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In the mysterious island city of Camorr, an orphan’s life is harsh and often short. Young Locke Lamora got lucky. He dodged death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist.
Years later, as leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman’s Bastards, Locke has become infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone even more ambitious and deadly than the city’s criminal mob boss. A bloody coup threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning to him, but Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game — or die trying — all while attempting to pull off an ambitious heist of his own among the wealthy of Camorr.
The Lies of Locke Lamora could be described as a grown-up version of Six of Crows with a darker madcap humor and a complex construction of world, political machinations, complex characters and clever, witty dialogue. Despite the really high amount of profanity, I’m still kind of stunned by how good it was.
That said, this book is dark. There are moments you’ll laugh out loud followed by scenes filled with absolute horror. But as the story progresses, and the tone increasingly turns darker and more violent, the storyline reaches an impressive climax. Scott Lynch keeps readers off guard, crafting a plot that is truly brilliant, mind-boggling, and addictive. If you’re looking for an example of a well-crafted high fantasy, this is it. But with its very strong content, it’s definitely not a book I can recommend to readers looking for cleaner reads.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 169 uses of strong language, 127 uses of moderate language, 260 uses of mild language, and at least 20 uses of British (bl-) profanity. Violence is frequently graphic and gory, with countless merciless murders and deaths by various means. In this brutal world, characters can buy a killing to make it legal, and orphan children are threatened with being hung as thieves, taken by plague, or sold into slavery. Sexual content includes countless euphemisms about sex, hinting at prostitution among child slaves, and reference to male and female body parts. In one scene a character lies naked in bed at a brothel. In another scene, characters stumble across a woman who attempts to hide an affair when her husband arrives. A particularly graphic story is told of sex slaves who rise up to kill their owner.
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