13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The troubled second release, 7 Jan 2008
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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good but a disappointing sequel, 7 Mar 2008
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.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Readable, but flawed and confused, 18 Nov 2010
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.
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