Sometimes I just want to find some cool art to include to break up a wall of text.
Red Seas Under Red Skies picks up where The Lies of Locke Lamora left off, with Jean and Locke fleeing the city of Camorr (As always, forgive any errs in spelling, as I only know these names phonetically!). There's a lot of emotional fallout for the pair to deal with, but eventually they pick up their games again in Tal Verrar. Naturally, as is the case with the stories of Locke Lamora, everything falls to shit when someone decides to start messing with their lives. The Archon of Tal Verrar tricks the pair into drinking a poison that places them in his power, and they must do his bidding for him to give them the antidote to keep the poison at bay every eight weeks. Locke takes on the new identity of a rogue ship captain--I cannot find the spelling to save my life--and 'steals' one of the Archon's ships (with the Archon's blessing, obvs), with the goal of hazing Tal Verrar and forcing the people of the city to turn to the Archon for protection. But--surprise!--their plan falls to shit too. These books are like the definition of putting your characters up trees and throwing rocks at them.
Like the first book, I listened to this as an audiobook from Audible. Again, the narrator is great, but I find that Lynch's intricate timeline braiding limits this book's effectiveness as an audiobook: I got lost a lot. We jump around between various points in time--from Locke's depression after leaving Camorr, to a stint in a town centered around a brutal slave fighting game, to their current time in Tal Verrar and on the Sea of Brass. I suspect that had I been reading the book the delineations between times would be clearer. As much as I like the technique of plot braiding, this might be a caution against getting too complex.
Back to the concept of throwing rocks at your characters: Lynch gives poor Jean Tannen a scant few weeks of happiness in love before cruelly ripping it away when Ezri dies most dramatically. Now, the husband and I have a terrible habit of coming up with 'corrections' to plots that we think would make them better, and I'm going to indulge myself here. This part of the plot feels really hokey to me, in a "we end the book exactly where we started" kind of way. You know how (bad) sitcoms wrap up that week's storyline by the end of the show in a nicely contained box that doesn't effect any other episode's continuity? It's dissatisfying because it feels like the characters aren't really changing.
So I put this idea forth that, if someone had to die, why not Jean himself? I feel like there was a huge opportunity there for an interesting dynamic. Ezri was a really fascinating character--a daughter of nobility who ran off to become a pirate, a damn good fighter, and angry. I have a huge soft spot for angry women characters. Both Ezri and Locke deeply love Jean (yes, in different ways, doesn't change the depth) and, say, if Jean had made them both promise to watch out for the other, because he saw the depths of depression Locke went into when the rest of their brothers were killed, etc. we could have found this really fascinating dynamic of a pair continuing their game while simultaneously despising each other. Each would be the other's only link to Jean, and therefore a kind of bittersweet partner that they might cling to despite the pain and irritation. A mutual respect could grow of that. And, I'll admit, I would enjoy messing with anyone's automatic expectation that they should become romantically involved, because I could see both characters answering "What? Ew, no!" if the question were raised.
But that's not what happened, so eh. Kill your darlings, I say. Don't let your love for a character keep them around when it would be a better plot choice to dump them.
The other plot point I wondered about was Stragos' poison. I had this inkling early on that the poison was a red herring, but it never came to fruit. What if there was no poison at all? Locke makes his living on deceiving people with words and actions, wouldn't it be nice to see the same played on him? I kept waiting for the end reveal, especially after the alchemist was killed and no more antidotes were to be had, but we ended on this cliffhanger of "will Locke die?" Well, obviously we know he won't die, it's his series. So maybe that is the reveal and it'll happen in the next book, but it would have been a fun moment for a reader if it had actually been revealed.
I feel like I really could keep on talking about this book for ages, but I'll wrap it up with a note on Lynch's dialogue. I like swearing. I like swearing a lot. So I really enjoy reading a book where the swearing is natural and fits in context, and honestly, it makes Lynch's dialogue pretty funny and on point. As a whole I think he's pretty great at dialogue, with or without swearing, because the quips always make me laugh. On a whole, though, this book suffers from pacing. It felt like the longest audiobook of my life.
"I also do a brisk trade in putting knives to peoples throats and shouting at them."
Jean grinned down at her, and she handed him something in a small silk bag.
"What's this?"
"Lock of my hair," she said. "Meant to give it to you days ago, but we got busy with all the raiding. You know. Piracy. Hectic life."
"Thank you, love," he said.
"Now, if you find yourself in trouble wherever you go, you can hold up that little bag to whoever's bothering you, and you can say, 'You have no idea who you're fucking with. I'm under the protection of the lady who gave me this object of her favour.'"
"And that's supposed to make them stop?"
"Shit no, that's just to confuse them. Then you kill them while they're standing there looking at you funny."
Overall: 3.5 stars
Amazon: Red Seas Under Red Skies
More reviews: Red Seas Under Red Skies on Librarything (Average 4.05 stars)
Red Seas Under Red Skies on Goodreads (Average 4.22 stars)
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