The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

 I have been eagerly awaiting the latest installment from Lynch in his Gentlemen Bastards series for quite some time and, all things considered, it was worth the wait - not that I'm encouraging him to take as long to write the next book. Lynch splits the tale of Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen into a continuation of what's happening after their ill-fated adventure in Red Seas Under Blue Skies, the upshot of which is that Locke is fatally poisoned and dying slowly, despite the best efforts of every alchemist and physicker that Jean can beg, hire, or threaten, and snippets from his first meetings with Sabetha and their training together with the rest of the Blind Priest's "children".

In the middle of the flashbacks narrative, Lynch has managed to create a significant portion of a tragic Shakespearian play called The Republic of Thieves, which the five original Gentlemen Bastards are hired to perform, in order to help out an old friend of their thiefmaster, a director of such things.

Locke reluctantly finds a cure for his malady when one of the Bondsmagi (the mother of the one they tangled with in The Lies of Locke Lamora, whom they left mute and crippled) offers to magically remove the poison, in return for their service in influencing the election of a city council in Karthain, where the magi dwell. They are forbidden by their code from using magic to influence the outcome, and every four years each faction hires consultants to run their campaign. The kicker, for Locke and Jean, is that the other faction is being guided by Locke's old lover, Sabetha.

Romantic entanglements aside, the tangled web of dirty tricks that Locke and Jean conspire to play are well matched by Sabetha's street fighting. Too much fun!

Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

And Pirates, too?

To the formula that made The Lies of Locke Lamora such a great tale, Lynch adds a bit of C.S. Forester or R.L. Stevenson flavor in this installment of the tale. Locke is still figuratively licking his wounds from the mess in Camorr, but his friend and fellow Gentleman Bastard, Jean Tannen, manages to pull him out of an alcoholic self-pitying funk and get their terrible twosome back in business, now in a new location.

The pair of rogues make their way to Tal Verrar, where they put into play a ploy to rob the owner, Requin, of the most expensive gambling hall on the planet, the Sinspire. Anyone caught cheating at the Sinspire is immediately put to death, in a very public manner, but somehow or other Locke and Jean, under assumed identities, of course, manage to cheat their way to the most exclusive floors of the establishment.

Their plans go a bit awry when the Bond Magi alert the ruler of the city, the Stragos, about the pair's true identity and origins, and he decides to use them in a plan of his own to consolidate his power over the nobles of the city. In a bit of "wag the dog" this military ruler coerces Locke and Jean into stealing a ship, raising the pirate flag, and trying to stir up other pirates to stage raids on the Tal Verrar coastline, so that he will be begged by the merchants and nobles to raise a large navy again, as he did the last time the pirates grew too bold. Once his forces are increased, he believes, it will be no problem for him to use them to consolidate his hold on power.

Despite a very concentrated training program forced upon them, Locke and Jean really aren't that skilled as sailors, and when their ship is nearly destroyed in the first big storm they encounter, the men on the ship mutiny and put the two off of the ship. Luckily, shortly thereafter some real pirates happen along and appropriate the ship, incidentally rescuing our hapless heroes.

Plenty of swashbuckling occurs after that, and their efforts turn to recruiting the female captain of the pirates, Drakasha, into their plot to a)finish the swindle on Requin and b)get vengeance on the Stragos. This one doesn't disappoint the promise of Lynch's first book, and now I'm eagerly awaiting the straggling sequel.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

My friend, Scott, is now two for two on recommending new, intriguing authors for me to read. The first one he told me about was Patrick Rothfuss, whom I've really enjoyed. I thought when I saw the title of this one that it was going to be some sort of retelling of Gaelic myth, but it turned out that Lynch has created an interesting and rather exciting new world, with this first tale centered around the island city of Camorr.

It's got a bit of that Oliver Twist flavor at first, as the protagonist, Locke Lamora, is an orphan purchased by the Thiefmaker, who is sold to the blind priest known as Chains when it turns out that Locke is just a little more than he bargained for. Chains is not actually blind, but is running a con on worshipers at the Temple of Perelandro. He has recruited his own select small band of boys to train in more ambitious and devious ploys than the pickpockets and second-story men that infest Camorra.

Chains teaches Locke and his other proteges all of the scholarly and noble arts, as well as sending them off to be trained in various forms of combat, and to other temples of the Twelve Gods, to learn the customs and secret rituals of the other temples, so they may pass unheeded and unhindered in their business around the city. Camorr's underbelly is ruled by Capa Barsava, a ruthless ruler of all of the Right People, as the criminals call themselves, who has established a Secret Peace with the ruler of Camorr, Duke Nicovante. As long as the thieves do not steal from the nobility, they are free to molest all of the lower and middle class at will.

The action moves smoothly back and forth between Locke's adventures as the leader of the Gentlemen Bastards, the gang he leads after Chains passes away (we never find out when or how this happened), and his early indoctrination by the cunning false priest. When an interloper known as the Gray King begins to kill, one by one, all of Capa Barsava's gang leaders, Locke is drawn into a game far more deadly than the scams he and his friends have begun to ply upon the unsuspecting noble dons of the city.

The Gray King has, in his service, one of the infamous bondmages of Karthain, a group so powerful that none dare cross them, as they seem to have a Hells Angels motto of "mess with one of us, you mess with all of us." The Gray King selects Locke to be an unwitting dupe in his schemes to dethrone Barsava and to wreak a horrible vengeance on the nobles of the city as well, and Locke's Gentlemen Bastards are in for the caper and fight of their lives. Locke's current scam also gets him crossways with the mysterious leader of the Duke's secret police, the Spider, and he needs to avoid the webs spun to catch him by that shadowy entity in the midst of chaos.

Very brutal, with a richly imagined new world, complete with mysterious magics, vanished ancient races and their ruins, and a whole host of fun new characters.