A review by bluejayreads
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was recommended to me by a friend (the same friend who recommended Circe, funnily enough). And like I do with most recommendations from friends, I didn’t really pay attention to what the book was about, just threw it on my to-read list and picked it up with no expectations and no real idea of what it was even supposed to be about. 

I have to take a small detour here and talk about Leverage. Leverage is a TV show featuring a bunch of variously-skilled former criminals (and one insurance investigator) who use their various criminal skills in brilliant and elaborate plans to take down criminals that the law can’t or won’t touch. I adore the show. It’s hands-down my favorite show ever and the only show I’ve loved enough to enjoy fandom content. And if Leverage was on the more dubious side of morally gray, set in a Venice-flavored fantasy world, and led by a teenager who belongs in the definition of “confidence game,” you might get something like The Lies of Locke Lamora. 

I don’t know how to write a review of this book except to say that it is really, spectacularly good. It is long, even for a fantasy book, but it needs every single word of that length because there is just so much going on always and constantly. That was the overwhelming feeling I got from reading – that everywhere I looked and even in the background, there was so much going on. The action never stops, it just swings back and forth among perspectives and times. The main story of Locke and company pulling their scam and running up against the Grey King is interspersed with bits from Locke’s past, from the history of the city and nation, and other things happening in Camorr at the same time. And it’s not just Locke against the Grey King, oh no – that would be far too simple for the audacity of this book. There are no less than five, and arguably up to eight, different factions fighting for their own goals for their own reasons (and two of them are Locke himself). 

A large part of what makes this book so hard to review is that the details are revealed in layers. It starts out with a crew of talented thieves and grifters preparing to run an elaborate con on a pair of nobles. Okay, I thought, A fun and adventurous heist story. Cool. And then the story begins to peel back the layers to all the competing factions, all the factors at play in Camorr, all the plans set in motion and beginning to come to a head, and suddenly the highly entertaining and audacious heist is one of the least interesting parts of the story. 

Everything is happening all the time and you’re constantly getting more information and nothing is ever what it seems. You may have gotten through three twists and finally think that you’re at the truth of something finally and you’re probably wrong. Very few solid answers are available to any but the most perceptive reader (definitely not me) until the very end. And I adored it. It was somehow both incredibly dark and a ton of fun, full of plot twists, overlapping schemes, audacious plans that somehow delightfully work, and steady slow reveals that felt like repeatedly handing me puzzle pieces and requiring me to figure out where they went while I was still receving more puzzle pieces. 

I didn’t know going in that this was a series, but you’d better believe I’m reading the next book. And I very much hope that it’s more of the same. 
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