View original postI do remember that the second chapter was essentially a large metaphor for what Locke and his gang are doing. I liked the second chapter more than the first. The first was an introduction to the gang as adults and the start of their Salvarra game. There was nothing wrong with it, but the time-hopping, going back and forth between the present and the immediate past even outside of the interludes, took a little getting used to at first, and at the end of the day, it's still an introduction.

View original postBut in that second chapter we get Locke at his finest fakery, completely slipping into the confidences of the Salvarras. While in the background, people fight and are devoured by various dangerous sea creatures. It's a metaphor for what will happen to Locke and his gang if they slip up, if they're careless, which makes you worry whether or not Locke has fully grown up from being the boy who stole too much.

View original postAnd then at the end, of course, the conquisterialla (I don't have the book on hand to tell me how to spell that) falls for a simple trick from the shark-thing and dies. The Don Salvarra laments that she fell for such a simple trick, while at the same time he falls for Locke's trick.

View original postI like the confidence game element of this book. It's something you don't see in fantasy very often, or at least I haven't, but it's a lot of fun. This book actually came out fairly close to Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn novel, which featured a heist, something else you don't see much in fantasy. Of course, Sanderson never really focused on his heist, and the book ended up being about something else. But Lynch gives us the confidence game and the wonderful abilities of the Gentleman Bastards all the way in. I appreciate it for that. The book really is something different, rather than being a cover for something else. (The something else that Mistborn turned into, especially over the full trilogy, is really very good, but it's not what it started out pretending to be.)

View original postI remember thinking this time around that it was just a touch unrealistic that the Don would fall so quickly and fully for Locke's game. But I have to remember that the rich of Camorr are completely unused to being the targets of thieves. The city is under the Secret Peace, and the wealthy are supposed to be untouchable. Which makes it a lot of fun that Locke and his company come along and touch them, just for the fun of it. I love that they have a huge vault full of the money they've stolen, and they don't even do anything with it. They just like to run daring plans and get away with it.

View original postBut of course, I think Lynch also realized that Salvarra's complete gullibility was just a little hard to swallow, so he had Locke himself lampshade it in the next chapter, which we'll get to shortly.

View original postI liked the bit with the Austershalin brandy, especially with the fake cask of the unaged stuff. You really get a sense of what an enormous temptation this is for the Salvarras. Which of course is why they should have been more careful of it. And perhaps they would have been, given just a little more time to get into things, which is why Locke's upcoming internal lampshading ends up being so brilliant.

View original postI don't remember much about the interludes here, except that I think they contain more warnings about how Locke could get all his people killed if he doesn't reign in his desire to pull a fast one on everything that moves regardless of the consequences. Which, of course, is a foreshadowing of the very most direct variety.