“This is a necessary nonsense.” One of those books the first page or two convinced me to try and while it took time to click when it did it clicked hard. Switching between back story, set-up and heist, Locke Lamora and his gang of thieving “Gentlemen Bastards” are a lot of fun to spend time with in a vividly described world and a plot of “Godfather” proportions. Nice to meet a bunch of blokes (and young Bug) riffing off each other and enjoying each other’s company; there’s lots of food throwing and sweary banter going on. Lynch takes pains to make his period fantasy world thoroughly violent and immoral (and richly described, bordering on overkill) so Locke’s thievery seems heroic but the title sounds like a Scottish romance and the quote on the cover fails to mention the two blazingly obvious USPs: the humour and the superb cussing. I’m quite surprised this hasn’t reached a mass audience yet, there’s real storytelling verve at work, knock-out developments around every corner. I reckon the best age to read this would be about 18 (lots of youthful vloggers have excitedly reviewed this one and I was put in mind of Asterix and Assassin’s Creed at times) but after a run of tough-guy fiction, to dive into something so utterly playful as this was bliss. A long read, at times exhausting, but it absolutely rewards your time.
