| The Lies of Locke Lamora | Contributor: Amfo | Posted: 08/02/07 | 12:48 |
|
page 2 of 4 This sets up the structure of the novel - a chunk of contemporary plot with "Interlude" flashbacks dropped in at cliffhanger points. It's a bold attempt to stir up a single-threaded plot, but at times it feels as if Lynch wrote all the flashback sequences in a single bloc and then literally cut them up and shoved them into the contemporary plot every time his hero jumped out a window or found himself facing his enemy's sword. Most of the flashbacks deal with Locke's early life, but a few of them suddenly focus on his best friend Jean, and then toward the end of the book you're hit with a whole bunch of little homilies and fables about the city of Camorr. They become relevant as Locke's journey continues but never manage to rise above cuteness and become the keystones to understanding that Lynch intended. The novel is quite self-conscious at a conceptual level. You're frequently given the impression that when Lynch wants to include a traditional fantasy trope - magic being the best example - he sits down and thinks about how he can give it a post-modern edge. Only one culture in the world of Camorr practices magic (Camorr is just one city - the world at large is left nameless in this first volume). The Bondsmagi of Karthain are a union of sorcerers with almost unlimited magical capability. They're so powerful, no one else in the world is allowed to practice magic, but for some reason these guys are content to sit at home and hire themselves out to needy tyrants. A Bondsmage travels with a genetically engineered familiar - in the case of The Falconer, the sorcerer who appears in this volume, it's a scorpion hawk. Like a normal hawk except with poison sacs in its talons. The Falconer can also control a person's mind, kill him by writing his name on an enchanted object or even just on paper, and when pressed call down fire from the sky and destroy an entire civilisation. So there's that. Then there's Elderglass. The city of Camorr is built on the ruins of a city in turn built by a much more technologically sophisticated precursor race, conveniently extinct. Human nobles now live in the Five Towers, Elderglass structures that dominate the city skyline. Our hero Locke also gets plenty of benefit from Elderglass, and the substance's inability to be so much as scratched by "human arts" helps various characters at several points during the novel. And finally there are all the monsters living in Camorr's harbour, canals and in the nearby Iron Sea. Handily, they can be captured and used to amuse the proles in elaborate ichthyological bullfights. The first time a wolf shark makes an appearance, the reader naturally assumes that at least one major character will meet a nasty end in the gullet of one of the creatures, and Lynch predictably doesn't disappoint. |
