Red Seas Under Red Skies

I read the first book of this series, The Lies of Locke Lamora, partially during the insanity that was National Novel Writing Month, and the rest during December. It was pretty good. It wasn't a pretty story, by any stretch, but it was entertaining and a lot of things tied together very well.

Red Seas Under Red Skies was better, in my opinion, though both were very good. They both had the rare distinction of being very entertaining, easy to read, and surprisingly deep. The bonds of friendship between Locke and Jean are touching and, while the depth of the two main characters makes the secondary characters seem shallow by comparison, most of the supporting cast is actually pretty well fleshed-out.

Like with a lot of good fiction/fantasy, it's nice to see characters mess up just because they're human, and humans make mistakes. It's also nice to see people act out of self-interest, not always having a sense of awareness that borders on supernatural.

I'm glad that I started this series, which began with an impulse buy at the Chinook Mall in Calgary. The dialogue is very witty, even unrealistically so, but it doesn't distract from the rest of the story. The descriptions are the only thing I would change. There are pages of description where maybe a paragraph or two would do. I don't need to know exactly what I'm looking at everywhere the main character goes. I usually gloss over the descriptions and let my mind fill in the gaps, especially when nothing is left to the imagination in the exposition.

There is supposedly at least one more book left in the series and I am eagerly looking forward to reading what Scott Lynch has to write.