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Red Seas Under Red Skies ハードカバー – 2007/7/31
英語版
Scott Lynch
(著)
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In his highly acclaimed debut, The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch took us on an adrenaline-fueled adventure with a band of daring thieves led by con artist extraordinaire Locke Lamora. Now Lynch brings back his outrageous hero for a caper so death-defying, nothing short of a miracle will pull it off.
After a brutal battle with the underworld that nearly destroyed him, Locke and his trusted sidekick, Jean, fled the island city of their birth and landed on the exotic shores of Tal Verrar to nurse their wounds. But even at this westernmost edge of civilization, they can’t rest for long—and are soon back to what they do best: stealing from the undeserving rich and pocketing the proceeds for themselves.
This time, however, they have targeted the grandest prize of all: the Sinspire, the most exclusive and heavily guarded gambling house in the world. Its nine floors attract the wealthiest clientele—and to rise to the top, one must impress with good credit, amusing behavior…and excruciatingly impeccable play. For there is one cardinal rule, enforced by Requin, the house’s cold-blooded master: it is death to cheat at any game at the Sinspire.
Brazenly undeterred, Locke and Jean have orchestrated an elaborate plan to lie, trick, and swindle their way up the nine floors…straight to Requin’s teeming vault. Under the cloak of false identities, they meticulously make their climb—until they are closer to the spoils than ever.
But someone in Tal Verrar has uncovered the duo’s secret. Someone from their past who has every intention of making the impudent criminals pay for their sins. Now it will take every ounce of cunning to save their mercenary souls. And even that may not be enough.…
After a brutal battle with the underworld that nearly destroyed him, Locke and his trusted sidekick, Jean, fled the island city of their birth and landed on the exotic shores of Tal Verrar to nurse their wounds. But even at this westernmost edge of civilization, they can’t rest for long—and are soon back to what they do best: stealing from the undeserving rich and pocketing the proceeds for themselves.
This time, however, they have targeted the grandest prize of all: the Sinspire, the most exclusive and heavily guarded gambling house in the world. Its nine floors attract the wealthiest clientele—and to rise to the top, one must impress with good credit, amusing behavior…and excruciatingly impeccable play. For there is one cardinal rule, enforced by Requin, the house’s cold-blooded master: it is death to cheat at any game at the Sinspire.
Brazenly undeterred, Locke and Jean have orchestrated an elaborate plan to lie, trick, and swindle their way up the nine floors…straight to Requin’s teeming vault. Under the cloak of false identities, they meticulously make their climb—until they are closer to the spoils than ever.
But someone in Tal Verrar has uncovered the duo’s secret. Someone from their past who has every intention of making the impudent criminals pay for their sins. Now it will take every ounce of cunning to save their mercenary souls. And even that may not be enough.…
- 本の長さ576ページ
- 言語英語
- 出版社Spectra
- 発売日2007/7/31
- 寸法16 x 3.81 x 24.13 cm
- ISBN-100553804685
- ISBN-13978-0553804683
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CHAPTER ONE
LITTLE GAMES
1
THE GAME WAS CAROUSEL HAZARD, the stakes were roughly half of all the wealth they commanded in the entire world, and the plain truth was that Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen were getting beaten like a pair of dusty carpets.
"Last offering for the fifth hand," said the velvet-coated attendant from his podium on the other side of the circular table. "Do the gentlemen choose to receive new cards?"
"No, no—the gentlemen choose to confer," said Locke, leaning to his left to place his mouth close to Jean's ear. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "What's your hand look like?"
"A parched desert," Jean murmured, casually moving his right hand up to cover his mouth. "How's yours?"
"A wasteland of bitter frustration."
"Shit."
"Have we been neglecting our prayers this week? Did one of us fart in a temple or something?"
"I thought the expectation of losing was all part of the plan."
"It is. I just expected we'd be able to put up a better fight than this."
The attendant coughed demurely into his left hand, the card-table equivalent of slapping Locke and Jean across the backs of their heads. Locke leaned away from Jean, tapped his cards lightly against the lacquered surface of the table, and grinned the best knew-what-he-was-doing sort of grin he could conjure from his facial arsenal. He sighed inwardly, glancing at the sizable pile of wooden markers that was about to make the short journey from the center of the table to his opponents' stacks.
"We are of course prepared," he said, "to meet our fate with heroic stoicism, worthy of mention by historians and poets."
The dealer nodded. "Ladies and gentlemen both decline last offering. House calls for final hands."
There was a flurry of shuffling and discarding as the four players formed their final hands and set them, facedown, on the table before them.
"Very well," said the attendant. "Turn and reveal."
The sixty or seventy of Tal Verrar's wealthiest idlers who had crowded the room behind them to watch every turn of Locke and Jean's unfolding humiliation now leaned forward as one, eager to see how embarrassed they would be this time.
2
TAL VERRAR, the Rose of the Gods, at the westernmost edge of what the Therin people call the civilized world.
If you could stand in thin air a thousand yards above Tal Verrar's tallest towers, or float in lazy circles there like the nations of gulls that infest the city's crevices and rooftops, you could see how its vast dark islands have given this place its ancient nickname. They seem to whirl outward from the city's heart, a series of crescents steadily increasing in size, like the stylized petals of a rose in an artist's mosaic.
They are not natural, in the sense that the mainland looming a few miles to the northeast is natural. The mainland cracks before wind and weather, showing its age. The islands of Tal Verrar are unweathered, possibly unweatherable—they are the black glass of the Eldren, unimaginable quantities of it, endlessly tiered and shot through with passages, glazed with layers of stone and dirt from which a city of men and women springs.
This Rose of the Gods is surrounded by an artificial reef, a broken circle three miles in diameter, shadows under shadowed waves. Against this hidden wall the restless Sea of Brass is gentled for the passage of vessels flying the banners of a hundred kingdoms and dominions. Their masts and yards rise in a forest, white with furled sails, far beneath your feet.
If you could turn your eye to the city's western island, you would see that its interior surfaces are sheer black walls, plunging hundreds of feet to the softly lapping harbor waves, where a network of wooden docks clings to the base of the cliffs. The seaward side of the island, however, is tiered along its entire length. Six wide, flat ledges sit one atop the other with smooth fifty-foot escarpments backing all but the highest.
The southernmost district of this island is called the Golden Steps—its six levels are thick with alehouses, dicing dens, private clubs, brothels, and fighting pits. The Golden Steps are heralded as the gambling capital of the Therin city-states, a place where men and women may lose money on anything from the mildest vices to the wickedest felonies. The authorities of Tal Verrar, in a magnanimous gesture of hospitality, have decreed that no foreigner upon the Golden Steps may be impressed into slavery. As a result, there are few places west of Camorr where it is safer for strangers to drink their brains out and fall asleep in the gutters and gardens.
There is rigid stratification on the Golden Steps; with each successively higher tier, the quality of the establishments rises, as do the size, number, and vehemence of the guards at the doors. Crowning the Golden Steps are a dozen baroque mansions of old stone and witchwood, embedded in the wet green luxury of manicured gardens and miniature forests.
These are the "chance houses of quality"—exclusive clubs where men and women of funds may gamble in the style to which their letters of credit entitle them. These houses have been informal centers of power for centuries, where nobles, bureaucrats, merchants, ships' captains, legates, and spies gather to wager fortunes, both personal and political.
Every possible amenity is contained within these houses. Notable visitors board carriage-boxes at exclusive docks at the base of the inner harbor cliffs, and are hauled up by gleaming brass water engines, thereby avoiding the narrow, twisting, crowd-choked ramps leading up the five lower Steps on their seaward face. There is even a public dueling green—a broad expanse of well-kept grass lying dead-center on the top tier, so that cooler heads need not be given any chance to prevail when someone has their blood up.
The houses of quality are sacrosanct. Custom older and firmer than law forbids soldiers or constables to set foot within them, save for response to the most heinous crimes. They are the envy of a continent: no foreign club, however luxurious or exclusive, can quite recapture the particular atmosphere of a genuine Verrari chance house. And they are, one and all, put to shame by the Sinspire.
Nearly one hundred and fifty feet tall, the Sinspire juts skyward at the southern end of the topmost tier of the Steps, which is itself more than two hundred and fifty feet above the harbor. The Sinspire is an Elderglass tower, glimmering with a pearly black sheen. A wide balcony decked with alchemical lanterns circles each of its nine levels. At night, the Sinspire is a constellation of lights in scarlet and twilight-sky blue, the heraldic colors of Tal Verrar.
The Sinspire is the most exclusive, most notorious, and most heavily guarded chance house in the world, open from sunset to sunrise for those powerful, wealthy, or beautiful enough to make it past the whims of the doorkeepers. Each ascending floor outdoes the one beneath it for luxury, exclusivity, and the risk ceiling of the games allowed. Access to each higher floor must be earned with good credit, amusing behavior, and impeccable play. Some aspirants spend years of their lives and thousands of solari trying to catch the attention of the Sinspire's master, whose ruthless hold on his unique position has made him the most powerful arbiter of social favor in the city's history.
The code of conduct at the Sinspire is unwritten, but as rigid as that of a religious cult. Most simply, most incontrovertibly, it is death to be caught cheating here. Were the archon of Tal Verrar himself to be detected with a card up his sleeve, he would find no appeal this side of the gods themselves from the consequences. Every few months, the tower's attendants discover some would-be exception to the rule, and yet another person dies quietly of an alchemical overdose in their carriage, or tragically "slips" from the balcony nine stories above the hard, flat stones of the Sinspire's courtyard.
It has taken Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen two years and a completely new set of false identities to carefully cheat their way up to the fifth floor.
They are, in fact, cheating at this very moment, trying hard to keep up with opponents who have no need to do likewise.
3
"LADIES SHOW a run of Spires and a run of Sabers, crowned with the Sigil of the Sun," said the attendant. "Gentlemen show a run of Chalices and a mixed hand, crowned with the five of Chalices. Fifth hand is to the ladies."
Locke bit the inside of his cheek as a wave of applause rippled through the warm air of the room. The ladies had taken four of the five hands so far, and the crowd had barely deigned to notice Locke and Jean's sole victory.
"Well, damn," said Jean, in credible mock surprise.
Locke turned to the opponent on his right. Maracosa Durenna was a slender, dark-complexioned woman in her late thirties, with thick hair the color of oil smoke and several visible scars on her neck and forearms. In her right hand she held a thin black cigar wrapped with gold thread, and on her face she wore a tight smile of detached contentment. The game was clearly not demanding her utmost exertion.
The attendant flicked Locke and Jean's little pile of lost wooden counters toward the ladies' side of the table with a long-handled crop. He then used the same crop to sweep all the cards back into his hands; it was strictly forbidden for players to touch the cards after the attendant had called for the reveal.
"Well, Madam Durenna," said Locke, "my congratulations on the increasingly robust state of your finances. Your purse would seem to be the only thing growing faster than my impending hangover." Locke knuckle-walke...
LITTLE GAMES
1
THE GAME WAS CAROUSEL HAZARD, the stakes were roughly half of all the wealth they commanded in the entire world, and the plain truth was that Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen were getting beaten like a pair of dusty carpets.
"Last offering for the fifth hand," said the velvet-coated attendant from his podium on the other side of the circular table. "Do the gentlemen choose to receive new cards?"
"No, no—the gentlemen choose to confer," said Locke, leaning to his left to place his mouth close to Jean's ear. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "What's your hand look like?"
"A parched desert," Jean murmured, casually moving his right hand up to cover his mouth. "How's yours?"
"A wasteland of bitter frustration."
"Shit."
"Have we been neglecting our prayers this week? Did one of us fart in a temple or something?"
"I thought the expectation of losing was all part of the plan."
"It is. I just expected we'd be able to put up a better fight than this."
The attendant coughed demurely into his left hand, the card-table equivalent of slapping Locke and Jean across the backs of their heads. Locke leaned away from Jean, tapped his cards lightly against the lacquered surface of the table, and grinned the best knew-what-he-was-doing sort of grin he could conjure from his facial arsenal. He sighed inwardly, glancing at the sizable pile of wooden markers that was about to make the short journey from the center of the table to his opponents' stacks.
"We are of course prepared," he said, "to meet our fate with heroic stoicism, worthy of mention by historians and poets."
The dealer nodded. "Ladies and gentlemen both decline last offering. House calls for final hands."
There was a flurry of shuffling and discarding as the four players formed their final hands and set them, facedown, on the table before them.
"Very well," said the attendant. "Turn and reveal."
The sixty or seventy of Tal Verrar's wealthiest idlers who had crowded the room behind them to watch every turn of Locke and Jean's unfolding humiliation now leaned forward as one, eager to see how embarrassed they would be this time.
2
TAL VERRAR, the Rose of the Gods, at the westernmost edge of what the Therin people call the civilized world.
If you could stand in thin air a thousand yards above Tal Verrar's tallest towers, or float in lazy circles there like the nations of gulls that infest the city's crevices and rooftops, you could see how its vast dark islands have given this place its ancient nickname. They seem to whirl outward from the city's heart, a series of crescents steadily increasing in size, like the stylized petals of a rose in an artist's mosaic.
They are not natural, in the sense that the mainland looming a few miles to the northeast is natural. The mainland cracks before wind and weather, showing its age. The islands of Tal Verrar are unweathered, possibly unweatherable—they are the black glass of the Eldren, unimaginable quantities of it, endlessly tiered and shot through with passages, glazed with layers of stone and dirt from which a city of men and women springs.
This Rose of the Gods is surrounded by an artificial reef, a broken circle three miles in diameter, shadows under shadowed waves. Against this hidden wall the restless Sea of Brass is gentled for the passage of vessels flying the banners of a hundred kingdoms and dominions. Their masts and yards rise in a forest, white with furled sails, far beneath your feet.
If you could turn your eye to the city's western island, you would see that its interior surfaces are sheer black walls, plunging hundreds of feet to the softly lapping harbor waves, where a network of wooden docks clings to the base of the cliffs. The seaward side of the island, however, is tiered along its entire length. Six wide, flat ledges sit one atop the other with smooth fifty-foot escarpments backing all but the highest.
The southernmost district of this island is called the Golden Steps—its six levels are thick with alehouses, dicing dens, private clubs, brothels, and fighting pits. The Golden Steps are heralded as the gambling capital of the Therin city-states, a place where men and women may lose money on anything from the mildest vices to the wickedest felonies. The authorities of Tal Verrar, in a magnanimous gesture of hospitality, have decreed that no foreigner upon the Golden Steps may be impressed into slavery. As a result, there are few places west of Camorr where it is safer for strangers to drink their brains out and fall asleep in the gutters and gardens.
There is rigid stratification on the Golden Steps; with each successively higher tier, the quality of the establishments rises, as do the size, number, and vehemence of the guards at the doors. Crowning the Golden Steps are a dozen baroque mansions of old stone and witchwood, embedded in the wet green luxury of manicured gardens and miniature forests.
These are the "chance houses of quality"—exclusive clubs where men and women of funds may gamble in the style to which their letters of credit entitle them. These houses have been informal centers of power for centuries, where nobles, bureaucrats, merchants, ships' captains, legates, and spies gather to wager fortunes, both personal and political.
Every possible amenity is contained within these houses. Notable visitors board carriage-boxes at exclusive docks at the base of the inner harbor cliffs, and are hauled up by gleaming brass water engines, thereby avoiding the narrow, twisting, crowd-choked ramps leading up the five lower Steps on their seaward face. There is even a public dueling green—a broad expanse of well-kept grass lying dead-center on the top tier, so that cooler heads need not be given any chance to prevail when someone has their blood up.
The houses of quality are sacrosanct. Custom older and firmer than law forbids soldiers or constables to set foot within them, save for response to the most heinous crimes. They are the envy of a continent: no foreign club, however luxurious or exclusive, can quite recapture the particular atmosphere of a genuine Verrari chance house. And they are, one and all, put to shame by the Sinspire.
Nearly one hundred and fifty feet tall, the Sinspire juts skyward at the southern end of the topmost tier of the Steps, which is itself more than two hundred and fifty feet above the harbor. The Sinspire is an Elderglass tower, glimmering with a pearly black sheen. A wide balcony decked with alchemical lanterns circles each of its nine levels. At night, the Sinspire is a constellation of lights in scarlet and twilight-sky blue, the heraldic colors of Tal Verrar.
The Sinspire is the most exclusive, most notorious, and most heavily guarded chance house in the world, open from sunset to sunrise for those powerful, wealthy, or beautiful enough to make it past the whims of the doorkeepers. Each ascending floor outdoes the one beneath it for luxury, exclusivity, and the risk ceiling of the games allowed. Access to each higher floor must be earned with good credit, amusing behavior, and impeccable play. Some aspirants spend years of their lives and thousands of solari trying to catch the attention of the Sinspire's master, whose ruthless hold on his unique position has made him the most powerful arbiter of social favor in the city's history.
The code of conduct at the Sinspire is unwritten, but as rigid as that of a religious cult. Most simply, most incontrovertibly, it is death to be caught cheating here. Were the archon of Tal Verrar himself to be detected with a card up his sleeve, he would find no appeal this side of the gods themselves from the consequences. Every few months, the tower's attendants discover some would-be exception to the rule, and yet another person dies quietly of an alchemical overdose in their carriage, or tragically "slips" from the balcony nine stories above the hard, flat stones of the Sinspire's courtyard.
It has taken Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen two years and a completely new set of false identities to carefully cheat their way up to the fifth floor.
They are, in fact, cheating at this very moment, trying hard to keep up with opponents who have no need to do likewise.
3
"LADIES SHOW a run of Spires and a run of Sabers, crowned with the Sigil of the Sun," said the attendant. "Gentlemen show a run of Chalices and a mixed hand, crowned with the five of Chalices. Fifth hand is to the ladies."
Locke bit the inside of his cheek as a wave of applause rippled through the warm air of the room. The ladies had taken four of the five hands so far, and the crowd had barely deigned to notice Locke and Jean's sole victory.
"Well, damn," said Jean, in credible mock surprise.
Locke turned to the opponent on his right. Maracosa Durenna was a slender, dark-complexioned woman in her late thirties, with thick hair the color of oil smoke and several visible scars on her neck and forearms. In her right hand she held a thin black cigar wrapped with gold thread, and on her face she wore a tight smile of detached contentment. The game was clearly not demanding her utmost exertion.
The attendant flicked Locke and Jean's little pile of lost wooden counters toward the ladies' side of the table with a long-handled crop. He then used the same crop to sweep all the cards back into his hands; it was strictly forbidden for players to touch the cards after the attendant had called for the reveal.
"Well, Madam Durenna," said Locke, "my congratulations on the increasingly robust state of your finances. Your purse would seem to be the only thing growing faster than my impending hangover." Locke knuckle-walke...
著者について
Scott Lynch was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and currently lives in Wisconsin with his wife and a small menagerie of household critters. He moonlights as a game designer and volunteer firefighter. This is his second novel.
登録情報
- 出版社 : Spectra (2007/7/31)
- 発売日 : 2007/7/31
- 言語 : 英語
- ハードカバー : 576ページ
- ISBN-10 : 0553804685
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553804683
- 寸法 : 16 x 3.81 x 24.13 cm
- カスタマーレビュー:
著者について
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Placeholder
5つ星のうち5.0
Awesome
2022年12月31日にインドでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Nothing else to say
For the truth talks
While lies sleep
Yes I'm making up stuff to fill up good reads requirements
For the truth talks
While lies sleep
Yes I'm making up stuff to fill up good reads requirements
Juan De La Rosa
5つ星のうち5.0
Excelente
2018年8月21日にメキシコでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Una excelente continuación de esta serie
Gala
5つ星のうち5.0
Awesome book
2018年8月23日にスペインでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
This book not only lives up to my expectations, it exceeds them. Awesome work.
Israel
5つ星のうち5.0
Awesome sequel
2023年9月20日にオーストラリアでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
A great second book in the series! Keeps you glued right till the end. Excellent action with some drama and lots of twists that challenged Locke and Jean. Looking forward to their further adventures.
Katharine (ventureadlaxre)
5つ星のうち5.0
What we’re really here for is the wit, sass and humour throughout.
2014年3月4日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ by Scott Lynch is the second in his Gentleman Bastard Sequence series, which is currently slated at seven books, with one or two novellas thrown in for good measure. This review has been a long time coming, as I struggle to review books that mean a lot to me - how can my puny little review ever do it justice?
For those who were disappointed at the lack of female characters being a focal point in the first book (where they’re mentioned but not seen, or have background roles throughout), then this novel is full of main and secondary females - a point which caused a reader to contact Scott and he responded to publicly, which gained him quite a bit of interest. Though the famous Sabetha still does not make an appearance within this novel - the only female member of the now very small Gentleman Bastards group of thieves and con artists - we are not disappointed with a variable crowd of strong and intriguing female characters.
Each of Scott’s novels so far is set in a different part of the world, with the first being set in Camorr, we are now in Tal Verrar - right at the edge of civilisation. Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen have moved on to another heist, and this is how the novel opens - after a short prologue of worst yet to come.
Book one, chapter one, opens with a fabulous scene set in a casino, with an intriguing game I hope someone will manage to create somehow, even though I’m not a drinker. The game, Carousel Hazard, is a game for two sets of pairs who work together though each has their own hand of cards. At the end of each hand, the losing team are then dealt an alcoholic vial from the carousel which has its potency masked by juice or otherwise. So while the player’s ability at cards is being tests, they also have to keep their wits about them as they get steadily more intoxicated. Those who miss seeing how Locke manages to get out of the various schemes he gets himself into are quickly sated, and the novel moves on, only to quickly drop us into something worrying. Ahh, of course, the author is Scott Lynch, after all.
The plot within this novel is speedy, as it cuts from the present to the past and then back again. This is an elegant way to show us important scenes rather than writing in a linear fashion and then perhaps having dull chapters, and it’s handled well throughout. The action is of a high quality, and even though part of the novel is set out on the open seas, on a boat - which isn’t really my ‘thing’, per se, it’s engaging and interesting throughout as we see Locke and Jean try to struggle their way through the current mess they’re in.
Again, though, what we’re really here for is the wit, sass and humour throughout. The dialogue is just as perfect as in the first book, and the insults just as sharp and startling.
The characters develop throughout the book, and we can see changes in them after the devastation that befell them in the first. Throughout what is thrown at them within this next instalment we see them under greater strain and how they cope with it, usually together. The bromance between these two friends is almost at Sherlock and John heights, and it’s glorious to read.
The ending of this book however will be the cause of great unrest if you don’t have the third with you, ready to dive into immediately. If you weren’t one of us, please spare a thought for those who read this book in 2007 and then waited until 2013 for the third book. The wait was for good reason, was well worth it, and simply shows how desperate we were to know what happens next to our beloved characters. To those who are just getting into the series now, well, I would say you don’t know how lucky you are, but I bet Scott will leave us many more cliffhangers in the near future, and we can all join together in quiet torture as we wait to see how it is solved.
Because we know it will be worth it.
For those who were disappointed at the lack of female characters being a focal point in the first book (where they’re mentioned but not seen, or have background roles throughout), then this novel is full of main and secondary females - a point which caused a reader to contact Scott and he responded to publicly, which gained him quite a bit of interest. Though the famous Sabetha still does not make an appearance within this novel - the only female member of the now very small Gentleman Bastards group of thieves and con artists - we are not disappointed with a variable crowd of strong and intriguing female characters.
Each of Scott’s novels so far is set in a different part of the world, with the first being set in Camorr, we are now in Tal Verrar - right at the edge of civilisation. Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen have moved on to another heist, and this is how the novel opens - after a short prologue of worst yet to come.
Book one, chapter one, opens with a fabulous scene set in a casino, with an intriguing game I hope someone will manage to create somehow, even though I’m not a drinker. The game, Carousel Hazard, is a game for two sets of pairs who work together though each has their own hand of cards. At the end of each hand, the losing team are then dealt an alcoholic vial from the carousel which has its potency masked by juice or otherwise. So while the player’s ability at cards is being tests, they also have to keep their wits about them as they get steadily more intoxicated. Those who miss seeing how Locke manages to get out of the various schemes he gets himself into are quickly sated, and the novel moves on, only to quickly drop us into something worrying. Ahh, of course, the author is Scott Lynch, after all.
The plot within this novel is speedy, as it cuts from the present to the past and then back again. This is an elegant way to show us important scenes rather than writing in a linear fashion and then perhaps having dull chapters, and it’s handled well throughout. The action is of a high quality, and even though part of the novel is set out on the open seas, on a boat - which isn’t really my ‘thing’, per se, it’s engaging and interesting throughout as we see Locke and Jean try to struggle their way through the current mess they’re in.
Again, though, what we’re really here for is the wit, sass and humour throughout. The dialogue is just as perfect as in the first book, and the insults just as sharp and startling.
The characters develop throughout the book, and we can see changes in them after the devastation that befell them in the first. Throughout what is thrown at them within this next instalment we see them under greater strain and how they cope with it, usually together. The bromance between these two friends is almost at Sherlock and John heights, and it’s glorious to read.
The ending of this book however will be the cause of great unrest if you don’t have the third with you, ready to dive into immediately. If you weren’t one of us, please spare a thought for those who read this book in 2007 and then waited until 2013 for the third book. The wait was for good reason, was well worth it, and simply shows how desperate we were to know what happens next to our beloved characters. To those who are just getting into the series now, well, I would say you don’t know how lucky you are, but I bet Scott will leave us many more cliffhangers in the near future, and we can all join together in quiet torture as we wait to see how it is solved.
Because we know it will be worth it.