Top Ten - 6. The Lies of Locke Lamora

Did anyone ever doubt that this would find it's way onto the list? I'm not one to definitively say what my favourite book of all time is, but if really pushed I'd say The Lies of Locke Lamora. There's just something about the book that hits me where I live every single damn time I read it.

I recently participated in a thread on Fantasy-Faction where readers were asked to name one of their favourite lines from a book and one of mine comes from The Lies of Locke Lamora. It's the opening sentence and the book had me hooked from that one line. I picked it up one lunch time after succumbing to the hype around it, and read the start on the tram on the way back to work and I was enthralled. It actually really sucked that I had to work that afternoon, because I could have quite happily jumped on the train and gone home reading the book.

I recently reread it (I think that was read number 16), and it honestly gets better with each subsequent read. It's not flawless, nothing is. There are occasional holes in the plot and some of the interludes are unnecessary, I personally like them, but I can see someone making the point that a couple could have been cut, although I think they add to the sense of reality that the setting (the city of Camorr) had. Camorr was like this extra character in The Lies of Locke Lamora, and while the sequels (Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves) have been excellent books, they lack a little something for me. There are a few factors, but the absence of my old friend Camorr is definitely one of them for me. 

It's about as close to a perfect work of fiction that I can ever remember reading, and after 16 reads I'm still not sick of it, despite being able to quote slabs to near word perfection when I do read it.

Favourite Fantasy Authors and Books A - Z (L)

I actually thought I'd find a few L's, and I guess 5 is a few, but I just thought there would be more. One of them is so obscure that I can't even find a picture.

Ursula Le Guin is one of the most highly respected figures in the world of science fiction and fantasy. She has won multiple awards for her fiction and when she speaks the rest of the literary world listens.

She's written from the age of 11, but didn't start to be published until the early '60's. A lot of her work prior to that point was rejected by publishers as it seemed inaccessible. Her novels alone have won 5 Locus awards, 4 Nebulas, 2 Hugos and 1 World Fantasy Award (I am tempted to put a partridge in a pear tree there just for fun).

She's won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, been inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and is a Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Fantasy lovers the world over know her for The Earthsea quartet. Beginning in 1968 with A Wizard of Earthsea and finishing in 1990 with Tehanu (which won both a Locus and a Nebula).

Her writing has influenced writers from Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell to Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks. She herself was influenced by J.R.R Tolkien and Phillip K. Dick (who actually attended her high school and was in the same class, although they did not know each other) and classic authors like Leo Tolstoy, the Bronte sisters, Virginia Woolf and children's authors such as Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame and Rudyard Kipling.

I'm not even going to attempt to try and list her library of work, it would take forever, but she has written with equal acclaim across the spectrum of science fiction and fantasy, and will be forever remembered for her contribution not just to SFF, but to literature in general.

I fell in love with A Wizard of Earthsea when I was still in primary school. We had a copy of it in our class library (as opposed to the larger school library) and the cover with an image of a person turning into a bird intrigued me. I read it and adored it. I got less out of the two sequels (The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore), but I think a lot of that can be attributed to my age at the time and lack of understanding of the deeper themes that both books explored. I have reread them since and gained a greater appreciation, but I still prefer the opening book. It just has something that was new a different to everything else I had encountered before. I think it paved the way for me to explore books that didn't just tell a story, they tried to educate the reader, engage them to make them think and created a world that was so unlike the one in which we live. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to truly understand the genre and find out why it speaks to so many readers.

Further and related reading: once you've read A Wizard of Earthsea you will want to follow Ged and find out more about his world and his art, and the best place to do that is with the two sequels; The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. There is a fourth book (it's a quartet after all), Tehanu, but that came out in 1990 (The Farthest Shore was published in 1972) and the intervening years have made it a very different book from it's predecessors, which I still regard as a trilogy. There's also a collection of short stories Tales of Earthsea. A 'fifth' book in the 'quartet' The Other Wind came out in 2001 and won the 2002 World Fantasy Award. It's a sequel to Tehanu and also relates to one of the stories in Tales of Earthsea.

I personally find J.K Rowling's Harry Potter series to have strong influences from A Wizard of Earthsea. I don't think I'd ever seen a proper school for magic until I read A Wizard of Earthsea. Rowling took that concept, married it with any 'girls own' school book you care to mention and created Hogwarts. Patrick Rothfuss' Name of the Wind also owes a great deal to A Wizard of Earthsea. I actually quite often call the book A Wizard of Earthsea meets Harry Potter. Lev Grossman's The Magicians is another book that explores the idea of learning magic in a school environment. None of them however explore the other themes in the way that Le Guin did in A Wizard of Earthsea, which is still ground breaking in many ways.

C. S Lewis - November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963. Not many people don't recognise the name C.S Lewis, and he along with his friend and colleague J.R.R Tolkien is one of the biggest names in fantasy.

Like Tolkien, Lewis served in WW1 and upon his return from active duty commenced a position at Oxford University. He and Tolkien both worked in the English faculty at the school, and they were also both members of the writing group called The Inklings.

He's best known for his Narnia Chronicles, which was a fantasy written for children, that was very heavy on the Christian allegory (Lewis was raised in the Church of Ireland, but became disillusioned with religion and was briefly an atheist in his mid teens. He returned to the church in the 1920's and eventually became a very committed Anglican from 1931 onwards), however he also wrote a science fiction series, The Space Trilogy. He also wrote a number of scholarly articles on Medieval and Renaissance Literature and wrote about his faith.

In recent times he has been labeled a Christian apologist, but remains one of the most widely read British authors of all time, and was ranked 11th in a 2008 list of the 50 greatest British authors since 1945 by The Times.

I don't think this list would be complete without The Chronicles of Narnia. For the time they were written in a very odd fashion. Lewis did not write them linearly at all. There's still debate even now over what the correct reading order should. Published order versus chronological. I originally read them all out of order, I started with Voyage of the Dawntreader (3rd published book), and then read the others as I found them. If read chronologically they start with The Magician's Nephew and end with The Last Battle, if read in published order they begin with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and finish with The Last Battle. Over the course of their seven books, they tell the story of the world of Narnia from it's birth in The Magician's Nephew to it's end in The Last Battle. It's also the story of Aslan (God) and to a lesser extent that of the Pevensie children, who initially rediscover the world via a portal in a old wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and those who carry the torch once the Pevensies become 'too old' to believe and move on. One of the books The Horse and His Boy, takes place entirely on Narnia and doesn't feature any of the Earthly protagonists, the Pevensie's are seen from afar, as it takes place during the reign over Narnia and both begins and ends during the final chapter of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Because time passes differently in Narnia (years here are centuries there) reading the books in any order can be a little bit mind bending. I felt Lewis really let his imagination run wild in these and if you can ignore the Christian allegory they are a lot of fun. One of Lewis' influences as a child were the stories by Beatrix Potter, and there are plenty of anthropomorphic animals in Narnia, from Aslan the giant lion to Reepicheep the valiant mouse duellist. They make quite an enjoyable fairytale if approached correctly, and they do over the course of their 7 books tell a very complete story. They tend to be a lot of readers entry to epic fantasy. There was an attempt to film the series, which started with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in 2005 and finished with The Voyage of the Dawntreader in 2010. I believe there were plans to film all of the books, but the films were never as successful as anticipated, and eventually the idea was wound up. I think when they got to titles like The Horse and His Boy and The Magician's Nephew they would have run into chronological issues in any case, as they seemed to be making the films in publication order.

Further and related reading: Lewis wrote science fiction, scholarly work and Christian work, but nothing else quite like Narnia. There have been a number of biographies written about him, at least one by close friend Roger Lancelyn Green (I best remember Green for his adaptations and collections of classic myths and legends). A screenplay called Shadowlands about his relationship with Joy Davidman Gresham was made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins as Lewis and Debra Winger as Gresham.

Authors influenced by, or who remind me of Lewis' work are legion. Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series, Harry Potter again, The Magicians by Lev Grossman again, his fictional world of Fillory may as well have been called Narnia. Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series was influenced by Lewis in that it is highly critical of what Lewis did with Narnia, one of the central characters also comes from Oxford, but in an alternate Earth.

Norman Lindsay - February 22, 1879 - November 21, 1969. Norman Lindsay is probably better known as an artist than a writer, but entire generations of Australian kids have grown up with his classic The Magic Pudding.

Norman Lindsay worked across the artistic mediums. He drew, painted, etched, sketched, cartooned and sculpted. He was quite well known for his nudes and became rather controversial because of it. A feature film called Sirens and starring supermodel Elle McPherson came out in 1994, and was a highly fictionalised version of Lindsay's life at the time and the controversy that surrounded his lifestyle and work.

He wrote more than one novel, but he will always be remembered for his irreverent and very Australian fairy tale The Magic Pudding, he also illustrated it himself, and the drawings do add to the story.

The book is also subtitled The Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum. Bunyip Bluegum is an adventurous young koala, who fed up with his father's habit of not shaving his whiskers and letting them get everywhere, leaves his tree and goes out to seek his fortune on the road. He meets up with two sailors, Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff (a penguin), who are in possession of a magical pudding called Albert. What makes Albert magical is not only the fact that he sprouts legs and arms, and wears his bowl as a hat and that he can talk (he's frightfully rude), but that no matter how often he's eaten (he can be a steak and kidney pudding and then turn into a plum pudding for dessert) there's always more than enough to go around and he never runs out. This makes him not only magical, but valuable and Bunyip, Bill and Sam are having to continuously fight off attempts from a couple of 'pudding thieves' (a possum and a wombat) to steal him, mind you Albert can stand up for himself too.

The book is divided into slices and it's wonderful fun, filled with odd concepts, poems, adventure and magic. It's so very Australian, and could only have been written by an Australian. It's been one of my favourites from the time I first read it as a child, right up to now.

Further and related reading: Lindsay only wrote the one genuine children's book that I am aware of, and this is it. I'm going to really only talk about Australian works here that I find similar, and that were either influenced by or influenced The Magic Pudding. Mae Gibbs was an Australian author and illustrator, she's known for her drawings and stories of the gumnut babies Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. The stories came out mostly after The Magic Pudding, but the drawings came out just before, and their Australianess may have influenced Lindsay a little. There's no magic in the stories (other than the anthropomorphic Australian animals), but the mischievous koala Blinky Bill by Dorothy Wall may have drawn her inspiration for the character from Bunyip Bluegum. I Can Jump Puddles author Alan Marshall clearly drew on The Magic Pudding for his own Australian fairytale Whispering in the Wind and I can even see the influence of Lindsay's story in the work of Mem 'Possum Magic' Fox.

Because I was unable to locate a photograph of A.R Lloyd I'll cover both author and book together. A. R Lloyd's first name is Alan. He publishes his work for children, like Kine, under the name A.R Lloyd and his more serious adult work, mostly historical non fiction is published under the name Alan.

His children's work is like Richard Adams, about animals in the wild. They look, act and behave like wild creatures, but they interact like humans and have human emotions. Kine is about a weasel, which is odd, the only other person I know to feature weasels as heroes was Garry Kilworth. The book is about one magical summer when the boastful, carefree Kine, meets the pretty Kia, has a litter of his own and with his friend weasels, as well as voles and shrews take on and defeat the escaped mink that are trying to take over his forest. It's quite deeply affecting emotionally and I confess that one section moves me to tears. It's part of the Kine saga, which tells other stories, not just Kine's. Kine is also apparently another term to describe a weasel.

Further and related reading: there are the other two Kine books, Witchwood and Dragonpond, I've read both, but only Kine spoke to me that way. Most of Lloyd's 'fantasy' work relates to animals. He's very like Richard Adams, although he clearly chose to use different subjects. Like Garry Kilworth he used weasels as his heroes, although unlike Kilworth's Welkin Weasels, Lloyd's aren't anthropomorphised, they're similar to Kilworth's mice in The House of Tribes in that respect. There's also elements of William Horwood's Duncton Moles.

Scott Lynch is really the odd man out here. He's certainly the youngest on the list and he'd probably be embarrassed to be included in such company as Ursula Le Guin, well that's what happens when your surname starts with L.

Scott Lynch worked as an occasional game developer and mostly as a firefighter and rescue worker when he got the idea for a book that he would come to call The Lies of Locke Lamora. He belonged to a writing group at the time and decided to post his attempts to write an epic fantasy novel on the internet. I think the site was called something like Adventures of a Newbie Writer.

One of the editors at Gollancz (Simon Spanton) was alerted to the existence of the first chapter online by a member of Scott's writing group. He read it, liked it, asked for more and hey presto best seller. Even Scott says that this was a one in a million chance and does not recommend it as a way to try and get published.

The Lies of Locke Lamora met with much hype and acclaim and sold very well. The sequel Red Seas Under Red Skies hit the streets not that long after and also did brisk business. That's when the author hit a roadblock. The publication date for the 3rd instalment in what had come to be known as the Gentleman Bastard series kept getting pushed back and pushed back. Scott's website and blog went silent. Eventually the news broke that the author himself was dealing with depression.

It took some time and plenty of people speculating that it would never happen, but in 2013 the 3rd book in the series; The Republic of Thieves, did come out, and was well received. We're still waiting on the 4th novel, The Thorn of Emberlain, but the most recent news says it will be out sometime in 2015.

Scott maintains a website: scottlynch.us (which seems to change at random and on a whim), he also tweets regularly as @scottlynch78 (I'm not sure who the other 77 are, or if that's a birthdate).

I'm not even going to attempt to review this seriously. I can't. My love for this book is ridiculous. I first picked it up after plenty of buzz and seeing that the 2nd book was out, so I wasn't going to be left hanging off the edge of an enormous cliff for years (yes, I am looking at you George R.R Martin!). I started it on the way back to work and by the end of the first page I was totally hooked. The whole thing was like a shot of nitro glycerine to the brain. After finishing it, I closed it, flipped it and reread it again. I can't remember the last time I did that. I've read it something like 15 times. Every time I find something new to discover. My battered old paper back remains one of my most treasured books because I was lucky enough to meet and speak to Scott at Worldcon on 2014 and get him to sign and personalise it. I'd have to say that its my favourite book of all time, regardless of genre.

Further and related reading: unfortunately there's not a lot. The Lies of Locke Lamora is fairly self contained, part of why I broke my rule of not including unfinished series in here, but if you like it, you will want to read on. Red Seas Under Red Skies adds pirates into the mix and the more recent The Republic of Thieves continues the adventures of the world's most likeable conman. Scott has a few short stories out, I can personally recommend A Day in Old Theradane from the Rogues anthology, and while he hasn't stated it, I can see it as being a sort of prehistory to the world in the Gentleman Bastards series. He also has some of a pulp science fiction novel he started serialising as a form of therapy online. The Queen of the Iron Sands, it may still be on his website.

When recommending Scott, people tend to recommend the usual suspects: George R. R Martin, Joe Abercrombie, Pat Rothfuss, etc... I don't think they have anything in common to be honest, other than that they all write epic multi volume fantasy. The city of Villjamur in Mark Charan Newton's Nights of Villjamur put me in mind of Lynch's setting of Camorr in The Lies of Locke Lamora. Lynch himself was quite heavily influenced by Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and that's quite obvious when you read them.

Next week onto the M's, that should be fun.

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

Before I actually get into the review I need to say a few things.

Firstly this does not mean that the blog will morph into a review blog. I'll do the occasional review when I read something that I really like that I want to tell people about, but it's not going to be the focus of the blog.

Secondly I should explain about my relationship with Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series. I am HUGE fan of these. The first book in the series (The Republic of Thieves is the third), The Lies of Locke Lamora is my favourite (I hesitate to use the word best as that is a very subjective term) book of any genre.

Thirdly this probably won't be a standard review. It as much about me and my experience reading the books as it is about the book itself.

The Lies of Locke Lamora came out in 2006. I wasn't an early adopter. It took me until 2008 to pick up a copy. Why? Especially considering that at the time I loved epic fantasy. I was probably falling a little bit out of love with the genre by then. I was also over the long waits between books, and The Lies of Locke Lamora was meant to be the first of seven books. I liked the alliterative title and the cover, so I did pick it up a few times, but the blurb I read on the back made it sound rather like lit fic and I wasn't in the mood for that, so back on the shelf it went.

Given all that why did I eventually read and love the book? Sometime in 2008 I saw the sequel Red Seas Under Red Skies appear, so thought that maybe Lynch was the real deal and wouldn't take forever and a day to produce new books in the series. I needed something to read and the hype about The Lies of Locke Lamora had not abated, if anything it had grown.

From this point on we're entering SPOILER territory for all three books. Before reading on, if you haven't already read them read The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves (why haven't you read them?) then come back. You have been warned.

I often used to give myself a little preview of a book when I bought it by reading the start on the tram while travelling back to work from the book shop. I did that with The Lies of Locke Lamora and by the end of the first page...no the first paragraph I was hooked.

Once in a great while you read a book that just grabs you right from the start and won't let go until you finish it. The Lies of Locke Lamora was for me such a book. From the Renaissance Venice inspired city of Camorr to the straight out of Goodfellas language, every post was a winner.

It was packed with great characters with cool names. The Faginesque Thiefmaker. Locke's mentor Father Chains. His partners in crime, Calo and Galdo the fast talking, wise cracking Sanza's, best friend Jean Tannen and his young protege Bug. There was the Duke's shadowy master of spies; The Spider (and the identity of that person was a great reveal). The boss of the Camorr underworld: Capa Barsavi. The villain of the piece: the Gray King and his pet bondsmage The Falconer.

Another bonus character in The Lies of Locke Lamora was the city of Camorr itself. It wasn't just a setting. It lived and breathed. It gave the book added depth and it made you understand why Locke loved the place that had nurtured him and made him what he was.

The Lies of Locke Lamora packed more into it than any single book had a right to, and it really was two books in the one. One story was the long con, the Salvara Game that Locke and his gang of Gentleman Bastards were trying to pull on one of the city's nobles, as well as how the Gray King inserted himself into that game and forced Locke to save the city of Camorr and himself at great personal cost. Then there were the Interludes, stories that told the reader how Locke got to where he was and filled in some of the history of Camorr itself, which explained why the people were the way they were.

In fact I liked The Lies of Locke Lamora so much that I did something I hadn't done since I was a kid, and that was reread it immediately afterwards. I've actually read it thirteen times and I still find something fresh and new about it every time I do so.

Red Seas Under Red Skies picked up two years after the end of The Lies of Locke Lamora, with Locke and his loyal best friend Jean trying to pull off an audacious heist on Tal Verrar's Sinspire. A gaming house that was reputable to impossible to rob. For Locke a claim like that is like a red rag to a bull. If you say it can't be done, then Locke is damn sure to try and prove that it can.

The Interludes in Red Seas Under Red Skies mostly served to explain what Locke and Jean had been doing in between leaving Camorr and putting their plan for the Sinspire into place and how they had done it.

As with it's predecessor Red Seas Under Red Skies had more than one story happening. This one concerned pirates. Now who doesn't love pirates? (unless of course they're robbing you, which would be a downer) Pirates do tend to improve things on the whole and while the pirate story was a lot of fun and had a nice love story for Jean as part of it, it felt a little out of place and the book as a whole wasn't as focussed as The Lies of Locke Lamora had been.

Like with The Lies of Locke Lamora, things didn't turn out as Locke had hoped and he and Jean were lucky to escape Tal Verrar with their lives and enough money to live for a while. Locke had been poisoned and would die a slow and painful death if a cure could not be found. As the concocter of the poison had been killed this was going to prove rather difficult.

I didn't anticipate a huge wait between books. In fact by the time I read Red Seas Under Red Skies, the third book: The Republic of Thieves was due out sometime in 2009.

The author's life got in the way and the end result was that The Republic of Thieves was published in October 2013.

I preordered The Republic of Thieves from Amazon, because I wasn't taking a chance on missing out and because it was a good deal cheaper for me to do so. Unfortunately that also meant I was at the mercy of their schedule. The result of that was that a bunch of people read ARCs (Netgalley was generous there) and got copies well before I did.

Just the other day I heard a knock on the door followed by a thump of something hitting the step. I opened the door and saw the delivery guy driving away, then looked down and my breath caught in my throat. There was a package there, it had roughly the dimensions of a good sized hardback book and it was from Amazon. Could it be? Yes, it could! I'm not ashamed to say I squeed. I then picked it up and did a quick victory lap around the house. Then I opened it and gazed at it lovingly for a moment or two before starting to read.

Yes, that is how into these books I am. During the wait I'd actually read nearly fifty pages of the book with the material that was posted on the author's website and various other places online, although they do appear to have been altered in the editing process and they're just as enjoyable this time round, probably more, because they're part of the whole book rather than just disconnected excerpts.

Was it worth the wait? I don't know if anything is worth obsessing over, but yes it's damn good and I loved every single line of it.

One character that has overshadowed Locke's life and the stories before is Sabetha Belacoros. Sabetha is the love of Locke's life. Readers have heard stories of her and we know about the indelible mark she's left on Locke's heart but The Republic of Thieves was her introduction.

There are two stories in The Republic of Thieves. One concerns Locke and Jean as they are forced into an alliance with a Bondsmage in order to save Locke's life, and once they take the deal find that their opponent will be Sabetha.

The other is told in the Interludes, and it is the story of Locke and Sabetha. How they met. How they fell in love and why they can't coexist.

Exotic new locales appear. The status obessed Lashain and the forbidding home of the feared Bondsmages; Karthain. The Interludes take readers from Camorr to Espara. Espara reminded me of Milan and Naples. A dangerous city that loves it's culture and entertainment.

To be honest I thought Lynch did something extraordinary with the Interludes. Chains sends his gang of delinquents off to Espara to learn how to act. They will spend the season as players in the Espara based troupe of Jasmer Moncraine. The chosen play is by the legendary Lucarno and is called aptly enough The Republic of Thieves.

Jean has been shown in the books to be a lover of the works of Lucarno and can easily quote from them. It was one of the things over which he and Ezri bonded in Red Seas Under Red Skies. Locke makes mention that they once trod the boards. I had always assumed Jean was the better actor when it came to acting, as opposed to 'false facing' as part of a job. This shows where his love affair with Lucarno began, but he is no actor. From the way it's written it appears that Sabetha is the best of the Gentlemen Bastards at acting. Jean is however at heart a romantic and this may be why the works of Lucarno affect him the way they do, it may also be because a Lucarno play is really where and how the fires of Locke and Sabetha's relationship was kindled.

Lynch shows quite a way with words in writing large parts of The Republic of Thieves in a rather Shakespearean style (the large slabs of the work that the characters quote probably could have been edited out, but I do have ti admire the author's skill), borrowing from Elizabethan theatre, Greek theatre and the Commedia Dell'Arte to concoct his own fictional acting style and tradition. In fact the pompous drunken lead actor has been used many times before. I suspect a viewing of My Favourite Year may have taken place before writing the character. He matches the fictional play up with a series of events in Espara that could only take place and be believable in one of Shakespeare's broadest farces.

The 'current' story in Karthain which centres around the efforts of Locke and Jean to fix an election in favour of the Deep Roots party and Sabetha's attempts to stymie them for the opposing Black Irises, is highly entertaining with cross and double cross as Locke and Sabetha duel and try to come to terms with their feelings for each other. I didn't see Locke and Jean's final gambit coming and that was a thing of beauty. It also reinforces my long held vow to not piss off the Gentleman Bastards ever.

The big revelation in this is Locke's real name and what it means for the characters and the series going forward. I enjoyed this and it explains a lot about the character and why he is what he is. I've seen someone else disappointed by this and complaining that it detracts from Locke's commonality. I beg to differ there. Locke comes from humble beginnings; the son of a seamstress and an unknown father, orphaned at a young age and turned to a life of crime, but he is not ordinary or common. In fact something I've wondered up until the revelation in The Republic of Thieves was exactly why Locke is extraordinary. This is why.

The ominous ending is a killer. Creepy and atmospheric. It sets the scene beautifully for book four: The Thorn of Emberlain.

Do I have criticisms or complaints? I do. Not many, but I have some. While I appreciated the skill of the faux Shakespearean play, as much of it as was included in the final product was a little self indulgent and could have been edited out without affecting the book overall.

At times Sabetha and Locke's relationship doesn't actually ring true. There are some clumsy scenes with them as teens and later on they do occasionally act out of character. Like many characters in books smart people are sometimes very dumb as the plot requires and there was some of that in this.

Karthain, while it is well drawn, does not have the impact or depth that Camorr did (I don't know that any new setting will) and that makes the events of the end have less impact than maybe they should.

It's less standalone than the other two, although it ends on less of a cliff than Red Seas Under Red Skies did.

I felt the battle between Locke and Sabetha for their two political factions was a little tame for the series. With something involving the Bondsmages I thought things could have gotten a good deal nastier. While I don't necessarily hold to the more bodies the better the story, this one could have used some more down and dirty.

There's not enough Jean in this. Because it's all about Locke and Sabetha I felt Jean got pushed to the side sometimes and he deserves better than that, both as a character and a person.

To be honest with the references and the story at the heart of it, this one is one for the fans, and maybe after the wait we deserve it.

I don't generally give stars and I'm not going to start here, but if you need a recommendation this one gets 5 out of 5.

Who am I?

I've told you my writing history and how I came about to write my most recent concept, but you don't know a lot about me besides that.

I'll start with a picture, because honestly anyone reading this doesn't even know what I look like.

This particular picture tells you a bit about me from that. For one I'm short sighted, hence the glasses. I'm not the most photogenic of people, although to be fair that picture is a 'selfie' and I really haven't been able to get the hang of those yet. The concerned look on my face is because I'm not even sure if I actually have myself in shot. I also can't smile on cue.

You can't tell it from the picture, because my head fills most of the shot, but that was actually taken on a bridge in Turin. It had been a really nice sunny day up to that point, then the clouds started to roll in not long before I reached the bridge.

Why was I in Turin? It's not really a tourist mecca like other cities in Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice, etc...) Every four years they hold this thing called The World Masters Games, it's the largest sporting participation event in the world. This is largely because it's open to anyone as long as they can satisfy the age requirement for whatever sport it is they want to participate in.

My wife has been playing softball since she was knee high to a grasshopper and this was her second World Masters Games. They held them in Turin this year, so we combined that with a European holiday, and we spent what free time we had looking at Turin itself. It's not like Rome or Florence in that it has a major draw card (there is the Shroud, but that doesn't really seem to drag the tourists in), so it has to work a little harder, but if you also want to look you can find things to see and do, and on the plus side it doesn't get the enormous crowds you have to contend with at the better known places.

Travelling is another passion. I've been to the States and New Zealand a couple of times. I've done a safari in Africa and trekked in South America. This was my second European trip and we're planning a trip to England next year. My wife has travelled extensively throughout Australia and I'm trying to catch her up on that front. Tasmania is a favourite destination of ours.

Sport is something else that is high on my list. I've played a few: squash, indoor volleyball, table tennis. I was in the 2009 World Masters Games in softball and I've been told that I have no choice in the matter in 2017 in Auckland, I'm playing for the men's team. I also held a red belt in tae kwon do.

Outside of participating, which I really don't do much these days, except for a bit of softball, I follow it keenly. We like to get to one day of the Australian Tennis Open, cricket is pretty much a constant during summer and I'm a very passionate follower of Australian Rules Football (which for anyone outside of the country is NOT rugby) specifically the Richmond Football Team. I am a Tiger born and bred and bleed yellow and black. You may get the occasional hysterical rant here if we do something good.

That's the old logo. Still the best for mine. Eat em alive!

I read a lot. I'm rather excited at the moment because the third of Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series is due out in early October. I think I've had it on pre order since Scott posted the news about it's release at Fantasy Faction early this year. I'm also a moderator at the site, where I'm known as Elfy and use the below avatar.

Because of the imminent release of The Republic of Thieves.

Isn't that just gorgeous?

I reread The Lies of Locke Lamora for about the thirteenth time.

Most people don't like that cover, but it's the one on my version and I seem to prefer it. I clearly have no taste when it comes to covers.

And followed it up with a reread of Red Seas Under Red Skies for about the eleventh time.

Obsessed? Me? Never!

So, come early October expect an absence whilst I first devour, then savour The Republic of Thieves. I may even do a review when I return from Scott's wondrous world of thieves, mages and elderglass.

That's pretty much me. Normal transmission will resume next time.