The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Reviewed by Victoria Hoyle
31 October 2007
One hundred and fifty pages into The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch's World Fantasy Award-nominated debut, I remembered why I love fantasy novels. Not because they're strongholds of comfort, or repositories of nostalgia (although they are); or because they allow us to "escape" the real world, or even because they give the reader permission to confront the essential clichés of theme—love, grief, evil, goodness—without flinching (although they do). But because when they're well done, really well done, they're vivid and glittering works of the imagination's art: they blow the walls off buildings, take the lid off the sky and remake the world. Believe me when I say that The Lies of Locke Lamora is very well done indeed.
Which is not to claim it as the perfect fantasy—no doubt it has its flaws and its disappointments—or to say that there aren't other novels on this year's World Fantasy shortlist to match it (I'm thinking particularly of Ellen Kushner's accomplished The Privilege of the Sword). But, pros and cons fairly weighed, it has and does everything an outstanding fantasy should: it creates an elaborate world, intricate with intrigue, introduces a rake of a hero, with requisite companions, and sets in motion a series of events set to carry its narrative momentum into a sequel and, happily, beyond. It doesn't hurt that it is also incorrigibly funny, and desperately dark-hearted.
Locke Lamora is a street-rat, an orphan thief with an innate love of mischief and an inspiring gift for survival. At the age of five or six he finds himself an apprentice to the Thiefmaker of Shades' Hill, a gnarly pick-pocket king lording it over an "ant-mound" of renegade children harvested from the city state of Camorr:
Eighty-eight thousand souls generated a certain steady volume of waste; this waste included a constant trickle of lost, useless and abandoned children. . . . Slavers got some, and plain stupidity took a few more. Starvation and the diseases it brought were also common ways to go for those that lacked the courage or the skill to pluck a living from the city around them. . . . Any orphans left were swept up by the Thiefmaker's crew. (p. 3)
Bright and reckless, Locke learns the tricks of his new trade quickly—the teases, the light fingers—and soon shows a higher potential for both larceny and for scheming. It isn't long before his elaborate games, the final one culminating in the deaths of his compatriots, start to make trouble for his old master and he is forcibly dispatched in quick order. Narrowly avoiding death, he is sold as a future investment to Father Chains, the eccentric garrista of Camorr's most unusual gang, The Gentleman Bastards. There he studies the art of "false-facing," of the dazzling, elaborate con, and meets the boys who will grow up to be his closest friends and allies: the Sanza twins, Galdo and Calo, the mysterious Sabetha, and Jean Tannen, a plump brawler with a gift for death. This early training destines them all for a life of disguise, blood, and revenge, as they slip in and out of the grasp of Camorr's two lawgivers—the Spider, faceless commander of the Duke of Camorr's secret police, and Capa Barsavi, the ruthless overlord of the city's innumerable gangs—gleefully robbing from the rich and keeping it all for themselves.
The Lies of Locke Lamora establishes itself firmly and immediately in the tradition of Renaissance fantasy—forget the feudal vistas of Robin Hobb or George R. R. Martin and think instead of Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, or Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, with more than a little of the intellectual density of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles thrown in. Camorr is no medieval idyll of Kings and castles but a dirty, roiling mess of early modernity complete with bankers, merchants, and a profusion of minor nobles, clearly modelled on the intense politicking and mercantile rivalries of the city-states of sixteenth-century Italy. It most closely resembles Venice, being composed of a multitude of islands intersected by canals and liminalised between dry land and the ocean, but has something of Rome about it too, dotted as it is with the archaeological remains of the Eldren, a lost and inhuman civilisation. Its most striking features are the five Elderglass towers, the striking homes of the city's greatest families, including the Duke himself, and the Shifting Revel, Camorr's equivalent of the coliseum. It would be true to say that Scott Lynch's greatest achievement is the vivid and grandiose realisation of this world which, although brilliantly observed, is difficult to capture with short quotes. Take this description of the House of Glass Roses, however, as a short example:
In the House of Glass Roses, there was a hungry garden. The place was Camorr in microcosm; a thing of the Eldren left behind for men to puzzle over, a dangerous treasure discarded like a toy. . . . Here was an entire rose garden, wall after wall of perfect petals and stems and thorns, silent and scentless and alive with reflected fire, for it was all carved from Elderglass, a hundred thousand blossoms perfect down to the tiniest thorn. . . . And it was flawless, as flawless as the rumours claimed, as though the Eldren had frozen every blossom and every bush in an instant of summer's fullest perfection. (p. 259)
Lynch has the same flair for world-building that his protagonist has for stealing, and his prose is alive with colours, forms, sounds, textures; with the subtlety of altered vocabularies and patois; not to mention the smells and the effects of changing light. Occasionally the description is a little too much, a glut of riches that reminds me of the baroque excess of China Miéville in Perdido Street Station, but this is perhaps more a matter of my taste for clean lines than it is a real failing. Certainly it did not disturb my sense of immersion in the world of the narrative—if all fantasy novels are sophisticated confidence games enacted against the reader, then Lynch is a genuinely gifted conman.
It helps that Locke and his Gentleman Bastards are thoroughly beguiling criminals, and that their enemies possess a full quotient of cunning. The witty banter and the self-deprecating humour helps as well. It is difficult to resist the confident delight of the thieves, even though there actions are, at times, despicable:
"I only steal because my dear old family needs the money to live!"
Locke Lamora made this proclamation with his wine glass held high; he and the other Gentleman Bastards were seated at the old witchwood table. . . . The others began to jeer.
"Liar!" they chorused
"I only steal because this wicked world won't let me work an honest trade!" Calo cried, hoisting his own glass.
"LIAR!"
"I only steal," said Jean, "because I've temporarily fallen in with bad company."
"LIAR!"
At last the ritual came to Bug; the boy raised his glass a bit shakily and yelled, "I only steal because it's heaps of fucking fun!"
"BASTARD!" (p. 107)
Locke himself is a charming and tricky piece of work, incredibly clever and incredibly foolish at the same time, whose real character and true identity are a theme at issue throughout. He plays so many parts, takes off so many roles and becomes so many different people that it is difficult for anyone, even himself, to locate the true man or what he stands for. There is a constant battle between his better self and his imp of the perverse, the latter frequently winning out above conscience or sense. This will, no doubt, be something that Lynch takes great pleasure in exploring in future episodes of his saga.
However, it is the strong line in female characters that finally wins me over to The Lies of Locke Lamora completely. Even Capa Barsavi, Camorr's most powerful robber baron, is wise enough to realise that "the women of Camorr could be underestimated only at great peril to one's health" (p. 449), and Lynch's plot is heaving with Lady Bitches, women who make me weak with their dastardly, dangerous femaleness. My only complaint is that the most important of these women, the one with whom Locke is supposedly in love, does not appear at all in the course of the narrative. Sabetha is the only woman in the Gentleman Bastards, and has parted company with them at some point in the recent past; she is mentioned any number of times but curiously fails to appear. She is not even given a walk on part in one of the book's many flashbacks and interludes. I can only conclude that Lynch is saving her for some future appearance, but I thought this a mistake: a reader can only wait so long for their hero's femme fatale before loosing interest in her.
Ultimately, The Lies of Locke Lamora's credentials as a successful fantasy novel are never really in doubt. I'm sure the author wouldn't object to my calling it a rare old Bastard of a book. It is irrepressible and infectious stuff—playful, rich, and shadowy—and Lynch is a great new talent. There are moments where he betrays his inexperience as a writer, the wrong word here and a clumsy construction there, but they are few and far between, easily forgotten amongst the glossy tumult of the rest. If it lacks anything it is a seriousness to match the weight and consequence of its world-building. The balance between Locke's humour and the plot's inherent darkness is a precarious one and occasionally there is too much of a discordance between the death and torture of the Bastard's actions, and the comic lightness of their dialogue. But this will undoubtedly mend itself as the sequence progresses and expands, thematically and literally. Lynch has set himself up for a long and fruitful career, with a whole new world for us to explore, and if he doesn't win the World Fantasy Award this year no doubt his time will come.
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