How do you tell yourself that you're dying for the next book, but then when the wait gets to be longer than you find acceptable, you just forget all about it?
That's exactly what I go through with entertainment. You're saying this has never happened to you?
I get invested in something for a short while, spend money and time enjoying it, then get bored and move on to something else.
If it takes more than two years to get the next book out I will get bored, find something else, and add this series to this list of "cool shit that's not finished yet, maybe check it out in twenty years when it's done. Maybe read it when it's done. Maybe forget all about it. I don't give a fuck." pile. Rather than the "Wow! That book was awesome! I can't wait until the next one comes out, instant purchase!" pile.
Ooops. Well, either way the point is approximately the same. Cliff hangers with long waits would annoy me a bit more, because by the time the next book has come out I've forgotten how the previous one ended.
I order the e-book of this and the next day my card is on lock down due to suspicious activity because of the purchase. It was bad enough have to wait 5 years for the damn thing!
About 1/3rd through and I forgot how much I loved Lynch's dialogue. Reviews on the book have been split, but I am a huge sucker for good dialogue and can't find it in me to nitpick much when I spend so much of my time smiling while I read.
Plus we get more of kid Locke, and kid Locke is awesome.
About 1/3rd through and I forgot how much I loved Lynch's dialogue. Reviews on the book have been split, but I am a huge sucker for good dialogue and can't find it in me to nitpick much when I spend so much of my time smiling while I read.
Plus we get more of kid Locke, and kid Locke is awesome.
Solid A- and better than I expected. Better than book one and two, in my opinion.
Only gripe that kept it from being even better:
Too much Locke. I like the character, but we've seen him for three books now being... well, Locke. The solution is to give Jean something to do. In the last book he hooked up with a pirate. This book, past Jean hooked up with a prop girl. But that wasn't enough. Present day Jean should have had more to do in the Karthain game. Like hook up with a politician from the Black Iris.
Or Patience.
Giving Jean a secondary objective would have balanced the Locke/Sabetha stuff better with the theatre shit. An honestly, the theater stuff needed to be cut even more than it was. It really dragged at the end.
Pacing issues aside, these are the only books I read with a shit-eating grin plastered on my face.
4/5th of the way through it...it has major "one story is superior" problems when it comes to the timelines (the biggest potential problem with using that structure, don't I well know it). I think if it was a tighter and shorter book it wouldn't be as bad but when it's 50 pages of teenagers breaking up revelations about Locke's origins...it's pretty annoying. Still not sure about Sabethia...I mean, she's not Denna...so there's that...
Finished this up not too long ago. The dialogue is what you come to expect from Lynch - you spend the majority of the book grinning like an idiot any time Locke & Jean are talking and it's leaps above any other fantasy writer on the market. With that being said, I had a few complaints:
There was no real sense of danger throughout the book. Locke's character is at his best when he's maneuvering with his back against the wall. There was very little of this going on despite the potential; Locke was given unlimited funds and complete power to wreck havoc and the best we got was a few contained fires & stink bombs.
Given how much a point Locke made when talking to Sabetha about how Jean isn't just his bodyguard, there was very little of Jean actually being clever or doing shit in this book. It would have been nice to have him actively doing something in either of the timelines.
I understand that a large point of the story was about introducing Sabetha (and, consequently, it was important to show how his relationship with Sabetha started) but all the theater shit was just boring compared to what it could have been. I mean, kid Locke has some amazing potential but he wasn't really doing much of anything aside from being a moppy bitch.
On the plus side:
Loved everything to do with the Sanza twins. We actually got to see character progression for both of them (which is a little fucked up since they're already dead).
Enjoyed all the background of Locke becoming a Priest of the thirteenth & the background information we got about why Sabetha left / how Locke ran things after Chains died.
While I didn't hate it, this is my least favorite of all three. Many of Voldeth's points above mirror my opinions. My biggest complaint is that almost nothing actually happened. The majority of the book was backstory, and I get that, but aside from the flashback stuff, almost nothing happened in the "present day" story outside of the beginning and the end. The entire middle 80% of that storyline was worthless other than a chapter or two (of which, hopefully none of what we were told is actually true).
Through much of the book I was also thinking to myself, "Wow, Sabetha is a cunt." (She's certainly no Boomworm, Neb.) Only at the end of each story did he make her even remotely likeable. She was sort of like, if you take a description of women from 4chan, and then make a character out of it, that's Sabetha. She's moody, illogical, vindictive, etc. And then suddenly at the end she's nice and we are supposed to like her.
Dialogue was good, Locke was ok but understandably a little too pussy-hurt due to Sabetha, Jean was severely under-utilized, story was pretty throwaway (if not downright shitty), Sabetha was mostly shitty, plot twist I really hope is not true...so for the most part, the Sanza flashbacks were the most redeeming quality.
It's not so terrible as to not be worth reading, but after the first book I still haven't been brought anywhere near back to that same level of excitement. Second book didn't thrill me, but at least shit happened and I was excited to see where the whole scheme took them. This one, there was very little interest (from me anyway) as to how each story was going to end. No big caper (unless I'm supposed to count the one at the end of the flashback story), no narrow escapes, no convoluted revenge, etc.
Only thing of significance that happened,
The Falconer, and the possible story of Locke's true past, are both disappointing to me. First, I don't want Locke to be some super-powerful bondsmage some day, or even in the past if he never regains it. Second...The Falconer coming back...fuck that guy. I suspected it long ago when they didn't kill him, and with how this book started, but I'd rather he didn't go that route. Now, if it makes for awesome stories and they outwit him with no bondsmage powers, ok fine. But I have my doubts about some of that after this one.
My grade in order of the books would be A+, B-, C-. Certainly not as bad as, say, The Devil's Spear, but a disappointment after the awesome first book all the same.
My guess is that he had a theme for each book plotted out in advance, I'm assuming each book will cover a different city and focus on a different aspect of criminality and a different aspect of politics, the first book was revenge, and the mafia vs the secret police, The 2nd book covered gambling, piracy, and merchants vs nobles. I'm not finished with the third book, only halfway through, so I can't go into detail and I'm avoiding spoilers, but it seems much more focused on democracy (the mages voting amongst themselves) but also election rigging.
So I finished the book, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Scott Lynch writes the best endings.
All 3 books ended completely different than how I expected, but in a completely logical way at the same time. The twist on the theater ending was perfect. The twist in the present day storyline was perfect. The epilogue was a bit over the top, almost like a comic-book villian, instead of the realistic villians we've had for the most part.
Boomworm is as amazing as Denna is terrible, I'll agree on that point. But I think that Sabetha is written more like how a "realistic" relationship goes, I mean... and I'm not trying to be misogynistic, but golly, a lot of women actually are moody, illogical, and vindictive... and teenage Sabetha was even "more realistic" in so far as Locke was being a terrible whiny moody passive "good guy".. I mean classic forehead kisses, GTBYHT worthy cringe... and even though Sabetha actually likes him, he's too much of a pussy around her most of the time, which is where most of his troubles with her begin and end.
read all 3 books the past few weeks, based on seeing this thread and some stuff on reddit. Interesting stuff, I really liked how the series started and the world Lynch built. The characters were a bit more mixed, they have all sort of become one dimensional and predictable, but what they do and how were fun to read the whole time. I am pretty fascinated by the ancient race that built all their stuff, and the hints the Bondsmagi dropped as to what may have happened and what may happen. I can't believe there are still 4 more books planned, and was sad to hear the last book got delayed so long because the author got divorced and fell into depression, especially when you read the last page where he dedicates the book to his wife
In many ways the book reminded me of a sort of "less depressing/hardcore" version of The Black Company books, but I really liked the thief/conman aspects of this series. I hope Lynch has his life back on track and can finish the series. I think if you liked this show the UK TV show Hustle would be good to watch, sort of a modern day version of a similar story.
So I was reading the Lynch thread over at Westeros and Adam Whitehead of Wertzone gave some inside info about this series I thought might interest people:
it's worth remembering that Lynch originally planned for The Thorn of Emberlain to be the first book in the series, and the first three books are therefore extended backstory he wrote to put the 'main' series (which will now be Books 4-7) in a better context. On that basis, I assume the plot revelations from #3 were always intended to be part of the background material for the series overall
AFAIK, Scott actually partially wrote ToE before deciding to do the backstory, and then wrote a very large chunk of the final version whilst editing Republic of Thieves, so I wouldn't be surprised if we got it relatively quickly. I wouldn't be too surprised if the books afterwards fell back to a novel every 18 months or so, all assuming, of course, that Scott's illness does not recur.
Yeah, the plan is that the first 7-book series is about Locke (hence why it's called The Gentleman Bastard, singular) and the sequel will be about something else, but 20-odd years later. Scott hasn't said - fairly obviously - if Locke will be involved in the later books. However, I think it's also unclear how much time the first series by itself will span.
