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#5 Platform - Red Seas under Red Skies
Mar. 22nd, 2008 02:54 amMore con man action - this time with more pirates!
Book #10 - Red Seas under Red Skies
Author: Scott Lynch
Provenance: Bought online from chapters.indigo.ca
This second book in the Gentlemen Bastard series sees our heroes, Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen, starting off with a plan to rob the biggest and most secure casino in the city they're living in now. Things get complicated pretty quickly, not surprisingly, and soon there are a whole merry bunch of plots and counterplots all weaving around each other. They all come together pretty nicely in the end, and just about everything important is mentioned at some point, so it's all pretty fair play. I liked that part of it, as usual.
The writing is still strong, and the plot is very good, and the characters... well, Jean certainly feels a good deal more fleshed out now, Locke gets some advancement, and the rest of the secondaries are by and large believable and interesting, although not all of them. Some, like Requin, feel fairly straight out of central casting. Still, they do the job well enough; it's probably just that they come across not quite as good as the first book.
The pacing in the book, though, is the main point; it comes and goes from the main city, which is okay in and of itself, but the main part on the sea with pirates doesn't show until a few hundred pages in, and much of the action at the end goes by very quickly. The bits with the main city during the pirates part felt a bit out of place, too, even if they made sense for plot reasons; it's just that it's snuck in, almost, in the larger arc of the story.
On the whole, though, still a very strong effort, and a very enjoyable read. I'll pick up the next one when it's out, for sure.
Next up: Low City, High City. Actually about half way done with it; a history of Tokyo makes sense just now, too.
Book #10 - Red Seas under Red Skies
Author: Scott Lynch
Provenance: Bought online from chapters.indigo.ca
This second book in the Gentlemen Bastard series sees our heroes, Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen, starting off with a plan to rob the biggest and most secure casino in the city they're living in now. Things get complicated pretty quickly, not surprisingly, and soon there are a whole merry bunch of plots and counterplots all weaving around each other. They all come together pretty nicely in the end, and just about everything important is mentioned at some point, so it's all pretty fair play. I liked that part of it, as usual.
The writing is still strong, and the plot is very good, and the characters... well, Jean certainly feels a good deal more fleshed out now, Locke gets some advancement, and the rest of the secondaries are by and large believable and interesting, although not all of them. Some, like Requin, feel fairly straight out of central casting. Still, they do the job well enough; it's probably just that they come across not quite as good as the first book.
The pacing in the book, though, is the main point; it comes and goes from the main city, which is okay in and of itself, but the main part on the sea with pirates doesn't show until a few hundred pages in, and much of the action at the end goes by very quickly. The bits with the main city during the pirates part felt a bit out of place, too, even if they made sense for plot reasons; it's just that it's snuck in, almost, in the larger arc of the story.
On the whole, though, still a very strong effort, and a very enjoyable read. I'll pick up the next one when it's out, for sure.
Next up: Low City, High City. Actually about half way done with it; a history of Tokyo makes sense just now, too.
