fools and their money. The scam is almost complete, but then fate and politics intervene in equal measures. Repercussions from their clash with the evil bondsmage, The Falconer, in the first book start to catch up with them, while the ruler of the city decides that they are the perfect people to go out and stir up a pirate rebellion on his behalf, and he takes drastic measures to ensure their compliance. Scam collapses in on scam and Locke and Jean are all at sea – in more ways than one.

Scott Lynch is an author not afraid to be cruel to his characters. Both Locke and Jean are put through the mill, physically and emotionally and the ending, while a win of sorts, is bittersweet as it leaves them in a precarious place ready for the next book, Republic of Thieves, which, of course, I had to buy for my Kindle immediately.