Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA is a fairly-well-hyped fantasy debut about the charismatic leader of a gang of con artists in a city that does (or tries to do) for renaissance Venice what PERDIDO STREET STATION did for Dickensian London. Overall, I enjoyed it - the prose was technically proficient, the plot hummed along efficiently, the setting was considerably more interesting than the usual plate-mail-and-offal-carts business, and there was a good deal of welcome humor. As debut novels go it's a promising start. On the other hand, it really doesn't amount to much more than an entertaining confection. The book's apparently been optioned for a movie already, and I can see why: the dialogue's relentlessly effervescent, occasionally stretching credulity past the breaking point (characters have one-liners for every occasion even while collecting broken bones and concussions like trading cards) and the screenplay-friendly three-act structure is too often embarrassingly visible underneath the flesh of the story. It's difficult to articulate my feelings on books like this. On the one hand, Lynch's technical talent clearly elevates him above the great gormless herd of modern fantasy writers already. And there's no denying that the book is very likeable indeed, while it seems unfair to fault it based only on what it could have been. On the other hand, it's just *too damn safe*. Lynch is going to be a major player in the genre - that much is obvious already - but he has it in him to do something Seriously Good rather than settling for being the next RA Salvatore. But it's not gonna happen until he gets over his fear of failure. PERDIDO had parts that worked and parts that didn't but Mieville wrote his ambition on every page in letters of fire, and the excitement swept me, the reader, away with him. Whereas LOCKE LAMORA felt like Lynch was parceling out his ideas and his talent and calculating every story beat based on whether it would make a good start for a franchise. In short, it's worth the money, even if you're not big into fantasy - I'm emphatically not, aside from staples like Tolkien, Moorcock, and Martin, and I still enjoyed it. But it's not a *necessary* book.