| The Lies of Locke Lamora | Contributor: Amfo | Posted: 08/02/07 | 12:48 |
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page 4 of 4 From this, you expect a gritty anithero, the kind of guy you love to hate. You expect to find a man of flexible morality, contrasted against the high chivalry of the novel's pre-gunpowder age setting. You want to feel naughty liking him. But Locke isn't an antihero. Yes, he's not the best swordsman in his gang, but he is the smartest. And his sense of morality and chivalry is extremely strong. We get the impression that maybe Lynch WANTED Locke to have the kind of complexity that you see in such literary constructions as George McDonald Fraser's Flashman - which works because each Flashman book is the confession of a self-professed bastard - but Locke is straight up and down a good guy. He just happens to be a thief. And this brings us to the title. Why is this book called the Lies of Locke Lamora? Yes, he's a confidence trickster, but the plot is not centred around Locke getting himself in trouble because his life of crime makes it impossible for him to tell the truth. The interesting concept of an average thief being accidentally built up to be the "Thorn of Camorr" isn't explored - Locke really is the best thief in the city, with the coolest gang and the most cash. The blurb might claim Locke doesn't want the title, but he actually deserves it. Still, Locke has at least two more books to explore his darker side. And with a hinted-at frustrated romance waiting to be examined, Lynch manages to both create a self-contained novel in Lies, and give fans something to anticipate. Scott Lynch hasn't redefined fantasy writing with this debut novel. He hasn't even extended it particularly far. But he has taken it to a place where fans of sophisticated - and slick - cable television dramas lie in wait. It's a shiny, pacy, exciting novel you can read all at once or in easily digestible chunks. It's staying in our library, for a reread in a year or so, because the vivid afterimage of the canals of Camorr overlooked by the mysterious Five Towers is one we want to retain. three and a half out of five
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