• Author: Scott Lynch
• Series: Gentleman Bastard #2
• Genre: Fantasy
• No. of pages: 628
• Dates read: 07.03.2021 – 28.03.2021
• Star Rating: 4 stars
• Challenge: Sequels

Plot: Thief and con-man extraordinaire, Locke Lamora, and the ever lethal Jean Tannen have fled their home city and the wreckage of their lives. But they can’t run forever and when they stop they decide to head for the richest, and most difficult, target on the horizon. The city state of Tal Verarr. And the Sinspire. The Sinspire is the ultimate gambling house. No-one has stolen so much as a single coin from it and lived. It’s the sort of challenge Locke simply can’t resist… but Locke’s perfect crime is going to have to wait. Someone else in Tal Verarr wants the Gentleman Bastards’ expertise and is quite prepared to kill them to get it. Before long, Locke and Jean find themselves engaged in piracy. Fine work for thieves who don’t know one end of a galley from another. 

We finally got there!!! It took me nearly a month to read but I finally finished this book and let me tell you. I really really enjoyed it.

So, the first thing I want to get out of the way is this book is very slow-paced. I thought I would finish it in about 2 weeks and it took my 22 days. Because the pacing was so slow I found it hard at times to sit down and read my normal 50 pages a day. The pacing wasn’t actually that bad it’s just more of a marathon book that you should dedicate more time. I assumed I would be able to whizz through it but the book had other plans.

One of the things I think this book did better than the first one is it felt a lot more structured. You flick between different points in time in both books and this felt a lot more rooted and I didn’t feel lost while reading it. Like last time the dialogue was amazing and witty and one of my favourite parts of the novel. I really enjoyed watching Locke turn on the charisma and talk his way out of complicated situations.

The action was also done really well. I felt that the fight scenes were easy to follow and really exciting and while I wasn’t super fussed by all the ship lingo it was easy to follow and understand which was great.

The plot itself was really enjoyable. It was super smart and exciting but without being all over the place and hard to follow. I did feel that a lot of pages were dedicated to the set up and less to the actual execution. I did end up looking at my book like how are they going to solve this in 100 pages but I liked what Lynch did with the ending.

Locke as per usual was great and I loved his partnership with Jean but I wanted to highlight the female characters in this story in particular. One of my criticisms with Book 1 was that it was very male heavy and there weren’t a lot of fleshed out female characters and this time round I felt the complete opposite. I really enjoyed Captain Drakasha and Lieutenant Delmastro in this novel. Watching two women work seamlessly together and being really successful at their job was great. Overall, the female characters were brill. They were in power, could handle themselves against the male characters and I loved them!

It took me some time initially to get my brain around the city of Tal Verarr. Trying to figure out their politics and how it worked but once I got a grip of it, it was really easy to follow and was super interesting. I really like this dynamic of following these two characters as they make their way through the world and each story is different. You are able to learn more about the world as a whole by exploring a different area with each book.

Overall, despite how long it took me to get through this was a super exciting adventure with better structuring and characters. I heard Book 3 is way better than Book 2 so I am super looking forward to that.

The next book I will be reviewing is Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, I wanted to read the first book before the Netflix show came out! A little disclaimer, I am not blown away by this book so far so maybe it will just be the TV show for me.