I find the books quite riveting but also a bit repetitive, if that makes any sense? I’m debating why I rated this three stars upon finishing it (here I am, coming up on about a two month delay between reading and reviewing), and I think it has to do with the narrative arc.
We start with an in media res prologue that messes with the fundamental premise of the entire book, aka that Jean and Locke are on the outs. It doesn’t seem like we’ll actually get there, and so you spend the first x hundred pages waiting to get back to that moment and see how cleverly Jean and Locke manage to fool their third Mexican standoff victim. Because of course there’s no Gentleman Bastards series if Jean and Locke are no longer brothers. With The Lies of Locke Lamora finishing as it did, there are precious few people left in the world who these two can rely upon.
In a sense, this book is a classic con game (wrapped in another con game, with a third con game strung along) heist novel + Robin Hood + political intrigue, with a pretty vivid imagination when it comes to world building. The biggest issue for me is that for a second time around, Locke and Jean are in for a series of endlessly high stakes, are going to succeed against tremendous odds, but walk away with a Pyrrhic victory. And after the arc of GB #1, the highs are lower and the lows and higher, so everything does feel a bit like retreading on the same worn grooves, but lightly.
The issue is that against SUCH high odds we know that these two will pull off a daring escape. If the odds were lower–and losing didn’t signify Death and Destruction–I think the stakes would be reasonable and the risk of failure would be acute. Instead, we know that they’ll have to succeed on all the death defying bits…or there’s no Book 3 (which, to be clear, I will read, just…in a bit).
