The Lies of Locke Lamora

The first two-thirds of this book are absolutely fantastic - it's a character-driven heist story with a group of witty, likable characters that truly are gentlemen as much as they are bastards. The book takes a sharp turn after that, though - enough of one that I would classify the rest as a completely different genre - and it never quite regains the energy it had in the first part. Overall, though, it provides a nice story set in a fantasy world that manages to avoid the trappings of a “fantasy novel”.