The Lies of Locke Lamora

In 2007 I went to the World Fantasy convention, which was being held that year in Saratoga, NY, just a pleasant few hours’ drive from where I live. I had just sold The Painted Man (back in stock on Amazon UK after selling out and going back on press!) and its sequels and had just decided to quit my day job (which I hated anyway) and start writing full time, which was always my dream career.

I didn’t know anyone at the convention other than my buddy Jay, my editor, and my agent’s assistant Steve, but World Fantasy is a con that’s pretty much exclusive to publishing industry insiders, and I had a real feeling of “these are all my co-workers now, and I want to meet as many of them as I can and learn as much as I can from them.”

One of the many fine people I met at that convention was the lovely and talented Deanna Hoak, a copyeditor who was up for a World Fantasy Award herself that year, but was also excited that a book she had worked on, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, was up for best new fantasy.

I remember how thrilled Deanna was when Lies took the award. When I got home from the con, I was pleasantly surprised to find a copy of the book in my gift bag, and resolved to read it.

Of course, my “to-read” pile is a horrid place where many amazing books go to die. Everything I read, I tend to read slowly, savoring and considering every page. On top of that, I gave up a lot of my free time for pleasure reading when I started writing on my daily commute, and it’s never gotten back up to speed. I always feel like I should be focused on my own work, and not someone else’s.

But I do manage to read a few books here and there, and I picked up Lies a few months ago. I read about 150 pages (out of like 725), and was actually rather enjoying it, but then for some reason I put it down anyway and started reading something else. I probably read three books after that, which is usually the kiss of death. But then I picked it back up a couple of weeks ago, and flew through the rest of it. It is a great fucking book.

I think the reason I put it down is that I found life of his title character, Locke Lamora, exhausting. At the time, I was a new father who was also marketing his own book and working hard on a sequel. I was stressed and sleep-deprived, and the rare moments I had to catch my breath and read were usually in the bathroom, which isn’t the best place for a dense read like Lies, filled with layer upon layer of cleverness and intrigue. I wanted lighter fare.

But life has leveled off a bit, and I decided to give Lies another chance. I’m really glad I did. The story takes a lot of unexpected turns and ends with a climax that is thoroughly satisfying. It has more than enough closure to be taken as a stand-alone story, but I can see how it could also be part of a larger tale. Lynch does leave some unanswered questions and isn’t afraid of jumps back and forth in time to fill in blanks, so even characters who did not survive Lies might play a role in the later stories. I hope a few of them do.

I have a few quips of course, places where the storytelling was weak or the characters shallow on some point or another, but overall these were not enough to significantly affect my enjoyment of the narrative, or the intensity with which I turned the last 200 or so pages.

If anyone wants to weigh in on what I should read next, I can list what’s on the pile. That might be a fun discussion. It better be quick, though, or else I’ll just end up reading the sequel to Lies, Red Sea under Red Skies, which I already ordered on Amazon.

Posted on January 3, 2009 at 1:59 am by PeatB
Filed under Musings, My Reviews, Writing
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