Book #36 - Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
This is the second Locke Lamora book, and while I enjoyed it (and I did), I also have quite a few criticisms of it.
I found it to be nowhere near as tightly plotted as Lies. Even with all the flashbacks in Lies, there really was only one overall objective; defeating the Grey King. But here, in Red Seas, it starts with what looks to be an Ocean's 11-type casino heist, but then we go to an actual ocean and get a pirate yarn, and then we're back and manipulating city politics and turning it into an art heist and it all just felt... confused. And the divergence into the gladitoral-like games of another near-by city state really seemed unneeded. Especially since it contributed only to a part of the overall plan. An important part yes, but it still felt like the emphasis on this outweighed it's actual importance in the structure of the story.
That isn't to say I didn't like many of the aspects going on. I always like a good pirate tale, and when the pirate captain here is a badass forty-something mother of two, yeah, I can get into that. My only problem with Drakasha was she wasn't a terribly well-developed character. She has potential, and I'd like to see her again, but the fact that she was a strong pirate captain who just happened to be a woman, I did like that.
The relationship between Locke and Jean is rather strained throughout this, and I found that got annoying after awhile. I understand completely why it is, but I would rather they get over it and revert to their normal bantering and not the continual pity party that conversations between the two often reverted to.
SLIGHT SPOILER: I also really needed them to have succeeded in their objective. Lynch has laid them low, taken pretty much everything from them (again!) and so one victory, even if not as big as they hoped, would've been good. Especially since Lynch has left them in a rather dire predicament again, a bit of a cliff hanger for when he finally gets around to finishing the next book.
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