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The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastards, Book 1) Kindle Edition
An orphan’s life is harsh—and often short—in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges relentless danger, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentlemen Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game—or die trying.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSpectra
- Publication dateJune 27, 2006
- File size5624 KB
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- It is one thing to kill in a duel, to kill in self-defense, to kill for vengeance. It is another thing entirely to kill simply because you are careless.Highlighted by 1,203 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
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From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Right now, in the full flush of a second reading, I think The Lies of Locke Lamora is probably in my top ten favorite books ever. Maybe my top five. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you have read it, you should probably read it again.”—Patrick Rothfuss, New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Wind
“Remarkable . . . Scott Lynch’s first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, exports the suspense and wit of a cleverly constructed crime caper into an exotic realm of fantasy, and the result is engagingly entertaining.”—The Times (London)
“A unique fantasy milieu peopled by absorbing, colorful characters . . . Locke’s wit and audacity endear him to victims and bystanders alike.”—The Seattle Times
“A true genre bender, at home on almost any kind of fiction shelf . . . Lynch immediately establishes himself as a gifted and fearless storyteller, unafraid of comparisons to Silverberg and Jordan, not to mention David Liss and even Dickens.”—Booklist (starred review)
“High-octane fantasy . . . a great swashbuckling yarn of a novel.”—Richard Morgan
From the Inside Flap
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Don Salvara Game
1
LOCKE LAMORA'S RULE of thumb was this: a good confidence game took three months to plan, three weeks to rehearse, and three seconds to win or lose the victim's trust forever. This time around, he planned to spend those three seconds getting strangled.
Locke was on his knees, and Calo, standing behind him, had a hemp rope coiled three times around his neck. The rough stuff looked impressive, and it would leave Locke's throat a very credible shade of red. No genuine Camorri assassin old enough to waddle in a straight line would garrote with anything but silk or wire, of course (the better to crease the victim's windpipe). Yet if Don Lorenzo Salvara could tell a fake strangling from the real thing in the blink of an eye at thirty paces, they'd badly misjudged the man they planned to rob and the whole game would be shot anyway.
"Can you see him yet? Or Bug's signal?" Locke hissed his question as lightly as he could, then made a few impressive gurgling sounds.
"No signal. No Don Salvara. Can you breathe?"
"Fine, just fine," Locke whispered, "but shake me some more. That's the convincer."
They were in the dead-end alley beside the old Temple of Fortunate Waters; the temple's prayer waterfalls could be heard gushing somewhere behind the high plaster wall. Locke clutched once again at the harmless coils of rope circling his neck and spared a glance for the horse staring at him from just a few paces away, laden down with a rich-looking cargo of merchant's packs. The poor dumb animal was Gentled; there was neither curiosity nor fear behind the milk-white shells of its unblinking eyes. It wouldn't have cared even had the strangling been real.
Precious seconds passed; the sun was high and bright in a sky scalded free of clouds, and the grime of the alley clung like wet cement to the legs of Locke's breeches. Nearby, Jean Tannen lay in the same moist muck while Galdo pretended (mostly) to kick his ribs in. He'd been merrily kicking away for at least a minute, just as long as his twin brother had supposedly been strangling Locke.
Don Salvara was supposed to pass the mouth of the alley at any second and, ideally, rush in to rescue Locke and Jean from their "assailants." At this rate, he would end up rescuing them from boredom.
"Gods," Calo whispered, bending his mouth to Locke's ear as though he might be hissing some demand, "where the hell is that damn Salvara? And where's Bug? We can't keep this shit up all day; other people do walk by the mouth of this damned alley!"
"Keep strangling me," Locke whispered. "Just think of twenty thousand full crowns and keep strangling me. I can choke all day if I have to."
2
Everything had gone beautifully that morning in the run-up to the game itself, even allowing for the natural prickliness of a young thief finally allowed a part in his first big score.
"Of course I know where I'm supposed to be when the action starts," Bug whined. "I've spent more time perched up on that temple roof than I did in my mother's gods-damned womb!"
Jean Tannen let his right hand trail in the warm water of the canal while he took another bite of the sour marsh apple held in his left. The forward gunwale of the flat-bottomed barge was a choice spot for relaxation in the watered-wine light of early morning, allowing all sixteen stone of Jean's frame to sprawl comfortably--keg belly, heavy arms, bandy legs, and all. The only other person (and the one doing all of the work) in the empty barge was Bug: a lanky, mop-headed twelve-year-old braced against the steering pole at the stern.
"Your mother was in an understandable hurry to get rid of you, Bug." Jean's voice was soft and even and wildly incongruous. He spoke like a teacher of music or a copier of scrolls. "We're not. So indulge me once more with proof of your penetrating comprehension of our game."
"Dammit," Bug replied, giving the barge another push against the gentle current of the seaward-flowing canal. "You and Locke and Calo and Galdo are down in the alley between Fortunate Waters and the gardens for the Temple of Nara, right? I'm up on the roof of the temple across the way."
"Go on," Jean said around a mouthful of marsh apple. "Where's Don Salvara?"
Other barges, heavily laden with everything from ale casks to bleating cows, were slipping past the two of them on the clay-colored water of the canal. Bug was poling them north along Camorr's main commercial waterway, the Via Camorrazza, toward the Shifting Market, and the city was lurching into life around them.
The leaning gray tenements of water-slick stone were spitting their inhabitants out into the sunlight and the rising summer warmth. The month was Parthis, meaning that the night-sweat of condensation already boiling off the buildings as a soupy mist would be greatly missed by the cloudless white heat of early afternoon.
"He's coming out of the Temple of Fortunate Waters, like he does every Penance Day right around noon. He's got two horses and one man with him, if we're lucky."
"A curious ritual," Jean said. "Why would he do a thing like that?"
"Deathbed promise to his mother." Bug drove his pole down into the canal, struggled against it for a moment, and managed to shove them along once more. "She kept the Vadran religion after she married the old Don Salvara. So he leaves an offering at the Vadran temple once a week and gets home as fast as he can so nobody pays too much attention to him. Dammit, Jean, I already know this shit. Why would I be here if you didn't trust me? And why am I the one who gets to push this stupid barge all the way to the market?"
"Oh, you can stop poling the barge any time you can beat me hand to hand three falls out of five." Jean grinned, showing two rows of crooked brawler's teeth in a face that looked as though someone had set it on an anvil and tried to pound it into a more pleasing shape. "Besides, you're an apprentice in a proud trade, learning under the finest and most demanding masters it has to offer. Getting all the shit-work is excellent for your moral education."
"You haven't given me any bloody moral education."
"Yes. Well, that's probably because Locke and I have been dodging our own for most of our lives now. As for why we're going over the plan again, let me remind you that one good screwup will make the fate of those poor bastards look sunny in comparison to what we'll get."
Jean pointed at one of the city's slop wagons, halted on a canal-side boulevard to receive a long dark stream of night soil from the upper window of a public alehouse. These wagons were crewed by petty criminals whose offenses were too meager to justify continual incarceration in the Palace of Patience. Shackled to their wagons and huddled in the alleged protection of long leather ponchos, they were let out each morning to enjoy what sun they could when they weren't cursing the dubious accuracy with which several thousand Camorri emptied their chamber pots.
"I won't screw it up, Jean." Bug shook his thoughts like an empty coin purse, searching desperately for something to say that would make him sound as calm and assured as he imagined Jean and all the older Gentlemen Bastards always were--but the mouth of most twelve-year-olds far outpaces the mind. "I just won't, I bloody won't, I promise."
"Good lad," Jean said. "Glad to hear it. But just what is it that you won't screw up?"
Bug sighed. "I make the signal when Salvara's on his way out of the Temple of Fortunate Waters. I keep an eye out for anyone else trying to walk past the alley, especially the city watch. If anybody tries it, I jump down from the temple roof with a longsword and cut their bloody heads off where they stand."
"You what?"
"I said I distract them any way I can. You going deaf, Jean?"
A line of tall countinghouses slid past on their left, each displaying lacquered woodwork, silk awnings, marble facades, and other ostentatious touches along the waterfront. There were deep roots of money and power sunk into that row of three- and four-story buildings. Coin-Kisser's Row was the oldest and goldest financial district on the continent. The place was as steeped in influence and elaborate rituals as the glass heights of the Five Towers, in which the duke and the Grand Families sequestered themselves from the city they ruled.
"Move us up against the bank just under the bridges, Bug." Jean gestured vaguely with his apple. "His Nibs will be waiting to come aboard."
Two Elderglass arches bridged the Via Camorrazza right in the middle of Coin-Kisser's Row--a high and narrow catbridge for foot traffic and a lower, wider one for wagons. The seamless brilliance of the alien glass looked like nothing so much as liquid diamond, gently arched by giant hands and left to harden over the canal. On the right bank was the Fauria, a crowded island of multitiered stone apartments and rooftop gardens. Wooden wheels churned white against the stone embankment, drawing canal water up into a network of troughs and viaducts that crisscrossed over the Fauria's streets at every level.
Bug slid the barge over to a rickety quay just beneath the catbridge; from the faint and slender shadow of this arch a man jumped down to the quay, dressed (as Bug and Jean were) in oil-stained leather breeches and a rough cotton shirt. His next nonchalant leap took him into the barge, which barely rocked at his arrival.
"Salutations to you, Master Jean Tannen, and profuse congratulations on the fortuitous timing of your arrival!" said the newcomer.
"Ah, well, felicitations to you in respect of the superlative grace of your entry into...
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B000JMKNJ2
- Publisher : Spectra (June 27, 2006)
- Publication date : June 27, 2006
- Language : English
- File size : 5624 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 752 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 055358894X
- Best Sellers Rank: #7,417 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Author of the internationally best-selling Gentleman Bastard sequence, Scott has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, the Campbell Award, and the Compton Crook Award. He received the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Newcomer in 2008.
Scott was born in 1978 in St. Paul, Minnesota, the first of three brothers. At various times he was a dishwasher, a waiter, a graphic designer, an office manager, a prep cook, and a freelancer/self-publisher in the gaming field, before accidentally selling his first novel in 2004.
After training at Anoka Technical College in Minnesota in 2005, Scott joined his local fire department in St. Croix County, Wisconsin and served as a paid-on-call firefighter for eleven years.
In 2016, Scott moved to Massachusetts and married his longtime partner, famed SF/F writer Elizabeth Bear.
UPDATE: Scott finished a draft of the next Gentleman Bastard novel, THE THORN OF EMBERLAIN, at the end of May 2019.
Scott's Website: http://www.scottlynch.us
Scott on Twitter: @scottlynch78
Sign up for Scott's newsletter: https://scottlynch.substack.com/
Photo: Charles Darrell
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Good character development and complexity. Constantly keeps you engaged and wondering what will happen next. Instead of giving you all the background in the beginning, it alternates chapters from the main story (Locke Lamora and his gang as adults) to their history as children or earlier adults. There are even myths and urban legends from the city's history to enrich the cultural and historical context of some aspects of the story. You get just the depth of background you need for the next chapter, in satisfying little mini-stories scattered throughout a complex and action-oriented story with multiple subplots and complex characters. It is an occasionally frustrating but excellently effective pacing mechanism.
The story is clearly a fantasy entertainment piece with its layers of confidence tricks and games and humor, but while parts of it are light-hearted and playful, it is not really a light read. Nobody who gets much screen time is innocent. The story starts out with orphaned children in a den of thieves, and despite showing us their further education and enjoyment of life, it definitely gets progressively darker from there, including some rather graphic scenes of torture, gladiator entertainment, and fights wherein everybody involved gets severely injured. There are psychological tortures, severed appendages, and gruesome deaths both on-screen and off. The main characters do their best to save lives, but do not leave their revenge story with clean hands. Sometimes people are murdered off-screen in painful ways and their corpses desecrated, not because of any culpability on their part but simply to cause pain to their loved ones (in trope language this is called "getting fridged").
In the author's defense, he handles this darkness and violence very well. In a world where the lives of the poor or criminal classes are harsh and come cheap, some of the most badass fighters are women, some of the richest merchants are dark of skin, and men get fridged four times as often as women. People get tortured, but even for women that torture is not sexual in nature. So, while some people are disenfranchised, victimized, and stripped of their agency in the cruelest and most final of ways, it is not done in the manner of the standard tropes prevalent in our culture and doesn't reinforce harmful stereotypes. It is not done in a lazy way. While some of the violence may seem like unnecessarily graphic stage dressing, it's at least not misogynistic, sexually charged, or racially uneven violent stage dressing, and as such it comes as something of a relief.
Writers: if these are mechanisms you want to use in your writing, make sure you execute them like Scott Lynch does. Don't get lazy. Here's an example of how to do it well.
Readers: This may be a fantasy story, but do not expect a hollywood ending. Everything does NOT turn out okay, there are major losses along the way, it's not just the villains with blood on their hands, and that moment when your mind rebels and you hope for a certain twist, it's not. There is no deus ex machina, and sometimes the cavalry arrives too late.
Nevertheless, the ending is still very satisfying, and leaves you curious to see how the protagonists will adapt to their extremely changed circumstances. I normally prefer lighter entertainment, but I'm already 1/3 through the next book in the series.
Story
The Lies of Locke Lamora is a medieval fantasy novel that follows a group of con artists called the 'Gentlemen Bastards.' In most fantasy novels, rogues will cut a coin purse for three silvers. Maybe they'll dash out of a tavern without paying for ale. Sometimes they pick locks and steal some precious trinkets from pompous nobles. But the 'Bastards' are rogues on an entirely different scale. They use disguises, deception, and complex plots to swindle nobles out of thousands of gold coins. If you like caper stories or movies like Oceans 11, then you'll probably enjoy this book.
Writing Style
There are two storylines in the book. One in the past, and one in the present. This book switches back and forth between the two. The past storyline gives insight and background information on the present storyline. The present storyline moves at a fun pace, because you already have the background information. It works very well. Scott Lynch is a talented writer and does a great job at writing action, humor, intrigue, and suspense.
World
The World is similar to Renaissance Venice with a magical history. There are mysterious glass towers created by an ancient race scattered throughout the city. There are some very creative uses of alchemy and sorcery, and the fiction behind the magic is grounded in rules. This isn't one of those books where characters have "magical do-anything powers." The magic systems are explained to the reader and they are interesting. A web of canals and waterways exist throughout the city and foul creatures inhabit the dark water. Outside of the murky depths, there's a criminal underworld far more dangerous than the things that dwell in the deep. All of the settings are original and interesting.
Characters
Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that the characters are well developed. Because of the dual storylines, you learn the history of all of the main characters and how they became the Gentlemen Bastards. They're all very clever and have distinct personalities and senses of humor. Most of them are pretty likeable.
Action
The action is pretty good. It's not epic, but you have a good sense of what's going on and it's pretty exciting. There are brawls, duels, and scuffles, but no castle sieges or massive battles.
Maturity
There's quite a bit of swearing, but there isn't any over the top violence or sex scenes. There's some blood and death in the action, but it's not overly gory.
Overall
This is a fun, fast paced, caper, featuring some interesting characters in a well crafted world. There's some very entertaining dialogue, too. This book is more of a crowd pleaser than an epic masterpiece. It's fun, but not great.
Buy this book if you want to read about a bunch of extraordinary con artists in a fantasy world.
Buy this book if you can appreciate a well thought out world.
Buy this book if you just want to read a fun story with a few twists.
Avoid this book if you like traditional fantasy with elves, dwarves, dragons...
Avoid this book if you like your heroes valiant, stalwart, and true.
Avoid this book if you like epic tales of heroism.
If you enjoyed this book, you may want to check out The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
(And vice-versa)
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Le livre est arrivé abimé et celui de remplacement aussi.