The Lies of Locke Lamora

 The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, 752 pages.

Locke Lamora is the leader of the criminal gang The Gentleman Bastards. Unlike most of the other gangs in the city of Camorr (a fantasy city-state reminiscent of Venice) they use con-artistry to steal from the cities nobles, which is astoundingly dangerous since it violates the secret agreement between the leader of Camorr's criminal underground and the Duke's forces. Luckily they are very good at what they do, so most of the drama of this book comes from people using knowledge of their wrong doing to throw the gang in way over their heads, pitching them headfirst into magic and politics.

This was a pretty good book! It's been a while since I read epic scale fantasy, and it was nice to get back to it. I think it would be a great book if some of the ways it was cut together weren't so weird and jarring. That being said, that the flow of chapters was the one big hang-up for me, I have a lot of hope that I'll like the next book even more! Camorr is a really cool location, and it was really fun to see the way that Locke's scheme came together. This is a very clever book, which made it fun for me, and it had a laser focus on a small group of characters and a relatively small area that's not common for fantasy of this scale. I'd definitely recommend it, and I'm planning on reading the sequel.