The Lies of Locke Lamora

by Scott Lynch

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I struggled with how I really felt about this book. It isn’t bad really and a few parts were genuinely interesting and exciting. This is very clearly a case where I feel like I’m not the target audience at all, so I couldn’t connect with it on the same level others do. I did enjoy most of the very clever scheming that was present through the entire book as well as the found family aspect of the characters. The story did take a little too long to pick up though for my taste.

All My Thoughts

May contain spoilers.

This is definitely one of those books that I struggle to define my feelings about. There was nothing wrong with it really, I just personally didn’t connect with it.

The story was fine. I liked the scheming and heisting that took place. They were fun and creative, but weren’t the focus of the plot. The majority of the story feels like build up and back story. It does a lot of set up for the main focus of the book. All of the back story had purpose and was a way of explaining why things were the way they were for each character. And the author would take every flashback style chapter as an opportunity to essential hint at the nature of the next story progression chapter’s theme. While those things were entertaining I did feel like it was just taking too long. The real meat of the story doesn’t take place until the last third or so of the story.

My only other issue was the fact that every strong female character was killed off. Their deaths were all used to fuel the determination of the main male characters, both on the good guy and bad guy side of things. I did see the purpose, but it was really disappointing to see. This feels like another situation where I am clearly not the target audience. Anyone I would have enjoyed or connected with was killed off. And to be fair, a lot of the main male characters also. Honestly, so many people died in this book. I do like that Locke as the main character starts as thief out for him and his only and goes against this in order to save those that don’t deserve to die because of a personal vendetta. This is a story arc I will always enjoy and this was no different.

Overall

It was entertaining for the most part but bases a lot of it’s girth on just giving backstory build up. It is a very male driven story, though they do go in some fun directions. It does attempt to entice the reader to continue the series with hints at other important people that aren’t present, but I personally won’t be continuing.