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Has anyone posted this here yet? A random chapter from Republic of Thieves was released a short while ago. http://io9.com/an-exclusive-chapter-from-republic-of-thieves-by-lies-468507382 (for those concerned about spoilers, it's a flashback chapter from Locke's childhood).
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Apr 5, 2013 19:24
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I've been looking for a new funtimes heist book for a while. Can't wait! Though I'm not sure how funtimes it'll be with the Bondmagi and Sabetha and the poison and Jean still being cranky about Ezri.
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Apr 8, 2013 14:59
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I loved Lies to pieces, but after Skies I don't know whether I'll read any further. That sounds fickle, but one of the things I adored about the first went all to poo poo in the second. Makes me think he doesn't really know what he's doing at all. I loved that the wizards were stone cold motherfuckers who you absolutely did not cross. And then in the second one within the first fifty pages or so they show up going "Woooo! We've found you and we're going to take our reveeeeenge! Eventually. At some point I guess, who knows? We're kinda busy right now so whatevs. Cya!". I could've vomited chunky disappointment all down the page.
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Apr 8, 2013 19:42
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Fargo Fukes posted:I loved Lies to pieces, but after Skies I don't know whether I'll read any further. That sounds fickle, but one of the things I adored about the first went all to poo poo in the second. Makes me think he doesn't really know what he's doing at all. I loved that the wizards were stone cold motherfuckers who you absolutely did not cross. And then in the second one within the first fifty pages or so they show up going "Woooo! We've found you and we're going to take our reveeeeenge! Eventually. At some point I guess, who knows? We're kinda busy right now so whatevs. Cya!". I could've vomited chunky disappointment all down the page. He kind of wrote himself into a hole though. There is no way for Locke to defeat the Bondsmagi as a group, at all. I guess he could have handled it by just ignoring it for a while by having the Bondsmagi investigate who the killer was. I haven't read Skies since it came out so I don't really remember how it was handled, but it would have been cool if the Bondsmagi were able to send magic/images/specters/etc to the killer of their brother but not identify who it was. That way it wouldn't just be a forgotten point in the narrative and Locke would experience an extreme amount of anxiety/dread about them figuring out who the killer was.
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Apr 8, 2013 22:08
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Lyon posted:I haven't read Skies since it came out so I don't really remember how it was handled, but it would have been cool if the Bondsmagi were able to send magic/images/specters/etc to the killer of their brother but not identify who it was. That way it wouldn't just be a forgotten point in the narrative and Locke would experience an extreme amount of anxiety/dread about them figuring out who the killer was. They didn't kill the Bondsmagi in Lies, they cut off his fingers and tongue but leave him alive.
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Apr 9, 2013 15:58
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Yeah they are kind of in a gray area because he didn't actually kill the dude.
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Apr 9, 2013 16:00
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withak posted:Yeah they are kind of in a gray area because he didn't actually kill the dude. That grey area where you torture a wizard guy and think there won't be reprecussions.
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Apr 10, 2013 00:04
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Benson Cunningham posted:That grey area where you torture a wizard guy and think there won't be reprecussions. That grey area where you torture a wizard guy who belongs to a group of wizards famous for being vindictive and think there won't be repercussions.
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Apr 10, 2013 00:21
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Nice bird, rear end in a top hat.
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Apr 10, 2013 04:59
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Lyon posted:He kind of wrote himself into a hole though. There is no way for Locke to defeat the Bondsmagi as a group, at all. Their only weakness seems to be arrogance; I can't believe they are as a cohesive group as was described in the first book. There would have to be in-fighting and politicking; I am surprised people that powerful can work together at all. There seems to be an awful lot of order and lack of ambition written in for such a dark world. People seem to naturally clump together and, when cowed by one massive display of force, they proceed to quietly, diligently, and faithfully to work underneath someone else for decades... Edit: FYI have not read the second book. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Apr 10, 2013 |
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Apr 10, 2013 06:26
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I feel safe saying Lynch will eventually reveal something about the bondsmagi that puts things in perspective. I don't doubt that have a lot of infighting and politicking, but I bet there is more to it than that. And as super awesome as they seem to be, when isolated they are clearly killable.
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Apr 10, 2013 07:20
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Bhodi posted:Their only weakness seems to be arrogance; I dunno, I'd say being so closely tied to their animals (familiars? I can't remember how their referred to in the book and I've lent my copy to a colleague) is a pretty big weakness. That's essentially how Locke got one over on the Falconer. Obviously, that only goes for the ones that have animals, but that's got to be at least a few, right? The Falconer wasn't a one-off. That said, ones tied to animals bigger/more dangerous than a bird (even a Scorpion Hawk) would be challenging.
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Apr 10, 2013 07:58
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Bhodi posted:Seriously. The way they are written, they may as well be gods. Magicians in that world seem to be basically unstoppable - omniscient, invisible at will, and can attack from distance. FYI, this is covered somewhat in the second book. tl;dr 1. There arent' that many mages. 2. Wars occurred in the past between mages and normals. Eventually, numbers won out in favor of the normals. 3. For all the bondsmagi's rules against anyone who isn't a bondsmagi using magic, stuff like alchemy, which is basically magic, is prevalent. This is because the everyday convenience and ease of alchemy makes it basically impossible to police. 4. The big bad evil guy even tries to appeal to Locke by advising that technological/alchemical advances would effectively create a society which could make the bondsmagi irrelevant.
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Apr 10, 2013 11:25
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I finished Red Seas yesterday, and I can see the problems people had with it; the plot was pretty disjointed and maybe it would've been better if he had just focused more on solely Tal Verrar or just the pirate adventure. I still really enjoyed it, mainly for the dialogue, especially the affectionate ribbing between Locke and Jean. I worked my way through a couple of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin novels before I started Lies and Red Seas, so I was only a little lost on a lot of the nautical jargon and I can understand why much of that could be off-putting to people, but it helped to be reading on an ereader for the dictionary. The conclusion to their heist was great, I don't think it should've played out any other way. My only question is about Merrain: at the end we see she has a tattoo of a "grapevine entwined around a sword," which makes me think it has to do with Emberlain/House of Bel Auster/Austerhalin booze. But it doesn't make much sense why they'd care so much about Locke and Jean's impersonations in the first novel. I see the Republic of Thieves has to do with bondsmagi and after that novel Lynch is working on one called The Thorn of Emberlain, which maybe we will see her there if I'm right.
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Jun 16, 2013 15:59
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 It's happening! Taken from the Gollancz twitter.
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Jun 17, 2013 14:46
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HOW DO I GET IT RIGHT NOW
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Jun 18, 2013 01:32
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I've probably lost five or six copies of "Lies" just by giving them away to friends. Out of all the paperback fantasies I read, it's the only book I'll universally recommend to anyone. Maybe I should be less evangelical, but one of these days I'm going to get someone to actually read the goddamn thing and geek with me. I liked "Red Seas" alright but oh my lord god Jean's love interest had "dead" written all over her the second she appeared in the book. I recall there was a cute little scene where Jean lost his glasses and had to keep backing away from her because he's far-sighted and all I can think of was "she is going to die in the worst way possible". Lo and behold she gets eaten alive by that insane alchemical flaming doom ball. It's nice her death was plot driven, but just knowing she was going to bite it left a sour taste in my mouth every time she and Jean had "puppy love" bits, however sweet they were. Regardless, I'm stoked for the third book. I know Scott had to do some major plot-intensive revisions after sending his first draft, so here's hoping the book benefits from the extra time he took to rework the story.
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Aug 14, 2013 02:02
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I am more concerned that his personal problems that caused all this 'extra time' might spill into the book and turn it into a fetid pile of spunk. But I remain hopeful.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:22
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darth cookie posted:I am more concerned that his personal problems that caused all this 'extra time' might spill into the book and turn it into a fetid pile of spunk. The other is that he admitted he got nearly all the way through writing then realized he'd accidentally written a situation that Locke couldn't get out of, so he had to go back and rewrite basically the whole book. I'm okay with stakes being that high.
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Aug 14, 2013 18:15
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I read the first book in this series a few weeks ago. Thought it was decent. It's nice that not everything comes easy to Locke, and it's explained how he got so good at what he does, but I couldn't get a real sense of him from the book beyond his skills and that he was an overly mischievous kid. Plus the three side characters (Caldo, Galdo, and Bug) seem very one note because I guess if characters die he doesn't want to waste too much time developing them. I dunno, it wasn't a bad book, and it had some evocative imagery (I liked the deadly crystal rose-filled place) and the super-glass structures left behind by an ancient civilization was cool. But if the next book isn't an improvement over the first I don't think I'll bother reading it. Ccs fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Aug 20, 2013 |
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Aug 15, 2013 22:02
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Your spoiler tag, it is not right.
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Aug 16, 2013 05:34
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Pre-ordered ROT from Book Depository. I just hope that the shipping wont take more than 20 days after they release the book on the 10th, which would nullify the advantage of buying it from them as opposed to just buying it in Canada on the 29th when its released here.
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Aug 16, 2013 21:12
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Finally pulled the trigger on reading these now that we have a firm release date for the third book. Amazing read(s) but ,given that cliffhanger, glad I waited. What I liked about the books stylistically: 1) The author uses profanity well! It's not just excessive and it's not silly and it's not tryhard it's just done right. He manages to get one-liners in that don't sound like Arnold trying out his next Terminator one-liner. 2) Most caper fantasy suffers from predictability: if you get the plan for the caper described in advance, you know it's not going to work out; if you don't, you know it is. With this book you always get the plan as it unfolds and it still never quite works out right. It's really expertly done. Fargo Fukes posted:I loved Lies to pieces, but after Skies I don't know whether I'll read any further. That sounds fickle, but one of the things I adored about the first went all to poo poo in the second. Makes me think he doesn't really know what he's doing at all. I loved that the wizards were stone cold motherfuckers who you absolutely did not cross. And then in the second one within the first fifty pages or so they show up going "Woooo! We've found you and we're going to take our reveeeeenge! Eventually. At some point I guess, who knows? We're kinda busy right now so whatevs. Cya!". I could've vomited chunky disappointment all down the page. Bhodi posted:Seriously. The way they are written, they may as well be gods. Magicians in that world seem to be basically unstoppable - omniscient, invisible at will, and can attack from distance. The impression I have is that the Bondsmagi have a lot of power but also have a lot of limitations that they don't advertise. They obviously put a LOT of work into putting up a terrifying front; they must have some weaknesses behind that front, or they wouldn't bother to be so terrifying. My guess is that the Bondsmagi's ability to strike at Locke and Jean is more limited than the Bondsmagi are letting on. You might also be right that Locke & Jean are facing more a few random mages taking a few easy steps at perfunctory vengeance rather than the collective organized might of all Bondsmagi. The mage in the first book seems to need blood or hair or a name to really, really gently caress with someone, and they may not have that. It may be that all they were able to do was some general long-range harassment. I suspect there are a lot of other limitations on their abilities -- maybe their spells actually consume reagents that cost the thousands of crowns they charge; maybe there are limitations on how far they can go from certain locations for certain durations, etc. Maybe there's a lot of political infighting and the Falconer didn't have any particularly good friends, or maybe since the payment never came through he got written off, so he's only getting on-the-cheap vengeance. The woo-woo chorus in Book 2 did say it was personal, so maybe it's just one dude, not the whole club. Anyway, my guess as to the plot of the next book: They must be going after a bezoar. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Aug 17, 2013 |
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Aug 17, 2013 22:03
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I always assumed that bondsmages were bonded and under a pretty harsh thumb from whomever supervises/spies on them. To my mind, they are sort of like the undercover narc/informant in a drama film, the guy has extra special powers but eventually he pisses off the Lieutenant above him and suddenly ends up in the river.
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Aug 18, 2013 05:57
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I think he should have stopped with Lies. Red Seas face planted, and he's been delaying this third book for about 7 years now.
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Aug 20, 2013 09:48
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Ghetto Prince posted:I think he should have stopped with Lies. Red Seas face planted, and he's been delaying this third book for about 7 years now. A bit hard to do when you're under contract with a publisher to produce a 7 book series.
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Aug 20, 2013 15:03
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Ghetto Prince posted:I think he should have stopped with Lies. Red Seas face planted, and he's been delaying this third book for about 7 years now. The hate for Red Seas seems weird to me. It's not an amazing book like the first one -- mostly because the characters spend too much time stuck in boats -- but it's not bad. It's still a far better book than 90% of the fantasy and SF that I've read lately. Why do you think it "faceplanted" ? Book 3 will be telling. If it's as good as the early reviews are indicating this will be a series to hunt up early printings of. If the writing declines further then Lies will fall into the same category of one-hit wonders as Bridge of Birds. Anway, neat quote from an interview: quote:Some characters do force themselves into broadened or adjusted roles; Zamira Drakasha, for example. And the Falconer's mother, Lady Patience of Karthain. Originally she was a very minor character in The Republic of Thieves. She's since come to loom over nearly every aspect of the plot. http://www.sffworld.com/interview/241p1.html So that explains what was going on in Book 2 -- it's not the universal might of the Bondsmagi Collective tracking him down, it's the dude's mom. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Aug 20, 2013 |
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Aug 20, 2013 15:10
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I'm willing to give Lynch some leeway since being hella depressed is a drat good reason for a delay. It's not like he stopped writing just because his favorite football team lost a game, after all  Gonna be interesting to see how book 3 ends up. With all the rewrites going on I figure chances are good it will be either amazing or awful, without a lot of room for something in-between.
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Aug 20, 2013 15:17
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Ghetto Prince posted:I think he should have stopped with Lies. Red Seas face planted, and he's been delaying this third book for about 7 years now.
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Aug 20, 2013 18:10
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Whalley posted:Red Seas is one of the best fantasy books about pirates and casino heists I've ever read; it "face planting" is like saying A Farewell to Arms was a faceplant after The Sun Also Rises.
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Aug 20, 2013 19:15
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The main problem with Red Seas under Red Skies was that it seemed unpolished. It wouldn't be so glaring if Lies of Locke Lamora wasn't done so carefully. I can't remember any event in the first book that wasn't necessary. For example, the author spends several pages on Locke watching shark-fighting gladiators with his would-be-victims. This seems completely pointless, until Berangias sisters are introduced. When the book ends, every thread is carefully resolved. Red Skies, on the other hand, seems like Lynch couldn't decide what book did he want to write and decided to just mash all possible plots together. Bondsmagi give their spooky warning and immediately disappear for the rest of the novel. The heist is interrupted with Stragos intrigue and soon they leave the city, hanging out with Drakasha's pirates, except that they still try to follow their original plan. There is that bizarre flashback in Salon Corbeau, which seems really important but gives no payoff worth speaking of. And at the end, it seems they didn't do anything meaningful at all: their spoils are fakes, most of the antidote is destroyed, Jean's girlfriend dies. Not to mention that the whole "poisoned and employed" shtick has been done so many times it's hard to take it seriously. It's still a great book, but nowhere near the first one.
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Aug 20, 2013 20:12
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The snippets I've read of the third book (some flashbacks with Sabetha) were very good, so I'm optimistic.
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Aug 20, 2013 20:44
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Gantolandon posted:The main problem with Red Seas under Red Skies was that it seemed unpolished. It wouldn't be so glaring if Lies of Locke Lamora wasn't done so carefully. I can't remember any event in the first book that wasn't necessary. For example, the author spends several pages on Locke watching shark-fighting gladiators with his would-be-victims. This seems completely pointless, until Berangias sisters are introduced. When the book ends, every thread is carefully resolved. I think it's implied but not explicitly stated that the bondsmagi are actively loving with Locke and Jean during the assassination attempt at the docks, when both Locke and Jean "accidentally" slip and kill their attackers instead of capturing them for interrogation, and when Locke inexplicably misses Jean's "lying" hand signal. Peasant chess at Salon Corbeau was really clumsy and didn't work for me. I thought the book was kind of bad overall, but there's enough going on just below the surface to keep me excited for the next one. I really like how the gods are set up in Red Seas - how Locke spends the entire first leg of their pirate journey pissing off the sea god and getting shafted for it, only to be rescued by pirates, immediately after giving the Crooked Warden's blessing to Caldris. It's almost a Deus ex machina, but we also see that maintaining the Crooked Warden's favor is going to get everyone Locke cares about brutally murdered sooner or later (sorry Jean, clock's ticking).
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Aug 20, 2013 20:50
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Squinty posted:(sorry Jean, clock's ticking). Yeah, that's the biggest thing I'm worried about. I hope we get at least a couple more books with Jean, their dynamic is great. The payoff for Salon Corbeau is the pirates later go back and sack the whole town in payback. It demonstrates Locke's devotion to the Crooked Warden -- he's exacting revenge for the weak and making sure the "rich remember." (why are we putting events from a book published five years ago in spoilers) I'd like to know a lot more about the deities in Locke's world (does the whole world have a name? Lockeland?) -- how "real" they are, do they manifest specific miracles, etc. I'd also like to know more about Locke's father. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Aug 20, 2013 |
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Aug 20, 2013 20:53
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Squinty posted:I think it's implied but not explicitly stated that the bondsmagi are actively loving with Locke and Jean during the assassination attempt at the docks, when both Locke and Jean "accidentally" slip and kill their attackers instead of capturing them for interrogation, and when Locke inexplicably misses Jean's "lying" hand signal. Really? I either didn't catch that or just don't remember. Hieronymous Alloy posted:The payoff for Salon Corbeau is the pirates later go back and sack the whole town in payback. It demonstrates Locke's devotion to the Crooked Warden -- he's exacting revenge for the weak and making sure the "rich remember." Yes, but the actual revenge (after they deal with guards on the harbor) happens offscreen. Lynch spent an entire chapter to present the city of most vile and petty assholes in Lockeland. Clearly he could have spared more than one paragraph basically stating "and they robbed Salon Corbeau and totally showed them who's boss, the end". quote:(why are we putting events from a book published five years ago in spoilers) Everyone else before me used them and I think it's not a bad practice - someone, who hadn't yet read it may change his mind.
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Aug 20, 2013 21:26
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This may be going out on a limb, but does anyone else feel like Lynch might have done a better job with pacing Red Skies if Lies hadn't been so relentlessly grim in terms of the final reckoning? He spends a ton of time setting up a bunch of characters and a setting that it now seems like we're not going to get back to for at least three more books. I know he's coming out with a novella that explains how the Bastards got the cast of Austershalin brandy they sacrifice in the con, but it seems like if he'd combined that with all the flashbacks of Locke/Jean as kids and also detailing the Secret Peace, Barsavi's reign (and maybe even his ascendence and cementing of his power), the Spider, etc, the conclusion to Lies would have had more of a kick and also he might have been able to fold some of the more travelogue-ish bits of Skies into an earlier book. I think some of the ending would have been better if there'd been more time to get lulled into a sense of certain characters, situations, etc being "the way things are". The Berangias would have been a lot more shocking if we'd gotten to spend more time with them, I think. As it was, that twist didn't really do anything for me. My biggest beef with Red Skies was that it felt like he suddenly had to start over from scratch and re-establish the world he was working in, and that it dragged everything else down.
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Aug 21, 2013 01:35
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I'm going back through and re-reading Red Skies and when you view the pirate section in light of this it's a lot more entertaining:quote:Q: I know that you're a big fan of Patrick O'Brian. Could the entire"piracy on the high seas" story arc of this book be considered somekind of homage to his work? [url]http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.sffworld.com/interview/241p1.html[/url] If you read all of Locke and Jean's griping about learning nautical terms etc. as an extended riff on / parody of the nautical language of the Aubrey/Maturin books and of the reader's experience trying to learn how to read the Aubrey/Maturin books it's screamingly funny. My favorite bit in that regard is probably when Locke and Jean are in the boat, the pirate ship comes up to them, and Locke shouts out "you must perceive we hold the weather gauge, and you are luffed up with no hope of escape!" -- Lookit Locke finally using the nautical terms correctly, if sarcastically! And note how that marks the point at which his fortunes turn! Basically Lynch is taking a few hundred pages out of the middle of his book to run his characters through a homage /light satire of a 2,000-page nautical series. It's funny but somewhat niche I guess. You can really tell that Lynch did his nautical/pirate research. The whole "mock court" thing is historical -- that's something real pirates did and we have records of from contemporary accounts. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Aug 22, 2013 |
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Aug 22, 2013 18:57
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There are a lot of reviews coming out now, and the book is sounding good. I am at least super interested in it, though I loved Lies of Locke Lamora and thought Red Seas Under Red Skies was ok. Mildly spoilery premise of Republic of Thieves: There are two factions of Bondsmagi, the Falconer's smaller one who wanted to be more involved in world politics (with them in charge), and the Falconer's mom's faction who want to stay out of politics. They settle which faction has more influence over the Bondsmagi as a whole through winning the elections in their local city-state. Locke is healed as payment to win the election for the Falconer's mom, Sabetha is in charge of the opposition party election. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun and should have a ton of info on the Bondsmagi. I've also saw this ARC giveaway: http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2013/08/win-advance-reading-copy-of-scott.html
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Aug 28, 2013 22:32
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fermun posted:There are a lot of reviews coming out now, and the book is sounding good. I am at least super interested in it, though I loved Lies of Locke Lamora and thought Red Seas Under Red Skies was ok. As if I weren't incredibly hyped about this book already, it's going to be about electioneering in a Renaissance style republic? YES.
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Aug 29, 2013 22:15
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Just finished the first book after picking it up completely on a whim. Loved the poo poo out of it and it's probably the first fantasy novel I've read and really enjoyed in years now. Can't wait to move onto the second and eventually third. Seems like these days most series seem to start well and then just disappoint the poo poo out of me, so I'm hoping that for once this won't be the case. I agree that Lynch should really make an RPG setting or something, as his book's world seems to hit the perfect sweet spot between original and traditional that those sorts of things usually require.
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Aug 30, 2013 02:59
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