The Lies of Locke Lamora read-along: week 5

Final set of Locke Lamora questions, these ones supplied by Lynn’s book blog.

I’m writing this in my hotel room at Eastercon. The read-along exercise has been great and I want to thank everyone who organised it. Sorry I haven’t commented on other people’s answers–I’ve been quite busy and have had trouble reading the book on schedule. I am a bad person.

Anyway, my answers:

1.       The Thorn of Camorr is renowned – he can beat anyone in a fight and he steals from the rich to give to the poor.  Except of course that clearly most of the myths surrounding him are based on fantasy and not fact.  Now that the book is finished how do you feel the man himself compares to his legend.  Did you feel that he changed as the story progressed and, if so, how did this make you feel about him by the time the conclusion was reached?

Well, the Thorn was never a legend that Locke tried to live up to; he was a persona that Locke found it useful to promote. It’s a nice bit of symmetry that the other major players have similar personae in the Grey King, and the Spider. It’s a duel of masks where everyone’s trying to out-deceive one another.

Does Locke change as the story progresses? Yes, and mostly through the tragedies he suffers. When Calo, Galdo and Bug are killed, Locke becomes focused on revenge with a single-mindedness that he never brought to bear on his pursuit of wealth. The book ends just after he achieves that revenge, but I can’t imagine he’ll go back to his previous good-humoured personality entirely.

I think the events also forced him to become more moral. In the early Locke-as-child scenes we know he caused someone’s death, as a side-effect of a poorly-thought-out scheme. Throughout the adult-Locke parts of the book, but especially in the final act, he is very careful to avoid endangering innocents even when he steals their money. He goes back to rescue the waiter whose costume he stole, risking the success of his plan; and then he risks his life to go back and save the nobles from the Wraithstone bombs. At the end that’s the contrast between him and the Grey King.

2.       Scott Lynch certainly likes to give his leading ladies some entertaining and strong roles to play.  We have the Berangia sisters – and I definitely wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of them or their blades plus Dona Vorchenza who is the Spider and played a very cool character – even play acting to catch the Thorn.  How did you feel about the treatment the sisters and Dona received at the hands of Jean and Locke – were you surprised, did it seem out of character at all or justified?

In the early part of the book I was actually bothered by the apparent lack of female characters. The five Gentlemen Bastards were all, well, gentlemen; the only Lady Bastard (if that’s the correct term) was a prominent absence whose only trait appeared to be being Locke’s idealised love interest. The Berangia sisters initially look like a background detail (a well-placed one, because they stuck in my memory without looking like they would obviously be important later); Nazca was, again, defined primarily be being a potential partner for Locke; and Dona Salvara was just there to be married to Don Salvara. It was only when we got to the last 1/3 or so of the book that we met Dona Vorchenza, and the Berangia Sisters and Dona Salvara came into their own as characters. So I’m happier with the book by the end than I thought I would be, but it would still have been nice to have a major female character from the start.

As for the treatment the Berangia sisters got from Jean, I thought that was a great fight scene that didn’t make a fuss of the genders of the participants, which was just right. It was clearly a life-or-death, him-or-them fight scene, and it’s not out of character for Jean to want to win that fight rather than die!

3.       Towards the end we saw a little more of the magic and the history of the Bondsmagi.  The magic, particularly with the use of true names, reminds me a little of old fashioned witchcraft or even voodoo.  But, more than that I was fascinated after reading the interlude headed ‘The Throne in Ashes’ about the Elderglass and the Elders and why their structures were able to survive even against the full might of the Bondsmagi – do you have any theories about this do you think it’s based on one of our ancient civilisations or maybe similar to a myth??

I don’t think the book has given enough information to form a sensible theory. We know magic (or at least alchemy, which I’m treating as a branch of magic) is used kind of like technology in this world, and the Elderglass is ‘sufficiently advanced technology’ in the sense of Clarke’s law. I think it’s nice that even though the present-day human setting of the story is clearly based on real-world Venice, the Elder civilisation isn’t ripped off from a real-world culture or myth. Why should they resemble anything from the real world? They’re aliens. And their ruins don’t have elaborate curses or traps or messages left to future generations: their builders didn’t care enough about humans to leave messages. They’re just big and dumb and fireproof.

4.       We have previously discussed Scott Lynch’s use of description and whether it’s too much or just spot on.  Having got into the last quarter of the book where the level of tension was seriously cranked up – did you still find, the breaks for interludes and the descriptions useful or, under the circumstances did it feel more like a distraction?

The description was just right. Some of the later interludes (after the main child-Locke story had been concluded) felt a bit unnecessary, as if they were just there for the sake of having an interlude at the end of each chapter whether there needed to be one or not.

5.       Now that the book has finished how did you feel about the conclusion and the eventual reveal about the Grey King and more to the point the motivations he declared for such revenge – does it seem credible, were you expecting much worse or something completely different altogether?

It’s credible. That kind of obsessive, long-planned campaign of revenge is an extreme thing to do, but not unbelievably so.

6.       Were you surprised that Locke, being given two possible choices (one of which could possibly mean he would miss his chance for revenge on the Grey King) chose to go back to the Tower  – especially given that (1) he would have difficulty in getting into the building (2) he would have difficulty in convincing them about the situation and (3) he would have difficulty in remaining free afterwards? Did anyone else nearly pee their pants when Locke and the rest were carrying the sculptures up to the roof garden?

No, because what kind of an ending would it have been if he hadn’t? He kills the Grey King and then in the background there’s a white explosion from the top of the tower as all the dukes get Gentled. When the sculptures are first mentioned during Locke’s first visit to the tower, the description practically shouts “these will be important later!” so from that point I was expecting them to be bombs or something similar, and for Locke to have to get rid of them.

I actually found the scene where the sculptures were disposed of to be lacking in the tension I’d expected. Locke spends some time convincing them, and then they see the problem, what will they do? and then someone points out the solution right away. Oh–Wraithstone can be negated by putting it in water, and we happen to have some water within reach. I don’t remember that cistern in the roof garden being set up previously, so it felt like a solution that came out of nowhere. Perhaps it could have been more exciting if I’d had a sense of coming closer to disaster–numbers ticking down on the bomb, or some fantasy equivalent.

7.       Finally, the other question I would chuck in here is that, following the end of the book I was intrigued to check out some of the reviews of LOLL and noticed that the negative reviews mentioned the use of profanity.  How did you feel about this – was it excessive? Just enough? Not enough?

Excessive? Fuck off. It’s used heavily right from the start, so someone knows what they’re getting in to from a casual look at the book. It’s used very well, and used only where you’d expect it to be used.

8.       Okay one further, and probably most important but very quick question – having finished, will you pick up the sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies?

I don’t know. Lies was good but I have a whole lot of other books on my to-read pile and I want to read widely, so I’ll probably give it a miss for now.

The Lies of Locke Lamora read-along: week 3

My answers to this week’s Locke Lamora questions, this time from My Awful Reviews:

1. This section is where we finally get to sneak a peek at the magic in The Gentleman Bastards books. From what we read, what are your initial impressions of the magic Lynch is using? Is there any way that Locke and Company would be able to get around the Bondsmage’s powers?

I’d rather see them getting around the Bondsmage than getting around the Bondsmage’s powers. I like the magic portrayed here: rare, very powerful, but also clearly defined, and with a good in-universe reason why it’s as rare as it is. Because it’s powerful and clearly defined, getting around it is like a logic puzzle: you find loopholes in the magic’s rules, rather than defeat the magic head-on. (I’m reminded of Asimov’s robot stories here.) In fact, that’s what Barsavi does: he learns ‘the Grey King’ can’t be killed by blades, but nothing stops him from drowning.

Could Locke defeat the Bondsmage in a similar way? Possibly. But then again, Barsavi only succeeded at this because the Bondsmage let him, and anyway, that’s not Locke’s style. His heroic skill is manipulating people rather than figuring out impersonal problems. I want to see him trick the Bondsmage, or trick the Grey King.

2. Not a question, but an area for rampant speculation: If you want to take a stab at who you think the Grey King might be, feel free to do it here.

I have a hard time believing he’s any character we’ve met in a different guise. It could be he’s the Spider, the Duke’s chief of secret police. His being able to afford a Bondsmage narrows down the options substantially.

2.5 (since 2 wasn’t really a question) Anyone see the Nazca thing coming? Anyone? Do you think there are more crazy turns like this in store for the book? Would you like to speculate about them here? (yes, yes you would)

I didn’t see the Nazca thing coming at all, and it was a great piece of misdirection to set up the Nazca/Locke arranged marriage plot before brutally cutting it short like that. Any other crazy turns…well, the nature of these turns means they’re hard to predict, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Don Salvara game and the Grey King business turned out to be related in ways we don’t yet know about. The book might end up seeming disjointed otherwise: my feeling right now is that it has a sudden change of plot half way through (the Don Salvara game is dropped and the Grey King takes centre stage), which is a structural weakness.

3. When Locke says “Nice bird, arsehole,” I lose it. EVERY TIME. And not just because I have the UK version of the book and the word arsehole is funnier than asshole. Have there been any other places in the books so far where you found yourself laughing out loud, or giggling like a crazy person on the subway?

This is a great piece of setup–time pauses in that moment of confrontation and we have a flashback explaining why you have to be polite to Bondsmagi, so Locke’s line both subverts the preceding flashback and releases the tension that had built up due to the pause.

What else? I find a lot of the Bastards’ banter enjoyable, especially when it’s semi-in-character, such as when Lukas Ferwright lamented that he was entirely fictional. Bug being rolled around in a barrel was funny. There haven’t been that many laugh-out-loud moment for me, but then I tend not to laugh out loud at books.

4. By the end of this reading section, have your opinions changed about how clever the Bastards are? Do you still feel like they’re “cleverer than all the rest?” Or have they been decidedly outplayed by the Grey King and his Bondsmage?

Unless they have some plan they’re keeping secret from the reader, they’ve been outplayed. It didn’t come as a surprise that the Grey King’s plan involved Locke being killed in that encounter–if he’s intended to survive, why not go himself? I’m kind of surprised that Locke didn’t think about that. Then again, he was out of options: it was either go along with the plan, or flee Camorr, perhaps with the Bondsmage on their heels.

If he survives now (and of course he will, because the book’s named after him) it’ll be through dumb luck. Either the Bondsmage will save him for his own mysterious purposes, or the other Gentlemen Bastards will recover the barrel and rescue him before he quite drowns. In the latter case, he’ll have survived due to Barsavi’s carelessness in not making really totally sure his enemy is dead. Either way it’s due to no skill of Locke’s.

But that’s appropriate at this point in the story. This may be the lowest point. Act II needs to end with our heroes apparently defeated, so we can enjoy their victory in Act III.

5. I imagine that you’ve probably read ahead, since this was a huge cliffhanger of an ending for the “present” storyline, but I’ll ask this anyway: Where do you see the story going from here, now that the Grey King is thought to be dead?

I haven’t read ahead, but I’d guess that the Grey King now moves behind the scenes to seize control. Alternatively, he could pull off a resurrection trick to strike even more fear into the underworld, and use that to take control.

If he does the latter, and moves openly, then Locke now has a means of getting at him. If he impersonated the Grey King once, he can do it again. So Locke sows confusion: there are two Grey Kings, and no one is sure which is real. Locke defeats the Grey King through deception.

And then, finally, they wrap up the Salvara game.

6. What do you think of the characters Scott Lynch has given us so far? Are they believable? Real? Fleshed out? If not, what are they lacking?

The characters are fine, and they’re fleshed out as much as they need to be. It sometimes feels a little too straightforward–they’re thieves who worship the thieves’s god and spent their youth training in thief school, which sounds like an uninspired D&D character backstory–but Lynch pulls it off by giving them individual traits on top of this.

7. Now that you’ve seen how clever Chains is about his “apprenticeships,” why do you think he’s doing all of this? Does he have an endgame in sight? Is there a goal he wants them to achieve, or is it something more emotional like revenge?

This is still the big mystery to me. Chains is spending a lot of effort into his legacy, ensuring that the Gentlemen Bastards continue after his death, when he could be spending his last years enjoying the fruits of his ill-gotten gains. He is, after all, sitting on an enormous pile of money. My best guess now is that he’s doing it out of a sense of duty, or because he finds the idea of his work living on after him more satisfying than cashing in his luxuries–but it’s possible he has a more specific goal in mind.

 

The Lies of Locke Lamora read-along: week 2

Here are my responses to this week’s questions on The Lies of Locke Lamora, this time supplied by Dark Cargo.

1) Do you think Locke can pull off his scheme of playing a Midnighter who is working with Don Salvara to capture the Thorn of Camorr? I mean, he is now playing two roles in this game – and thank goodness for that costume room the Gentlemen Bastards have!

Of course he can! The interest in the Don Salvara game has always been in how Locke can pull it off, not whether he can. If he fails it’ll be because of some problem external to that scheme, e.g. the Grey King.

It was a nice bit of misdirection to introduce the Midnighters from Don Salvara’s point of view, before revealing that the Midnighters were Locke and Jean. I was actually a little disappointed that they weren’t who they claimed to be. Actual Midnighters on Locke’s trail would have introduced real tension about whether Locke could succeed.

My biggest problem with the book so far is that, in the present timeline, everything seems to be going Locke’s way. It’s been interesting for a while to see how Locke’s plan unfolds (it feels like an episode of Hustle), but that necessarily puts Locke at arm’s length from the reader (because if we can read his mind then his plan isn’t a mystery), and I don’t think it’s enough to sustain a book of this length. The Don Salvara game is Locke’s ordinary world, the starting point from which the real story will take off, and it’s about time it did.

2) Are you digging the detail the author has put into the alcoholic drinks in this story?

I hadn’t really noticed, to be honest. The detail is there because the alcoholic drinks play a role in the plot, but I haven’t noticed them being given more detail than other plot-relevant elements of the setting.

3) Who is this mysterious lady Gentlemen Bastard Sabetha and what does she mean to Locke?

Now that’s the big question. And I think it’s effective that Sabetha is in the book as an absence, with just the right level of intriguing mentions. She’s right there in the first scene, mentioned by Chains along with Calo and Galdo; then we meet Calo and Galdo pretty quickly so Sabetha is left as an intriguing void. Now we know that she returned in between the child-Locke and adult-Locke timelines, but there are only hints about what happened.

4) Are you as creeped out over the use of Wraithstone to create Gentled animals as I am?

Nope. I think it’s a great part of the setting. I was a little surprised at how easy it turns out to be to get hold of Wraithstone and to affect animals or people with it, though. I’m thinking of other possible uses. A fully Gentled person would be obvious, but could you slip very small quantities of it into someone’s food to make them docile…?

5) I got a kick out of child Locke’s first meeting with Capa Barsavi and his daughter Nazca, which was shortly followed up in the story by Barsavi granting adult Locke permission to court his daughter! Where do you think that will lead? Can you see these two together?

It was a nice bit of structure to put Locke’s first meeting with the Capa and Nazca so close to his latest one.

It’ll lead to something more than what Locke intends, to play along for a few days and then brush it off–because otherwise what would be the point? But whether he and Nazca could be together is another matter. I can see it happening if Locke can get over this Sabetha person, and especially if Nazca becomes privy to Locke’s real schemes and they think a partnership would be in their mutual interest.

6) Capa Barsavi is freaked out over rumors of The Gray King and, in fact, us readers are privy to a gruesome torture scene. The Gray King is knocking garristas off left and right. What do you think that means?

It means that finally there’s something that could put Locke in danger!

I like the way the Grey King is similar to the Thorn of Camorr, Locke’s imaginary folk-hero persona. They both work by having a myth built up around them, and I’m guessing the Grey King will turn out to not match his myth in the same way that Locke isn’t the Thorn.

(Unless–and this is some out-there speculation–unless Locke is the Grey King, and the whole thing’s part of another con?)

7) In the Interlude: The Boy Who Cried for a Corpse, we learn that Father Chains owes an alchemist a favor, and that favor is a fresh corpse. He sets the boys to figuring out how to provide one, and they can’t ‘create’ the corpse themselves. How did you like Locke’s solution to this conundrum?

I was surprised at its simplicity! In fact, I get the impression that Locke didn’t find it challenging enough, hence his more elaborate and entertaining scheme for getting his money back using the corpse as a prop.

It’s this urge to make plans more elaborate than they need to be that might turn out to be Locke’s undoing. We’re told he’s gotten more sensible after the recklessness of his youth, but perhaps he could still overreach himself.

The Lies of Locke Lamora read-along: week 1

So, here’s the first batch of discussion questions for the Lies of Locke Lamora read-along, with my responses:

1. If this is your first time reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, what do you think of it so far?  If this is a re-read for you, how does the book stand up to rereading?

I’m loving it! There are some books where you feel like you’re putting a lot of effort in to get enjoyment out, but with Locke Lamora it’s effortless. Without being a comedy, it’s fun, in the prose style and in particular in the dialogue.

2. At last count, I found three time lines:  Locke as as a 20-something adult, Locke meeting Father Chains for the first time, and Locke as a younger child in Shades Hill. How are you doing with the Flashback within a flashback style of introducing characters and the world?

Well, it depends how you count. I’d say there are two really important timelines: Locke as a child and Locke as an adult. The distinction between these is formally visible in the book’s structure, with the main chapters being adult Locke and the prologue and interludes being child Locke. The child Locke sections further jump around between the business with Chains (first between Chains and the Thiefmaker, and then Locke meeting Chains) and Locke’s earlier childhood.

The Locke-as-adult sections jump around in time a little as well: they start in medias res with Locke being throttled in an alley, and then jump back to show us how we got there. The sections with Bug don’t always quite align temporally with those with Locke, either.

So we’ve got jumping around in both timelines, especially in the child-Locke one. The difference, for me, though, is that the early-childhood flashbacks seem to have caught up with the Locke-and-Chains timeline: they’ve tracked Locke from early childhood to events just a couple of days before he met Chains. Whereas we don’t yet know exactly how the Locke-and-Chains timeline relates to the adult-Locke timeline: there’s a big gap that the book hasn’t (yet?) explored. We can guess at a lot of what happened during this time, but there are mysteries as well. (What becomes of Chains, for example–is he still around?)

3. Speaking of the world, what do you think of Camorr and Lynch’s world building?

It’s subtle, which I like. I get the impression that world-building isn’t the point of Lynch’s book: it’s about characters, and character-scale drama. When the political structure of the world beyond Camorr becomes relevant (as it does in Locke’s con), the book tells me exactly what I need to know at the point I need to know it. Of Camorr itself, I think there are just the right number of fantastic touches. There’s the Elderglass, and the few uses of magic (gentled animals and alchemical botany), but for the most part Camorr feels like an easily accessible version of Venice with a dash of Dickensian London. The fantastic touches aren’t once that need to have a big effect on the society or on the plot: Elderglass is big dumb architecture that people just build around, and the magic is of the sort that provides flavourful toys for the setting’s aristocracy but doesn’t have major knock-on effects for society. There’s a lot of fun to be had in speculative fiction with exploring how society would be changed by a particular magic or technology, and I’m not getting that from Locke Lamora–but world-building isn’t the point of the book.

4. Father Chains and the death offering. . .  quite the code of honor for thieves, isn’t it? What kind of person do you think Chains is going to mold Locke into?

Well, into the person we see in the adult-Locke timeline, presumably. So far that looks like a cunning con man with the ability to plan far ahead and play the long game; and it’s that forward-planning ability that Chains said he would have to teach Locke. The impression I get from the child-Locke segments is that Chains wants to mould Locke into someone like himself, a cunning thief and con-man, and the implication is that Chains had a mentor who did the same for him, and Locke will eventually take on apprentices of his own.

It’s why Chains wants to do this that I find more puzzling, so I hope I’ll find the answer to that later into the book. The fact that Locke was trained from childhood to be a thief and con-man, and that the Gentlemen Bastards was a pre-existing group rather than something that he formed, is the most surprising thing for me based on my preconceptions from reading the back-cover blurb. Possibly Locke’s character loses something from that: he’s been groomed into the man he is by Chains, rather than forging a path for himself.

5. It’s been a while since I read this, and I’d forgotten how much of the beginning of the book is pure set up, for the characters, the plot, and the world. Generally speaking, do you prefer  set up and world building done this way, or do you prefer to be thrown into the deep end with what’s happening?

I almost always prefer to be thrown into the deep end. Locke Lamora does its setup a lot better than most books: Locke’s childhood is an interesting story, and doesn’t read too much like setup for the main plot. Both the main timeline and the childhood timeline begin with interesting hooks: Locke being sold under threat of death, and Locke being fake-strangled in an alley as part of a con. They both keep the interest going. But even so, I’m in two minds about whether the prologue was necessary. Perhaps Locke would be a more interesting character if I didn’t know the details of his childhood. I don’t know–I’ll have to see how things turn out.

6. If you’ve already started attempting to pick the pockets of your family members (or even thought about it!) raise your hand.

Ah, no. For me, Locke isn’t a pickpocket (or rather, that’s not what’s interesting about him) – he’s a con-main. So rather than making me want to pick pockets, it makes me want to spin an elaborate lie that will lead to my family and friends giving me all their money with a smile. Not that I would try to do something like that of course.

The Lies of Locke Lamora read-along BEGINS

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be taking part in an online read-along of The Lies of Locke Lamora. It’s hosted by The Little Red Reviewer, Dark Cargo, SF Signal and My Awful Reviews. The plan is that we post our thoughts on a section of the book each Saturday, and there can be discussion in the comments.

I was given The Lies of Locke Lamora for Christmas–it was part of a set of Gollancz 50th Anniversary editions in plain bright yellow covers–so this read-along is the kick up the backside I needed to get it off my to-read pile and into my brain. I normally read science fiction rather than fantasy but I’ve heard some good things about Locke Lamora, and I’m drawn to con man characters.

I’ve started reading Locke Lamora, and…well, I may have already finished the section I’m meant to read for this weekend. So far it’s very easy to read and great fun. More detailed thoughts to follow this Saturday.