Red Seas Under Red Skies

After a my unfortunate run of unimpressive reads, this finally felt like coming home. I've put off reading this book for a while because I loved the first book so much I didn't want to ruin my memories of it, but those worries were proven to be unfounded. The second instalment to the Gentleman Bastards series is just as fantastic as the first.

A heist story in a fantasy setting done RIGHT.

How Scott Lynch balances intrigue, suspense, drama, and humour so masterfully is beyond me.

The structure, the writing, is all meticulous and effective, but somehow also never fails to be exciting and entertaining (EVERY. SINGLE. LINE.).

Not a second of it was boring. It knew when to be light, when to be heavy, and when to be both.

The dialogue is truly the star of the show, the way these characters swear should be considered an art-form. It's almost poetry.

Word of warning: this man has a way of making you fall in love with characters just to murder them in the most brutal ways. I learned that in the first book and this one just served as an unfriendly reminder.

The beginning was confusing as hell because so many things were going on at once, but then again the characters were confused too. Enjoyed this a lot. Didn't think it'd be so much fun with just Locke and Jean but omg it totally was. The new characters were amazing, especially the Poison Orchid crew, but I also really liked Selendri.


—Audiobook notes (spoilers galore)—

• Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen were getting beaten like a dusty carpet.

Building on the first one, I felt that I enjoyed the heist side of this one much more. It reminds me of the movie “Lucky Number Slevin” (which wasn't as good as this book), where our heroes are thrust into situation after situation where they are being exploited for their unique set of skills. The main arc with the Sinspire was the the one I was most interested in, but felt the resolution wasn't as strong. Leaving off much more in the middle of the story than the first book, I'll need to read #3 to know where this one goes.

Full review at SFF Book Review.

This is just a very quick impression. I could talk about Scott Lynch for days.
If you loved The Lies of Locke Lamora as much as me, you will feel an equal reluctance in returning to that universe of awesome fantasy places, quippy con men and a group of guys who are like brothers. Too much has been lost at the end of book one, too many things were still resonating with me and so I took a break.

The break lasted until now - another publication date set for The Republic of thieves (October 2013) and my boyfriend reading Locke Lamora for the first time, chuckling and shouting “That is so awesome” on every other page.

Scott Lynch has managed something very few authors do. To bring back a sense of the known and beloved characters and world he set up in book one, and to add something entirely new, to thrown even more difficult situations their way and have them get out by the skin of their teeth - if at all.
This swashbuckling adventure on the high seas and in the vibrant city of Tal Verrar was possibly even more fun than our first stop in Camorr. Please don't make me choose!

If you're just looking for a hint whether to pick up the second book at all: DO IT!
It's the same humor we learned to love in book one, the same great characters, just new adventures, cleverer tricks, cons within cons and - a special bonus for me - kittens!

9,5/10 stars

I was told Red Seas wasn't quite as good as Lies, but it was still pretty great. I very much enjoy Lynch's style of writing, his slow reveals, and determination not to pull any punches (save one which is the reason this book is going at 4 rather than 5).

Most of this book could stand under the same review as Lies: Locke is great. Jean is great. This book also reminds us that cats are great. The new characters are a fun bunch, and I absolutely love how Lynch decides to completely upend the “Women are Bad Luck on Ships” to “Go out to ship without a woman and you are DOOMED!” He cadre of lady pirates (which does make me think of that Muppet Babies episode with the PiRETTES! Anyone remember that? No? Awesome) are great not only because they are fabulous examples of buccaneers, but because not once does anyone every question their skill or authority because of their gender. Too many times, women are brought into “manly” roles to just have it pointed out how special they are for achieving these roles against the odds. In Lynch's world, there are no odds. People in their roles got them through skill or luck or bribery or whatever, but never because or in spite of their gender. Lynch even makes a point of mentioning both male and female extras among the guards, crews, and other Redshirts that appear throughout the book. As messed up as Locke's world can be, this part they got right.

Thrilling adventure, fast pacing, convoluted schemes. If you like Lies (and are okay with letting the Bondsmagi plotline sorta drop off for a novel), you'll enjoy this one.

The only thing that really bugged me was the teaser scene. You get this great lead in to the story and then slowly build up to that point over the course of the novel. We know Jean would never turn on Locke as sure as we know Locke is not going to die of poison anytime soon in this 7 book series. What we don't know is why he is faking it. The answer seems obvious, but Locke goes out of his way to say that Jean is giving him no hand signals. NO clue. This is getting real, y'all. Then we build and build and build and find that Locke just missed Jean's hand signal. Locke, master of observation missed this hand signal? That just doesn't pan out and was such a let down. Maybe if there'd been some sort of Bondsmagi trickery that made Locke miss the hand signal ... maybe... but that is never explained. I'd even forget it if Lynch hadn't used it as the teaser for the whole book, setting it up as some huge epic turning point only to end up an utterly forgettable moment. Boo hiss.

Rant aside, the story still stands, the world still stands, and I'm looking forward to the series continuing, though I may wait a bit to read three until four is closer on the horizon.

Not bad for a second book. Likable new characters, another exciting heist that leaves the reader in the dark until the very end, and many adventures that make me want to play a D&D campaign in this world. This book made me want to play the old Pirates! game from Sid Meier again, and I didn't regret that either.

Executive Summary: This book is uneven, and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as [b:The Lies of Locke Lamora 127455 The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1) Scott Lynch http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320532483s/127455.jpg 2116675], but the second half more than makes up for the first to make this an enjoyable read.Full ReviewThis book is very uneven. The beginning was painfully slow. It seemed like little happened and Mr. Lynch was determined to describe everything in minute details.A lot of what did happen seemed like a rehash of the first book in a new city and not nearly as fun.Locke and Jean are dealing with the aftermath of the first book and things aren't going well. Like the last book this book mixes chapters of the present with flashback chapters filling in the reader on past events as they are relevant to the current story. I still think this works well.Thankfully somewhere in the middle or so the book takes a turn. We have ships, and pirates, and of course plots within plots.This book adds some greatly needed female characters, and provides interesting superstitions about sailing a boat without female officers and cats. Cats? Yeah, though kittens seem preferred.The humor and the relationship of Jean and Locke continue, albeit under even more strain than the last novel. There are a lot of great quotes to choose from again.I would almost call this book stand alone like the last save for some very major plot points left unresolved at the end and obviously the need to have read [b:The Lies of Locke Lamora 127455 The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1) Scott Lynch http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320532483s/127455.jpg 2116675] first.Overall the second half of the book was much better and despite the slow start the book really got it's hooks into me and was hard to put down.I debated between 4 stars and 3 on here and decided to round up since it ended better than it began.3.5 Stars

DNF at 60%. This was my second try, I still can't stand this book for multiple reasons.

Lets start out with saying I absolutely adored the first book. It was fantastic, witty, charming, with characters that made me attached. Then shit went down at the end and yeah.

Here we have Locke and Jean, moving to a new city. Old habits die hard, they can't live an honest life, so they get tangled up in crime again.

Lets just start out with pointing out that this book is long. Don't get me wrong, long books are fine, I have nothing against them, if they are written in a tight way. Here? None of that. the first HALF of the book is just a bunch of oh so (in)convenient way of Locke and Jean being noticed by basically everyone in the city, everyone wanting to recruiting them, just the two of them playing on all sides and none on any of them. It didn't feel smart, just... try hard.
Especially annoying for a book with a BURNING SHIP on the cover that has close to no ships until about half way in. I'm sorry, but it all felt like dragging as hell as we STILL had no pirates, STILL had no pirates, then when they arrived, they were ridiculous.

Mr. Lynch seems to have a sailing fetish. One we have ships, every sentence has 56 random seafaring related words that meant literally nothing to me. They could have been in ancient Chinese ballet slang, written in hieroglyphs. The funny thing is, not even the protagonists understood it, nobody did, it was just chucked around to make me feel like I had a stroke. Niiiice.

The characters are ridiculous as well. “We follow this pirate captain because she is our best chance. Oh, so she recruits random other pirates she takes on after she takes over their ships? While her very small children are running around? What could go wroooong?” It really feels like Mr. Lynch believes that criminals are all super reasonable people, none of the are prone to revenge or just going “I don't fucking care”. You can tell them they will be killed if they hurt the free roaming kids of someone they do have a reason to dislike.
It just... feels like he never met any human beings.

I love Jean. Always did. My beef is, though, that the only time something happened from his point of view was when he talked to his insta-love girl. Thanks for nothing.

There were barely any actual tricks in this. I loved the first book for that, not for random, boring chains of events. Not even the occasional good joke could change that. I'm sorry, but this book pissed me off. I really hated it. It made no sense, I couldn't justify finishing it.

When you stop and think of the effort Lynch has had to put into creating the world these Gentleman Bastards, you've got to tip your hat to him. It's truly mind-boggling. Even if you aren't charmed by Locke Lamora, if you don't cheer for Jean Tannen, if you don't want to see them triumph over all their marks, if you don't find their games – long and short – amusing, ingenious, daring, clever, and occasionally nail-biting, you still have to acknowledge the sheer brilliance of this man's work – it's so intricate, so well-developed, so detailed, it's breathtaking. Oh, and you're wrong to not fall in love with this series. Utterly wrong.

Red Seas picks up a couple of years after the events of [b:The Lies of Locke Lamora|127455|The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1)|Scott Lynch|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320532483s/127455.jpg|2116675], with Jean and Locke still dealing with the fallout – with some flashbacks to the days immediately following it, where the psychological and physical damage is a lot more evident. There's a lot for these guys to recover from, and the best way they know to do that is to get back on the horse and try to pull off a job, and not just any job – where's the fun in doing anything less than the impossible?

Because, like [b:The Lies of Locke Lamora|127455|The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1)|Scott Lynch|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320532483s/127455.jpg|2116675], this book's plot involves several con jobs, a lot of back-stabbing, double-dealing, and other forms of lying and duplicity, it's very difficult to write much about the plot without spoiling something. So let me just say, in the midst of the multiple layers of twists and turns here, you get a casino, assassins, enough aliases to really confuse a guy, a corrupt military mastermind, a twisted variation on gladiatorial games, poisons, blackmail, counterfeit antique furniture, love, extortion, and pirates!

I'm simply in awe of the way Lynch does all that he does with these books. Do yourself a favor, and start reading.

I won't get into the plot of this one so as not to spoil the previous book.

I loved this book. The only reason I gave it 4 stars is because of how slow certain parts felt. I think that's inevitable when such a large section of the book is spent on a ship. My favorite part of the book is definitely Locke and Jean's relationship. Lynch really dove into the dynamics and struggles of their relationship, and their constant need to save the other at the expense of themselves. I thought that their loyalty to each other was so admirable and wonderful. I did miss some of the fancy, white collar criminal activity we got in the first book. This one was a little more rugged and life threatening. However, the characters more than made up for it, and the ending had me screaming. I am very excited to continue on with this series. I'm getting even more nervous for the wait after the 3rd book the closer I get to it. I know Lynch is one of the author's notorious for taking forever to finish a series. We'll see!

TW: alcohol, amputation, blackmail, death, gambling, kidnapping, murder, poisoning, profanity, sexually explicit scenes, torture, violence, poisoning, gore

i enjoyed this book besides the insta love that appeared in the middle of the book that fucked me sideways
i mean seriously, ezia's ENTIRE existance is to be a way for jean to fuck i guess
remove her from the book and NOTHING changes ..
scott trying to convince us they are in love... no lol theyve known each other for barely a month
authors need to desperately learn the difference between love and lust because im tired of yall writing this garbage
otherwise it was enjoyable. i know i'll probably be disappointed when sabetha finally shows up. actually i kinda hope they will learn she died 9 years ago lol shortly after she left them. otherwise it will prob just be more  unnecessary romance i dont care about with a character ive learned nothing about (except shes hot? i guess?) shoe horned in the last book. oh well. lets find out.
also yes the filler is fucking insane in this book. i think it couldve been 100 - 200 pages shorter. im not kidding, theres that much filler. all the pirate lingo that nobody needs to know (and turned out to be completely useless anyway... we learned that with the MC's for NO REASON..) extremely long scenes that lead to nothing... the amount of pages i just plain skipped lol

This book was a lot of fun, way better than I was led to believe it was going to be. The prose is smoother than the first book, although the flashbacks are borderline filler this time. I also think the book could have been tightened up a bit, the middle has a bit of meander while the ending felt a bit rushed. But damn do I love Locke and Jean's relationship, and the epilogue of the book is great. Lynch also continues to be excellent at dialogue.

8.5/10

I am so conflicted about this book.

Let me start with the extraordinary - the author's writing style and skill with words, especially when it comes to sarcasm and creative insults, is worthy of praise. I do not enjoy crass language in books, yet I find it tastefully executed in the books from this series.

I also love our main characters, as well as some of the supporting ones (captain Zamira Drakasha for example) - they have managed to carve themselves a place in my heart and I am deeply interested in what happens to them.

However, the plot of this book was a total mess, to say the least.
We have a saying here - the author brought water from 9 different wells, trying to create a web of mystery, only for it all to make no logical sense at the end.

We begin with the fallout from book one and this part I actually enjoyed, to the point that I started predicting a new favorite.

But then, the author seemingly decided that this is not grand enough and threw another plot line with another villain.

And then, at about 40% of the book, all of sudden he changed his mind on what the book will be about and introduced a whole new setting and yet another plot line. It felt so abrupt and, in my opinion, completely unnecessary, to the point that I lost all interest.
Then a chapter before the end, we are back to the original plot line, which made it feel disjointed and rushed as though it was an afterthought.
And just to clarify, I did like the place where the characters ended and the cliffhanger that was introduced, but getting there was exhausting.

I also didn't like the fake morality the author tried to inject. I mean, you are writing a book about two thieves who steal for the fun of it, sir. One of them literally overtook a gang by beating little kids to assert his dominance. Any financial and social morality you'd like to share rings hollow in this context. Locke isn't Robin Hood - he is literally a “priest” of the god of thieves. He steals for the sake of stealing. He is not interested in doing honest work who benefits honest people. I don't care that he steals from rich people, he has no high horse to sit on. And I liked him in book 1 because he didn't pretend to be anything else.

All in all, the book is okay, but I had very high expectations and am definitely disappointed by it.

I do plan to continue with the series and hope for going back to greatness in book 3.

Only slightly off the magnificent standards set by the first book. This time the main action takes place at sea and is great entertainment even so. There are pirates, love, cunning and rivaling power hungry peeps. Definately word a recommendation in case you have been living under a rock and dont already know.

I liked The Lies Of Locke Lamora overall, but I did have to slog my way through it at certain parts, and I was only really invested in it at certain parts of the story. So originally I wasn't going to check out its sequel.
I'm really glad I did anyway.

I can't pinpoint as to why exactly, maybe because I was already used to the characters and the style, but this one just clicked for me. Aside from exciting, it was also humorous and tragic at times, and it worked. During the second part of the story, the flashback chapters were dropped and, as interesting as they were, the story did flow better as a result.

There is however a lot going on, and at times it feels like you can't keep up with all the different parties that are either seemingly against them or with them, but it does all come together in the end. Also I'm just really glad that they took Regal with them :) That kitten won me over in one sentence!

Listen, this book was 5 stars and every bit as good as its predecessor. Then I get to the middle of the book where the protagonists go to place you know you won't enjoy reading about. I'm 28 and I still remember the feeling of dread and loathing associated with under-water levels and caves in video games (looking at you Sonic and Pokémon), and that's the exact same feeling I got when the author PAUSED the main narrative to introduce a side mission. I can't find the motivation to pick it back up. I will eventually, but for now it gets a 3 star review for the perfect first half of a book.

EDIT: it's still a 5 star book, and it's only slows down for FOUR CHAPTER CYCLES... ughh. But it's all worth it once the side quest is fully underway.

I enjoyed this probably just as much as the first one. Although I'm getting annoyed with some plotlines being ignored like what Loche's real name is, how Chains met his fate, and what happened with Falconer? I realize there are supposed to be more books but are you really just going to prolong the suspense among multiple books?

I loved the pirate battle scenes. I haven't read very many and this by far the best one! This book felt more slow in the beginning than the first one and a lotttt of pages were dedicated to gambling which I could care less about. After the half way mark it picks up and absolutely rocks. Lynch's characters are a blast, I love the dry wit, and I'm immediately reading book 3

I think this suffers in comparison to the fantastic first? But this feels like a star rating I might change over time. Good things: Locke & Jean continue to be friend goals, no shortage of witty dialogue as always, and now there's a pirate queen! Plus Jean has a lovely romantic connection! Downsides: a wee bit too much sailing talk for me, a thing that I find happens regularly in the second book of a series with too plotty of a plot, and a sudden sadness (no spoilers) near the end that feels too abruptly handled for the emotions involved. BUT I am in for the long haul with Locke & Jean so for sure will read the 3rd!

It is undoubtedly true Lynch has masterful prose and Locke and Jean are a very entertaining duo. The plotting does seem strange though like Lynch just had to keep adding elements because the book wasn't long enough and then there's a whole side adventure in the middle of the book. By the end the threads kinda wrap together but don't know if it was all that satisfying.

After reading this I'm confident in saying most fantasy series would benefit from including one book where the characters become pirates for a bit.

Locke and Jean are still the beating heart of the series but the host of new characters manage to hold their own.

Not quite as tight as the first book, and it didn't add much new depth to the characters, but still a swashbuckling ride that never stops entertaining. The bold shift in style makes up for any small grumbles I might have.

Left me looking forward to book 3.