The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch

I don’t know what it was about this book, but I had the worst time getting into it. It’s taken me months to get through it. I did get through it, because it’s actually a really interesting story, but I would put it aside for weeks at a time before I could get into it again.

Locke Lamora is a thief – from a young age, he was part of the gangs in the seedier side of Camorr. He had the fortune to be sold to a priest named Chains. It turns out he was using the temple as the front for his own small gang of young thieves. These stories are told in interludes to the main story, where Locke is now in charge of the Gentleman Bastards. They’ve made their living stealing from the peers of Camorr – thinking that no one is the wiser to how much they’re really hiding in the cellars beneath the temple of Perelandro.

The meat of this story is a challenger to the head of Camorr’s criminal underworld – Capa Barsavi. The Gentleman Bastards have always nominally owed allegiance to Barsavi, and Locke has a particular relationship with Barsavi’s daughter Nazca. When she’s killed in the opening salvos in what turns into a war with the new player – things start to get complicated.

This is one of those stories that has plots on top of plots, and absolutely nothing is what it seems. It’s incredibly smart, and I really enjoyed it when I was trucking along. But then I’d have to put it down again, and I’d have the worst time getting back to it. It was just so odd.   There are two more books in the series, but I’m not going to be in a hurry to read them since I had such a weird experience with this one. Which is a shame, because I’m sure they’ll have as many interesting twists and turns.