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It'd be lovely boring writing if his next book confirms that as fact and I'd be done with this series, not necessarily weird. I mean, you can say it isn't actually badly written at all, but I read a book about a fully grown fairly mature adult suddenly telling a woman he's had a crush on for 20-some years "I JUST CAN'T BE WITH ANYONE BUT YOU" after she says "well, I gently caress people sometimes just to get a job done." It's unrealistic and lovely and boring from a series that has had surprisingly realistic, awesome, incredibly interesting characters and situations for two books up until this one.
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Feb 19, 2014 21:24
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I liked that bit very, very much, actually, and I honestly really enjoyed reading two people communicating this poo poo instead of getting lovely and goony about how she'd been 'soiled' or was somehow made less desirable for doing what she'd decided to do.
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Feb 19, 2014 23:51
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Republic of Thieves was a writer struggling to reconcile intellectual feminism with his own natural impulses to objectify women via a contrived fantasy scenario.
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Feb 20, 2014 02:28
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neongrey posted:I liked that bit very, very much, actually, and I honestly really enjoyed reading two people communicating this poo poo instead of getting lovely and goony about how she'd been 'soiled' or was somehow made less desirable for doing what she'd decided to do. This. A thousand times. I understand that your goony rage is all a flutter because he didn't get the girl and she had the audacity to sleep with other dudes, but that doesn't make it bad writing. It just makes you a neckbeard. They had different expectations and Locke, due to the stuff in my last spoilers post, is unusually overly head over heels and loyal. He knows it's weird. He mentions that he knows it's weird like a dozen times through the series. I don't understand why you're so upset over an adult conversation between two people about emotions in a fantasy book, but the stupid 'lol fantasy can't write romance' meme that runs trough TBB is really worn out. Is it the greatest love story ever told? Not at all. Is it logical within the context of human emotions, especially considering the history of the characters and the world they exist in? Yeah.
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Feb 20, 2014 07:20
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I agree. Plus, in the three books there are what? Two sex scenes? Jean and his girl and Locke and Sabetha had an awkward first-time teen hump in a cupboard. Its hardly getting thrown in our face.
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Feb 20, 2014 08:05
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When did 'goony' turn into The Thing To Say about people or books you don't like? It seems like the standard insult on SA these days... specifically in sci-fi/fantasy threads. Either the protagonist is goony or the author is goony or the sex scene is goony or the person disagreeing with you is goony or jesus christ make it stop already!
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Feb 20, 2014 08:13
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Decrying not slut-shaming someone who you love and respect as unrealistic is loving goony as hell, sorry if it breaks your immersion in a book about wizard politics. Like I can definitely understand not liking how it was done, but don't trot out that realism saw.
neongrey fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 09:33
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Whoa, I used really lovely word choices there and I apologize - I'm glad there was no slut shaming, I actually enjoyed that one part of the "true romance" was all "yo so sex really isn't a big deal" and that it was the woman, and I love that Lynch didn't make Lamora freak out at Sabetha for her actions. That's not my problem. My problem is that Locke Lamora, despite everything else about him being surprisingly realistic for a book about an impossibly clever thiefpriest in Fantasy Venice, apparently had to have the NO BUT I LOVE YOU SO HARD I CAN'T EVEN BONE IT UP FOR ANYONE ELSE personality trait. It felt really out of place and hammy and just bad; like, I get that Locke has been in love with Sabetha for ever, and I'm fine with that, but the idea that a smooth talking master thief has kept himself chaste and untouched doesn't fit with my interpretation of how Lynch was writing the character. It felt like a bullshit Romance 101 thing that got stapled onto Locke's character sheet, instead of a natural feature of the person he has been built up to be. So much of their romance read like hacked bits from a How To Write Twue Wuv story.
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Feb 20, 2014 15:12
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Whalley posted:It'd be lovely boring writing if his next book confirms that as fact and I'd be done with this series, not necessarily weird. Agreed. I'm sure someone will say it has been coming for awhile because we hear about it through other characters but seeing the protagonist transformed into a gibbering teenage idiot felt completely out of place, like some bad romance novel. It had a direct impact on major parts of the story so people can't really just ignore it either. Republic of Thieves felt really disjointed overall and that was just another part that didn't seem to fit. Very disappointing book to me.
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Feb 20, 2014 15:38
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The Gunslinger posted:Agreed. I'm sure someone will say it has been coming for awhile because we hear about it through other characters but seeing the protagonist transformed into a gibbering teenage idiot felt completely out of place, like some bad romance novel. It had a direct impact on major parts of the story so people can't really just ignore it either. Republic of Thieves felt really disjointed overall and that was just another part that didn't seem to fit. Very disappointing book to me.
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Feb 20, 2014 16:27
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To me it feels like an interesting bit of role reversal, and not at all unwelcome or bad. Usually it's the woman half of the separated couple that remains chaste and in yearning while the man away at tasks or sojourning or in exile has needs that must be satisfied and whatnot. Locke basically stayed at home and kept the fires burning and stared out the window every night sighing hoping for Sabetha's return, until the Grey King forced him to spread his wings a bit. As a quirk, it just makes Locke more interesting and endearing to me (even though he can be insufferably maudlin during trying times, as we can all sympathize with Jean on that front).
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Feb 21, 2014 16:17
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I agree with that, strongly. Especially when Locke's history/potential origin are taken into account. I think a lot of people are just mad that their suave, confident, awesome badass suddenly stuffed his foot in his mouth when Sabetha showed up, and declared it bad writing, instead of a flawed character.
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Feb 22, 2014 22:19
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Considering how Locke fucks up in the other books I think that anyone who had that sort of image of him wasn't paying a lot of attention!
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Feb 22, 2014 22:44
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Srice posted:Considering how Locke fucks up in the other books I think that anyone who had that sort of image of him wasn't paying a lot of attention! Absolutely. I don't know where that one guy was coming from when he said like Locke was too smooth to be awkward around her. Or he was too perfectly poised to ever be flustered by a girl much less a whore. It was just so far from my reading of the books that it annoyed me when they started saying he was a poor author or whatever. Not that he's perfect, but he's pretty good. Edit: I feel like I'm coming across as a bit of a fanboy. So I'm going to cool down my commentary, but I like the series and want more people to read it, not be scared away because of a 'bad romance plot' that isn't actually bad at all, whether you wish he'd done something else with the story or not. Yngwie Mangosteen fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 02:27
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Speculation from the end of Thieves: I don't foresee any possibility where Sabetha isn't pregnant. Actually, that is probably what Patience told her to make her run away.
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Feb 23, 2014 05:17
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bigperm posted:Speculation from the end of Thieves: I don't foresee any possibility where Sabetha isn't pregnant. Actually, that is probably what Patience told her to make her run away.  I thought Locke and Sabetha never boned during the whole electioneering thing though.
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Feb 23, 2014 05:20
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I think they only did after the election the one time before Patience ruined everything. Maybe Lynch can avoid the protagonist is secretly all powerful god being route by having Sabetha be preggers and having the grand wizard body hop to the new seed, and Sabetha becomes some kind of game piece. I dunno just throwing poo poo out there.
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Feb 23, 2014 05:28
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The Rat posted:
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Feb 23, 2014 05:32
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Whalley posted:Like, Sabetha's awesome. She's genuinely great at everything and is Locke's equal, if not better, in many ways. I would have killed for this book to have taken the turn of Sabetha saying "Oh Locke, honey, no, I liked you as a teenager but baby move on. I'm obviously not coming back. I absolutely tricked you, yes, you moron" after he returns from the boat-drugging scene, as a kind of reiteration of the sentiment that Calo and Galdo were saying all through book 1 and Jean through book 2. It would have cemented her as more of a solid rival and added some more gravity to the election; plus, we wouldn't have a backstory where Locke and Sabetha finally admit they have feelings for each other juxtaposed with a current story where Locke and Sabetha... finally admit they have feelings for each other. We'd see how much they meant and how far they'd drifted. It would have been more interesting and made me like Sabetha so much more. Yes please. It might not be epic, but this would have led to so much more nuanced story-telling. The current reading is so played-out: the author really wants to put in a love interest, but the character has no particularly romantic or even empathetic qualities. Instead, a woman is presented to him as reward for being a good hero.
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Feb 23, 2014 06:00
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Going from all the great reviews of this series I decided to give it a try, now I've finished the three books over the last three weeks. A couple of thoughts, I thought Lies was quite a decent book, a decent balance between character development and storytelling and a reasonably fresh storyline. Red Seas Under Red Skies was quite hard to get into I found, certain parts seemed quite flat and I didn't really enjoy it too much. The last book? I've got to agree with the comments about the hilariously bad romance, couple this with the childish pranks that we're meant to believe are the political campaign of a renown strategist made me feel like I just read an Eddings novel. Sure the story might be compelling and acceptable for a pimply faced teenager but for a character in their mid to late twenties I had expected a little more.
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Feb 26, 2014 04:01
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Aargh posted:The last book? I've got to agree with the comments about the hilariously bad romance, couple this with the childish pranks that we're meant to believe are the political campaign of a renown strategist made me feel like I just read an Eddings novel. Sure the story might be compelling and acceptable for a pimply faced teenager but for a character in their mid to late twenties I had expected a little more. This is what really stood out to me. I mean, okay, disrupt meetings and stuff, but that was all they did. And, given how that kind of thing works in real life and flamboyantly grim world of the previous novels, I was expecting some proper brownshirt poo poo. Lynch has said he wants Locke to start questioning the things he's doing as the novels get more political and espionage-y, so I don't see why he wouldn't start hinting at that early. But instead, even the election itself is explicitly introduced as a consequence free pissing match between mages who will ensure nothing goes wrong.
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Feb 26, 2014 20:02
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Strategic Tea posted:But instead, even the election itself is explicitly introduced as a consequence free pissing match between mages who will ensure nothing goes wrong. I like book 3, but it obviously used this setup to guarantee that the entire book was Locke x Sabetha and little else mattered. It would have been nice if the interludes to their past had taken up less of the book and the modern-day events had had more gravitas.
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Feb 26, 2014 20:05
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Love Lynch, but it was a horrible idea to do this contrived politics thing.
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Feb 27, 2014 03:55
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Is "The Bastards and the Knives" really coming out on Tuesday? If so, does anyone know if it's getting an audiobook release?
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Mar 3, 2014 06:44
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No https://twitter.com/scottlynch78/status/439905419754893312
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Mar 3, 2014 06:56
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"Beefwit Smallcock" is the single greatest alias known to man. We need more Sanza brothers.
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May 6, 2014 13:32
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The Gunslinger posted:Agreed. I'm sure someone will say it has been coming for awhile because we hear about it through other characters but seeing the protagonist transformed into a gibbering teenage idiot felt completely out of place, like some bad romance novel. It had a direct impact on major parts of the story so people can't really just ignore it either. Republic of Thieves felt really disjointed overall and that was just another part that didn't seem to fit. Very disappointing book to me. Locke Lamora is a flawed character. It's been established from just about the very first chapter in the very first book that one of his major flaws was that he was completely hung up on Sabetha, and completely broken about it. Him turning into a jabbering idiot around her is not out of place unless you ignore anything that's not Jean throwing axes at someone.
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May 6, 2014 16:23
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I am pleased we finally have a recurring bad guy. Looking forward to the next one!
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May 7, 2014 01:18
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Whalley posted:My problem is that Locke Lamora, despite everything else about him being surprisingly realistic for a book about an impossibly clever thiefpriest in Fantasy Venice, apparently had to have the NO BUT I LOVE YOU SO HARD I CAN'T EVEN BONE IT UP FOR ANYONE ELSE personality trait. It felt really out of place and hammy and just bad; like, I get that Locke has been in love with Sabetha for ever, and I'm fine with that, but the idea that a smooth talking master thief has kept himself chaste and untouched doesn't fit with my interpretation of how Lynch was writing the character. It felt like a bullshit Romance 101 thing that got stapled onto Locke's character sheet, instead of a natural feature of the person he has been built up to be. So much of their romance read like hacked bits from a How To Write Twue Wuv story. See, I felt it was pretty clear that this was supposed to be abnormal. Like, Scott Lynch isn't sitting there being like LOCKE IS THE GREATEST SEE GUYS THIS HOW ROMANCE SHOULD BE NOT LIKE THAT DUMB SABETHA With this book and comments from the previous one, it was obvious that as a character trait, it was not ideal.
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May 7, 2014 20:47
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Yeah. It is a character flaw, purposefully written. Some goons are just terrible at reading comprehension I guess. Plus a lot of people just straight go crazy if there's anything approaching ~*romance*~ in their fiction stories. Add those together and you get people frothing at the mouth because Locke is written to be a manbaby when it comes to Sabetha. I just always assume those guys see too much of themselves in the character when it comes to that , and it ruins their escapist fantasy of being a suave motherfucker.
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May 8, 2014 02:20
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nucleicmaxid posted:Yeah. It is a character flaw, purposefully written. Some goons are just terrible at reading comprehension I guess. I think people in general always want to quantify their (perfectly fine) lack of attachment to a particular story/character/book whatever, probably because everyone who does like it always wants to go "nuh-uh, it's the best thing ever." The thing I keep seeing is 'character x is such a mary sue* because blahblahblah but it's super frustrating how dumb they are about xyz and the plot only works because they're dumb about xyz.' Wise Man's Fear gets this a lot, and it's a very similar issue with the ladyfriend being an Achilles heel and all, but again there's this weird inability to sort out the characters having problems facing problematic issues as problematic and the text doing the same. *Because much was we goons hate TvTropes we end up doing the same poo poo in slightly less obnoxious ways 99% of the time
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May 8, 2014 04:43
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Is there really a tvtrope for "critics beating a dead horse"?
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May 16, 2014 15:10
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Republic of Thieves is bad. The romance is the least of its problems. I would have been happier with a book that was nothing but Locke and Sabetha having dinner. I enjoy their conversations and their relationship has obvious, personal stakes. This book is about a prank war and summer acting camp. They used to rob casinos and run multilayered cons evading secret police and vigilantes! Rather than going deeper into the politics of the Gentleman Bastards or why Sabetha left, there is a gigantic detour with a con even less compelling than the election that only matters if you've been brainwashed or have a magic gun to your head. The Sanzas are great, but there is a limit to dressing up a story about paying off some jerk's debts by performing a play. The bonds magi are a strong third plot. Their issues actually matter. I cannot remember dreading anything in a book like when the Locke foreshadowing piled up. I don't want this and I don't care how it is explained. Go rob a bank. I'll even settle for purse snatching swircheroos. I've been thinking Lies may have been a poor setup for a series. They left behind a vibrant setting and some great characters. Things in Camorr seem important, even in flashbacks that have inherently limited tension. I am surprised by how much interest I have in Book 0.
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Jun 21, 2014 11:09
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Scott Lynch's entry in the Rogues anthology is one of the most charming and fun stories I've ever read. It's a caper that's not set in the Locke world. Instead it's a combination of traditional fantasy and steampunk with a good bit of wizardry mixed in. I loved Red Skies and Republic, but this rivals TLoLL for my favorite thing he's written.
LASER BEAM DREAM fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jun 22, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 18:46
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Just finished Lies, it was very refreshing - I'll be reading the other two in short order. I'm interested in recommendations of other books/authors that have similar subject matter and high-paced action.
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Jul 9, 2014 02:52
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The Riyria Revelations by Michael J. Sullivan is primarily about two experienced thieves. It leans much more towards epic fantasy rather then heist books, but there are capers through out the series.
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Jul 9, 2014 03:59
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Riyria is pretty good and also a bit more consistent than the Locke Lamora series has been for me. tLoLL is head and shoulders above Riryia but they were alright. Riryia also has the advantage of having a couple prequel/novellas floating around, I think a couple were even for the low-low price of free..? I liked how they broke into that tower full of magic swords in the one book, caught me off-guard. And I liked the dwarf. Also there's the Eli Monpress books however, it kind of went farther into chosen one/deus ex machina than I'd really wanted 0 suddenly errybody is all I AM SPACE JESUS and then problems solved. Felt like a Hamilton space opera without all the sexing of high school girls.
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Jul 9, 2014 04:13
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Eli Monpress is a little closer to Lies than Riyria is, at least in tone. Lies is very energetic and every sentence has its own personality, and Eli Monpress comes close to this, while Riyria is pretty bog standard, in my opinion.
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Jul 9, 2014 07:35
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