The Lies of Locke Lamora

This is a good book, but let me put a couple warnings out there. This book is very dark and can be pretty gruesome (gory) and explicit in places. There is also a lot of profanity, in the prologue especially. I am used to the made up cuss words in a lot of fantasy, so this was a little jarring. I understand that this sets the mood for the world, but I just wanted to let others know that if this were a movie, it would be rated R.

I had trouble getting into this book. It is split into 4 parts and goes back and forth in time with “interludes” throughout the book, those are little snippets of what happened with Locke and his crew as they grew up, or sometimes events that are outside of the main plot. I enjoyed the interludes, especially the parts about Locke and his friends growing up. What I had trouble with was “Part I's” tendency to go back and forth between what Locke et al. were doing in the present and what they were doing earlier to get ready for their undertakings. It was like one of those retrospective episodes of Bones or NCIS. It completely broke the flow, and it took my brain a minute to catch up. It took me forever to get through that part, and I was afraid that it would continue in the same vein. Thankfully after the first part ended, the back and forth calms down and you really get the meat of the story.

For me, once the story picked up, it was very good. It keeps you on edge and wanting to know how/if the gang is going to get out of situation.


Also in regards to the prologue, was anyone else picturing Fagin every time the Theifmaker spoke?


Just me?