Red Seas Under Red Skies
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
After reading the Lies of Locke Lamora which i found to be one of the best books i've ever read i had to read this book.
The style of this book is different to it's prequel, where the first one is about scams and comararderie this one is more piracy and not so much scullduggery, what the first book was so brilliant at.
In itself the book is ok but as a sequel to LoLL i found it a bit wanting.
I was disappointed at the end when it seems the author kind of thought (without giving anything away) 'hmmm, that idea won't work so let's do this completely random thing instead.'
I'll definitely continue with the gentleman bastards series but hope it picks up in the next one.
The style of this book is different to it's prequel, where the first one is about scams and comararderie this one is more piracy and not so much scullduggery, what the first book was so brilliant at.
In itself the book is ok but as a sequel to LoLL i found it a bit wanting.
I was disappointed at the end when it seems the author kind of thought (without giving anything away) 'hmmm, that idea won't work so let's do this completely random thing instead.'
I'll definitely continue with the gentleman bastards series but hope it picks up in the next one.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The Lies of Locke Lamora is a fantastic novel. It reads like a Summer movie blockbuster - very very showy with something pretty spectacular in every scene, but no bad thing for that. TLoLL is a pretty relentless ride and one which you feel exhilirated to have taken. Red Seas, sadly, is not quite in the same vein. A more considered pace would never kill this tale, but I believe the book takes its turn for the worse mid-way, when the main protagonists hit the high seas. It seems to me that Scott Lynch is as uncomfortable with pirates as Locke and Jean. It's not quite "AHAR! Avast!" and "shiver me timbers", but it's just not very convincing.
I don't want to be unkind to Lynch as TLoLL is the first fantasy novel I truly enjoyed. He drew some good characters and a superbly paced plot in that book. Here, Red Seas seems like a stretch, and the introduction of the hitherto unacknowledged guiding principles of Locke's religion seem rather shoe-horned in, rather like the existential theories (poorly) shoe-horned into the Matrix sequels. Perhaps later novels will build on those principles further, but I felt that that two jarring dimensions - the pirates and the religion - was one too many to fully forgive.
Red Seas is OK, but it doesn't live up to the huge expectation I had following Lies of Locke Lamora.
I don't want to be unkind to Lynch as TLoLL is the first fantasy novel I truly enjoyed. He drew some good characters and a superbly paced plot in that book. Here, Red Seas seems like a stretch, and the introduction of the hitherto unacknowledged guiding principles of Locke's religion seem rather shoe-horned in, rather like the existential theories (poorly) shoe-horned into the Matrix sequels. Perhaps later novels will build on those principles further, but I felt that that two jarring dimensions - the pirates and the religion - was one too many to fully forgive.
Red Seas is OK, but it doesn't live up to the huge expectation I had following Lies of Locke Lamora.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In "The Lies of Locke Lamora", to which this is the sequel, Scott Lynch introduced a band of con artists and sneak thieves in a lush fantasy setting. That book showed some real promise, despite a slightly clunky structure and a heist-with-a-twist-at-the-end plot which didn't quite work. Unfortunately, Lynch is apparently determined to parlay that into a seven book series, and this is probably why "Red Seas under Red Skies" fails.
The surviving gang members from the first book, the silver tongued Locke Lamora and tough Jean Tannen, have fled to pastures new and are plotting a new heist while being hunted by dangerous enemies. So obviously they have chosen a long, complicated and dangerous rip-off of a gambling house that is famous for never having been robbed. Unfortunately, having set up this potentially interesting plot, the book then tacks hard in another direction, throwing them into a convoluted political game involving them pretending to be pirates. All the best heist stories are complex, with layers within layers, but the secret of success is that all the complications flow from one another, driven by character conflict. Instead, Lynch just throws external threats in every time he needs a new twist, and so the whole impression is of confusion.
However, Lynch can write amusing characters and dialogue, and he makes sure there's a good sense of pace. Lamora spends a bit too much time wallowing in grief due to past events to be as amusing as he can be, and we don't get as good a feel for the locations here as we did the city of Camorr in Book One, but his world is enticingly different.
The main flaw is that rather than writing a self-contained tale, Lynch is slowly juggling elements for further books, and it's this obsession with taking up so much of our bookshelves that stops him and many other promising authors from producing their best work. This book is worth a read, but Lynch needs to start writing a story for each book, rather than stretching for a series.
The surviving gang members from the first book, the silver tongued Locke Lamora and tough Jean Tannen, have fled to pastures new and are plotting a new heist while being hunted by dangerous enemies. So obviously they have chosen a long, complicated and dangerous rip-off of a gambling house that is famous for never having been robbed. Unfortunately, having set up this potentially interesting plot, the book then tacks hard in another direction, throwing them into a convoluted political game involving them pretending to be pirates. All the best heist stories are complex, with layers within layers, but the secret of success is that all the complications flow from one another, driven by character conflict. Instead, Lynch just throws external threats in every time he needs a new twist, and so the whole impression is of confusion.
However, Lynch can write amusing characters and dialogue, and he makes sure there's a good sense of pace. Lamora spends a bit too much time wallowing in grief due to past events to be as amusing as he can be, and we don't get as good a feel for the locations here as we did the city of Camorr in Book One, but his world is enticingly different.
The main flaw is that rather than writing a self-contained tale, Lynch is slowly juggling elements for further books, and it's this obsession with taking up so much of our bookshelves that stops him and many other promising authors from producing their best work. This book is worth a read, but Lynch needs to start writing a story for each book, rather than stretching for a series.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not As Disappointing As I Expected
Having read other reviews I was expecting this to be a big disappointment, instead only a minor disappointment. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mr. N. J. Keighley
Solid Follow Up
Not quite as enterianing as the first instalment in the Gentlemen Bastard Sequence. The first half of the book is quite slow going with plenty of infomation dumping taking place... Read more
Published 5 months ago by bronze-yohn
Love these books
The Locke Lamora books are a hidden gem. They are full of humour, intrigue, angst and everything that makes a good book. Read more
Published 7 months ago by P. D. Smith
A story almost as rich as the characters are.
After reading the book, I've started to keep a sharp lookout for Scott Lynch, and when I heard he had a second book out, I was overjoyed! Read more
Published 10 months ago by Alex Lee
Only five stars for this one
Why "only five stars for this one"? because the Lies of Locke Lammora (LoLL) deserved eight stars. LoLL was without any doubt the very best book of its genre I have ever read, and... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Alec
Not quite as brilliant as the previous volume, but still very good...
The Lies of Locke Lamora was a wonderful book, the author's first, and by all accounts a good seller. I was therefore somewhat perturbed when my copy of this sequel arrived. Read more
Published 16 months ago by D. R. Cantrell
Weird and wonderful
Enjoying this series, love the characters. However it is not one I would recommend to someone just starting on the Fantasy journey.
Published 20 months ago by Kathy Warbey
Terrible Shame.
The first book in this series was outstanding! Fantastic characters, a wonderful storyline and blind siding twists at the end!
Sadly 'Red Seas.. Read more
Sadly 'Red Seas.. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Charles Stanley-grey
A brilliant sequel to "The Lies of Locke Lamora"
Having read - and thoroughly enjoyed - Scott Lynchs' "The Lies of Locke Lamora" I had been looking forward to this second book in the Gentleman Bastards sequence. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Molly
Meh...
With this book I did what I've done perhaps one other time in the past decade and that is stop reading a book before I'd finished! Read more
Published 22 months ago by Armchair
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