More Lamora

[drcpunk]

Still reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, since I was prioritizing it lower than a couple of other things.



I'm back in the swing of it. I think I like it better when Lynch is not trying to do fancy intercutting. I don't mean alternating chapters of boy Lamorra and man Lamorra -- that's fine. I mean the back and forth within a short span of time in one chapter. This sort of thing can work, but in this book, these are the parts where I decide I can put the book down and read something else for a while.

I think I also find the language better when there's a longer straight narrative, although this may be my imagination. As I've said, Lynch's prose isn't as lively as Brust's at Brust's best.

My annoyance with the language doesn't get in the way of my enjoying the plot or the characters or the general story. And, I am aware that this is the kind of book where the language of Elfland and the language of Poughkeepsie cannot be kept separate. As a panel on the topic at Boskone concluded, there are books where part of the point is the blend. Nevertheless, I still prefer Brust on one end of things and Kushner on the other.

Plotwise, I've hit one of the twists agrumer told me about, Capa Basavi's decision that Locke will marry his daughter. I find that knowing about this not only did not spoil the scene, but also increased my enjoyment of it. I started this book knowing that Locke broke the Secret Peace, that someone knows about this and will try to blackmail him, that his boss wants him to marry the boss's daughter, and that he has to make a moral decision between vengeance and not letting a lot of people die. Given agrumer's complaint, I'd guess that if there isn't some third path, he gives up his vengeance. And the villain is someone who would normally be a tale's hero.

I'm wondering about the Grey King and the blackmailer, of course, and getting a lot of ideas, some of which are barely foreshadowed -- but that may be enough -- and some of which I hope are wrong simply because I find them less interesting.

I do like the way Lynch uses the city makes the map of the city useful for the reader. As panelists at a long ago Readercon once noted, not every fantasy epic needs a map. Indeed, for some, a map would make no sense or would be a spoiler. But, this book is one where the map provided is exactly correct, showing neighborhoods and waterways, but nothing more.

Comments

[drivingblind.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, there's more. Much more to come. I'm leaning forward in my chair, anticipating the moments. :)

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

I'm up to where all the Gentleman Bastards except Locke and Jean are dead.

I still find the prose overly cluttered. I'm not so far seeing the problem agrumer saw, given that Locke has shown that he cares very much about people other than himself. Granted, I'm not at that part of the book, and most of the people Locke cares about are now dead.

I did not find Locke-in-a-barrel suspenseful, though I doubt I was meant to. I mean, I already know there's a sequel out. I did find the alternating chapters interesting at that point, since this is where, as agrumer told me, Jean comes into his own as a second protagonist. This probably counts as foreshadowing that everyone else is going to die.

I really hope that Nazca is really dead. I mean, it seems the way to bet, and it doesn't feel like the kind of book where she turns out to be the Gray King.

I like Countess Amberglass (always assuming she's not the Gray King, which seems equally unlikely, but...). I think she's the first person I've liked, and I'm wondering if it's because of the language. She's the most like a Kushner character. Speaking of which, I recommend Kushner's Riverside books if you haven't read them.

I'm also wondering, given what agrumer said, if the mage guy isn't running the whole show.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Hm. Okay, see, one problem I have is that the identity of the Grey King is not important. He's -- some guy we haven't heard of until he tells us who he is, and he's working with some people who, yeah, sure, they're his twins, no reason they can't be, but, well, any explanation would work. It doesn't fit . It just exists.

I was vaguely trying to figure out logically who could have such connections to the Spider, but there's no one. This guy is a brute force guy -- that is, how he does things involves the brute force of hiring a scary mercenary dude from an order that got made up by the author and that can basically do anything the plot requires.

It isn't that I feel cheated. It's more that there wasn't a game for me there.

Yes, some stuff is adequately foreshadowed -- the wraithstone plan, for example. But, for the few bits that are foreshadowed, I have to read an awful lot of irrelevant stuff that Lynch just isn't good enough to make interesting.

This is important because I don't really care about any of the characters, and there's no moral center to the book. All of that would be fine if the plot were cleverer or tighter or both.

I found that the cliffhanger chapters did not increase the tension for me. So, Locke's in a barrel of horse urine? Okay, I know he survives and goes on to the next book. The flashback chapter and the introduction of the Spider that happen next are well enough written that they hold my interest -- but I don't really care how Locke gets out of that barrel. I know he will.

I found the whole sequence of revenge-bound Locke getting clothing annoying. Oh, I don't mind that it wasn't easy, but we are marking time here, he will get the clothing, and I'm just not that interested.

I found the sequence where Locke tries to convince everyone that they have to stop the Wraithstone bomb hard not to skip over. It isn't well enough written, and I found myself saying, "No, you say X, not Y, you twit."

Now, I did like the bit with the ship sinking as a death offering. I did like him punching out the Spider. I did like the Spider's choice of successors -- but her comment on the necessary selling of one's soul? Frankly, there's not enough there there for me to give a damn.

I did like the bit about Locke not being his first name -- I was wondering about that one myself.