Books Wot I Have Read

Red Seas Under Red Skies, by Scott Lynch
title or description

Hooray. I really really enjoyed the first book by Scott Lynch, as you should be a ble to tell from the review prior to this one, and I've been waiting what seems like an age for the second part to be printed up as a proof and sent out (Thanks Gollancz!). Nice and chunky (it runs to 650 pages or so), and I knocked it off in a couple of days. Seriously, I was taking the chance to read two or three pages a time on two minute bus journeys, where normally I would just look out of the window. I haven't read a paper in three days, 'cos that would have been non-Lynch time. There are a couple of flaws in the book, but if nothing else it is very very hard to put down.

There are probably going to be a few spoilery things below this, to be honest, as the book is so twisty and turny that any discussion of events after about the first hundred pages or so will spoil something, somewhere. And if you haven't read The Lies of Locke Lamora and plan to, I'll definitely be giving away the plot of that. So be warned.

The whole thing reads fairly well as a standalone book - although there are references to various events in The Lies of Locke Lamora, they tend to be explained in the text or so minor that they don't need to be. There's no doubt that having read book one will greatly increase your appreciation of this one, but you don't have to have done so. Unfortunately, that is also one of the book's minor flaws. In a (perfectly laudable) attempt to make the various volumes stand on their own merits, I sort of think that Lynch has made a bit of a rod for his own back. At some point, various threads (from both books) will have to be tied up, and that might well turn out to be a hell of a job.

There's an ongoing plot strand in this book that bubbles happily underneath the main narrative, concerning a character who is working against Locke & Jean, which has no conclusion to speak of - she just goes 'ah-ha, I must try again, my masters won't be pleased, I'm going to skulk off into the night'. Fine, she'll reappear at some point, but I feel it weakens the 'unity' that Lynch seems to have been trying to achieve. There are various other instances of this (Locke & Jean's history, for example, and the mystery surrounding the love of Locke's life, who we have yet to meet), and clearly at some point in a future book everything will be resolved, but I would just have liked a little more continuity between books one and two. Not everyone will agree with me, though, so who knows?

My only other niggle is the slight feeling of having been here before. When you have a series of stories in which the protagonist's raison d'etre is to set up and pull off audacious scams and schemes, there's always going to be an element of familiarity in the opening stages, as the trick is set up and complications ensure. Lynch manages to negate some of that with his trick, possibly his greatest plotting asset, of being able to misdirect us entirely. I promise you, it won't be until about the last ten pages or so that you realise exactly what Locke has been planning for two years, and even then there is another twist to come. Still, enjoyable though it is to follow Locke and Jean around a well-defined city as they bamboozle various people, this book doesn't provide the luxury that Lynch had in the first one - the chance to break the narrative up a little, through flashbacks to the childhood and training of the Gentlemen Bastards. Lynch has to make do with filling in the two years that have passed since the first book and showing us the beginnings of the con, but there just isn't as much information (or fun) to be had in these side-steps (enjoyable though they are), and so I just felt a small amount of deja vu. Complex con, frustrations caused by the leaders of the city, enforced side-missions for various people, crisis, denouement - the template is similar.

Having said all that, about halfway through the book everything changes, and all of the problems I described at far too great a length in the previous paragraph vanish. Locke and Jean get sent off to indulge in some old-fashioned piracy, the flashbacks stop, and (forgive me for this) the whole thing is like a breath of fresh sea air (I said I was sorry...). Away from the cramped confines of a city, the novel opens up into a much more surprising and entertaining thing that, above all, feels different. Don't get me wrong, I was enjoying the first section - Lynch is never less than exciting and readable, and leaves enough hints and unexplained business to keep the reader interested - but the book really picks up once we get onto the open seas.

From then on everything comes together, although I suppose one could argue that the ending is slightly rushed, and the cliffhanger the book ends on is an absolute bastard. Seeing Locke and Jean totally out of their depth is a real boon for the book, as at times early on everything just seems a bit too easy for them. Put them out to sea, though, in nominal command of a pirate ship and depressingly unable to sail, and things become hard for them. We meet some other pirates, visit the port from which they sail, get a very spooky interlude that is never fully explained, but I'm sure will come up again at some point, and all the time Locke and Jean's machinations back in the city are progressing. The book doesn't let up from this point in, and the various strands come together rather nicely. As I said, one could argue that the final denouement is a little rushed, but it makes perfect sense in the context of the novel, so I think I might be looking for things to criticize that aren't really a problem.

One of the great strengths of The Lies of Locke Lamora was the way that the world had been very carefully thought through. Camorr, the city in which it was set, felt real, and there was a sense of history and backstory - largely unexplained or left to the reader's imagination - that didn't in any way feel tacked on, or added for its own sake. Lynch manages to maintain that feel here, giving us little titbits of recent and ancient history and unobtrusively creating a sense of reality that many books strive for but few achieve. There are very few answers to some of the obvious questions - we're no nearer to learning what Elderglass is, for example - but that is, really, as it should be. Maybe some answers will come, maybe some won't, but it all adds up to make the experience believable (well, you know what I mean - as much as possible for a fantasy novel, anyway...)

I was a little worried that the slimmed down cast of characters - only Locke and Jean, no sidekicks or friends - would be a bit of a drawback, but in fact what it means is that the relationship between the two is much stronger, both in fictional and authorial terms. It seems as if Lynch, without the distraction of having to juggle a group of five main thieves, has managed to put that much more effort into exploring the connections between the two men. There are times during the novel when you truly fear that Locke and Jean's friendship is going to come to an end, especially as the book opens with a prologue that suggests, quite pointedly, that betrayal is on the cards. In fact, throughout the novel that three page scene plays on your mind, and seems more and more plausible. Of course, nothing is ever quite what it seems in Lynch's work, but it is a wonderful piece of narrative structure - it tinges everything that follows with a sense of unease. The unpleasant events of the first book are dealt with as well, with some of the flashbacks exploring Locke & Jean's reactions to the deaths of their friends.

Red Skies Under Red Seas is as violent and sweary as the first book, which doesn't bother me at all, but might some, I suppose. There is nothing as downright nasty here as the broken glass/face scene in The Lies of Locke Lamora, but there is plenty that comes close. This is not a friendly world. Lynch continues his habit of making you care about characters, characters you think are going to be part of the wider series of books, and then disposing of them messily (and often capriciously, it seems like), which successfully underlines the feeling that nothing is safe in Locke's world, and nothing can be taken for granted (especially not happiness, of course...).

I got to the end and really, really wanted to have book three in front of me, like right now. I suppose I'll have to wait (although if Gollancz want to send me the MS when delivered, I wouldn't say no, hint hint...), but the sheer bastardness of the situation Locke is left in made me swear loudly at my book for not having more pages. There are three novellas from Subterranean Press to come at some point in the future (http://scott-lynch.livejournal.com/213929.html), as well as the looking-lovely limited edition from the same publishers (http://scott-lynch.livejournal.com/222245.html), so that will keep me going, I guess.

I really can't recommend this book, and the predecessor, enough. Lynch can write. I read a proof 21/03/07 to 22/03/07, from the lovely people at Gollancz, which you can't borrow because I have a list three deep for it already, but the book itself is out in June, ISBN: 9780575076952.

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