Read-Along: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Part 3

This is the third post for my participation in a read-along of Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, hosted by Dark Cargo, @ohthatashley at SF Signal, My Awful Reviews, and the Little Red Reviewer.  What this means is...

Read-Along posts discuss a specific portion ofThe Lies of Locke Lamora and are therefore full of spoilers!  I will do a usual review post once the book is complete.

Today I'm focusing on the segment between Chapter 5 through the Interlude called "The Half Crown War".  This one's a little late, thanks to a busy Saturday and the fact that I seemed to have a lot to say this week.  A lot of the following is wild speculation, so all of you people who've read the book can feel free to mock me in the comments! :)

1. This section is where we finally get to sneak a peek at the magic in The Gentleman Bastards books.  From what we read, what are your initial impressions of the magic Lynch is using?  Is there any way that Locke and Company would be able to get around the Bondsmage's powers?

In a way I like the magic that Lynch is using, but I dislike its lack of limits.  Because the Bondsmagi are so secretive, we know nothing about the rules of the magic system or exactly what it makes one capable of doing.  I know there was that discussion of how bondsmagic doesn’t block bruises or punches, but I think that’s dubious information at best.

At this point, I would say that, without outside help, Locke’s group has no way around the Bondsmage’s power.  This is mostly just because they don’t really know anything about the limitations of the Bondsmage's magic.  Locke knows a lot about how people perceive and interact with Bondsmages, but he knows essentially nothing about their power, save that it is considerable.  However, the one obvious way both the Capa and Locke could have gotten around the Falconer’s powers is to hire a Bondsmage of their own.  They’re both rich enough, so it’s beyond me why this never seems to have occurred to either of them.  

2. Not a question, but an area for rampant speculation: If you want to take a stab at who you think the Grey King might be, feel free to do it here.

I really don’t know.  Before Nazca died, I thought it might have been Capa Barsavi, but I don’t know if I could believe he would kill his own daughter.  I have a few theories based on wild speculation, though.

Perhaps Nazca is the Grey King!  In that case, she’s now faked her own death twice, though I have no idea how she would have faked her corpse.  Maybe she wants to take control of her father’s criminal underworld, but she knows she won’t be able to do so by normal means.  This is all an elaborate plot to take her father’s place.  If she knew about Locke’s activities as the Thorn of Camorr, she may well have decided he deserved execution, thus setting him up the way she did.

For my second wild theory, perhaps Father Chains is the Grey King, and he didn’t really die!  We don’t really know anything about his death at this point, so maybe it was all mummery.  Maybe he’s been behind the scenes all this time, orchestrating his takeover of Camorr. Obviously he knows all about Locke’s activities, and perhaps his ‘sewing up’ of the Gentlemen Bastards is yet another test, in order to see if the Bastards are capable of dominating the city.

2.5 (since 2 wasn't really a question) Anyone see the Nazca thing coming? Anyone? Do you think there are more crazy turns like this in store for the book? Would you like to speculate about them here? (yes, yes you would)

I did not see that coming at all.  I mean, she had a clear role in the story, there was going to be some drama with her and Locke… I was completely blindsided.  Furthermore, she was the only major female character in the story, so I naively I assumed that would lend her some immunity.   At this point, I’m expecting the worst.  Maybe Locke will die, and the rest of the trilogy will be about Jean?  Seriously, I think that Locke is pretty much the only character who is “safe” now.  As for speculation, I think the Duke will be the next to go.  If I'm going to guess, I'll guess big.

3. When Locke says "Nice bird, arsehole," I lose it. EVERY TIME. And not just because I have the UK version of the book and the word arsehole is funnier than asshole. Have there been any other places in the books so far where you found yourself laughing out loud, or giggling like a crazy person on the subway?

I laughed there, definitely.  I loved the juxtaposition of the dry section about how important it was to show proper respect to the Bondsmagi and Locke’s complete irreverence.  I think this was done especially well, because Locke did face many consequences for his flippant attitude.  If he hadn’t been hurt and tortured for it, the whole exchange would have just made the Bondsmage look weak. I know there have been other things that made me laugh, but I can’t think of any particular examples.

4. By the end of this reading section, have your opinions changed about how clever the Bastards are? Do you still feel like they're "cleverer than all the rest?" Or have they been decidedly outplayed by the Grey King and his Bondsmage?

I still think they’re “cleverer than all the rest”.  They have been clearly outplayed by the Grey King and the Bondsmage, but I don’t think that was a result of lack of cleverness.  That was a result of the Bondsmage’s raw power and willingness to use it.  I think that if Locke and Company can learn more about the Bondsmage’s magic and its actual limitations, they can certainly outplay the Grey King. 

However, there is one thing about the situation that confuses me.  Why on Earth didn’t the Gentlemen Bastards just hire their own Bondsmage, once they knew what they were up against?  It’s not like they can’t afford it.  They have over 40,000 crowns just lying in a pile.  Capa Barsavi, in his paranoia, should have considered this as well.

5. I imagine that you've probably read ahead, since this was a huge cliffhanger of an ending for the "present" storyline, but I'll ask this anyway: Where do you see the story going from here, now that the Grey King is thought to be dead?

Well, for one thing, I think the last Interlude was clearly a reference to the fact that Jean is going to save Locke before he drowns in horse piss.  I’m curious as to whether the man who “tipped off” Capa Barsavi was the Grey King, or whether it was just someone in his employ.  I don’t trust the information about the Bondsmage’s power, since it was obviously a set-up to get Locke killed.  I’m not sure why he wanted to fake his own death, though.  Why build up a reputation just to fake your death?

The only answer so far that makes sense is that the Grey King is targeting a noble, perhaps even the Duke.  If he were targeting any of the Right Folk, there would be no need to lull them into a false sense of security.   He clearly has all of them outmatched.  The only benefit I can see for him in faking his own death would be to keep the rich and powerful (such as Duke Nicovante) from taking him seriously and hiring an army of Bondsmagi. 

6. What do you think of the characters Scott Lynch has given us so far? Are they believable? Real? Fleshed out? If not, what are they lacking?

I like the characters quite a bit so far.  I appreciate the back-development he’s giving us for various characters (even poor dead Tesso!) through the interludes.  They seem, at least to me, real and fleshed out.

7. Now that you've seen how clever Chains is about his "apprenticeships," why do you think he's doing all of this? Does he have an endgame in sight? Is there a goal he wants them to achieve, or is it something more emotional like revenge?

I still don't know if I believe he had any goal at all.  Based on the fact that you questioners keep bringing it up, though, I’m guessing he did J.  Maybe his endgame was taking over Camorr entirely, from both the Capa and the Duke?

Review: Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith

Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith

Published: NewCon Press, 2011

Awards Nominated: British Science Fiction Association Award, British Fantasy Society Award

The Book:

“Hellequin, last of the HawkEye military elite, is desperate to escape the legacy of Soul Food, the miraculous plant food that leeched the soil, destroyed his family, and instigated a bloody civil war. For a man awaiting the inevitable madness brought on by his enforced biomorph implant, there’s only one choice. Run away with the circus…

Drifting above a poisoned landscape, Cyber Circus and her exotic acrobats and bioengineered freaks bring a welcome splash of colour into folk’s drab lives. None more so than escaped courtesan turned-dancer Desirous Nim. When Nim’s freedom and her very life are threatened, Hellequin is forced to fight again. But, even united, will the weird troupe and their strange skills be enough to save Nim and keep their home aloft? That’s assuming, of course, that Zan City’s Blood Worms, mute stowaways, or the swarms don’t manage to bring them down first…

Welcome to the greatest show on Sore Earth!

The book also features: “Black Sunday” – a free-standing but associated novelette. A tale of desperation, incorporating drought, science, giant burrowing machines, rural magic, racial tension and sensuality in the 1930s Kansas dustbowl.” ~WWEnd.com

This title caught my eye after it was nominated for the BSFA award, and I saw it was available as an inexpensive e-book release.  (I recently went on a possibly ill-advised spending spree on physical books, so I’m trying to read through what I have before I buy any more.)  Cyber Circus is Kim Lakin-Smith’s second novel, the first being Tourniquet.

My Thoughts:

Cyber Circus begins with a lot of action and little explanation.  In fact, there are some things about the world that are left deliberately unclear throughout the novel.  For instance, I was never completely sure how or even if the Sore Earth is related to the 1930s US dustbowl.  It seems like a completely fantastical setting, with various exotic species (Sirinese, Jeridians, Showmaniese, Hoppers…) and bioengineered creatures (the Scuttlers, Pig Heart, Hellequin, Nim…). However, the presence of some familiar livestock animals and goods hint towards a connection to our Earth.  It’s also unclear whether Cyber Circus was aiming for science fiction, fantasy, or something in between.  On one hand, Hellequin’s Hawkeye machinery, Desirous Nim’s epidermal lighting, and Pig Heart’s grafted animal parts appear to be the result of advanced technology.  On the other hand, there’s an entire subplot about a mysterious female stowaway that seems to be based in magic.  The setting of Cyber Circus has a lot of intriguing elements, but I never felt like I had enough information to get much of a sense of the world as a whole.

The story did a little too much head-hopping for my taste, switching between the viewpoints of many different characters.  For me, this constant switching had the effect of making all of the characters feel secondary.   Each of the inhabitants of the circus had an interesting shtick, as one might expect, but I never really felt like I grew to know or care about them.  Each of them also had an unspeakably tragic past, and the continuing stream of ‘tortured pasts’ eventually began to feel a little over-the-top.  I appreciated the idea of a band of severely mistreated misfits helping each other survive in a damaged world, but there’s a point past which excessive fictional tragedy just starts seeming a little trite.

In conjunction with piling on the tragedy, Cyber Circus also has a lot of sex and violence.  Several of the characters pasts involve forced bioengineering, the murder of their loved ones, and/or rape.  However, though there are many references to rape, I appreciated that the only sex scenes explicitly described are consensual.  Even so, these scenes sometimes seemed a little gratuitous with respect to plot and characterization.  The many, lengthy, bloody action sequences were difficult for me to get into, since I didn’t feel much of a connection to the characters.  The violence often seemed a bit like an action video game—the point was to be entertainingly flashy.

The plot itself is relatively simple.  Desirous Nim, a beautiful woman who was forced into prostitution, had escaped to the circus.  The story began some amount of time later, when they ran across her former pimp, D’Angelus.  He became obsessed with the idea of getting her back, and the basic plot became the story of the circus fleeing the pimp.  I was not really sold by D’Angelus’s motives.  I can accept that he felt a desire to reclaim a potentially profitable prostitute, but he seemed to have been doing fine financially after losing her.  Therefore, it never really made sense to me how he flung himself and his subordinates after the circus with all the subtlety and lack of self-preservation of D&D goblins.  There are some interesting subplots going on between the circus characters throughout the chase, but for me everything was overshadowed by the poorly supported actions of the villain.    

The novella at the end, “Black Sunday”, shows the entirety of the novel in a different context by elaborating on the origins of a particularly enigmatic character in the novel.  I kind of wished that the information provided in “Black Sunday” could have been incorporated into the novel somehow, since it would have given context for that character’s behavior and provided very interesting hints about the nature of the world of Sore Earth.   

My Rating: 2.5/5

The Sore Earth of Cyber Circus is a grim world, with strange technology and animals, several different species (or races?), and a deeply damaged earth.  However, I didn’t ever feel like I got enough pieces of the Sore Earth puzzle to get a real understanding of the place. Each of the poor souls in the Cyber Circus had their own distinct, extremely tragedy-laden histories, but the frequent point-of-view changes made me feel distanced from them.  This distance left me feeling a little uninterested in the many, lengthy action sequences throughout the story.  I was also a little disappointed in the simplicity of the overarching plot and the unexplained mania of the villain.  The novella included at the end provides an interesting new context with which to view the book, but I couldn’t help wishing that some of that information could have been incorporated in the story of the novel itself.    

Read-Along: The Lies of Lock Lamora by Scott Lynch, Part 2

This is the second post for my participation in a read-along of Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, hosted by Dark Cargo, @ohthatashley at SF Signal, My Awful Reviews, and the Little Red Reviewer.  What this means is...

Read-Along posts discuss a specific portion ofThe Lies of Locke Lamora and are therefore full of spoilers!  I will do a usual review post once the book is complete.

Today I'm focusing on the segment from Chapter 3 to the Interlude "The Boy Who Cried for a Corpse".  The story is getting rapidly more complicated.  What appeared at first to be a simple story of con artistry now involves a mysterious, possibly supernatural murderer known as the Gray King, and the awkwardness of an organized crime boss instructing Locke to court his daughter.  I can't wait to read next week's section, to see how all of this develops! 

Now for the discussion questions:

1   1) Do you think Locke can pull off his scheme of playing a Midnighter who is working with Don Salvara to capture the Thorn of Camorr? I mean, he is now playing two roles in this game - and thank goodness for that costume room the Gentlemen Bastards have!

He’s pulling it off so far, but I don’t know how the Gray King and the issues with Capa Barsavi, who believes Locke is a simple thief, will affect the game.  It does seem a perfect con; his ‘Midnighter’ character can vanish at any time, and Don Salvara has no way of ever seeking him out.  I think that his involvement with Capa Barsavi is going to become a serious complication in an already complicated game.

2) Are you digging the detail the author has put into the alcoholic drinks in this story?

Definitely.  Mixing drinks has always seemed fun to me—sort of a mixture of chemistry and cooking—and the descriptions make me want to buy some ingredients and try to recreate them all.  I don’t know if I’d want to drink them, though.  The ginger scald sounds dreadful.

3) Who is this mysterious lady Gentlemen Bastard Sabetha and what does she mean to Locke?

It seems like Sabetha is Locke’s ex-lover.  From Locke’s childhood, we’ve been told she was crazy and arrogant, and she had been sent somewhere to learn a lesson.  It was also implied that she was pretty. From Locke’s adulthood, we know that they had some kind of relationship, and that it ended very badly.  We also know that she’s ‘the only one in Locke’s heart’.  I hope we eventually get to meet this Sabetha, who seems capable of affecting the story even while absent!

4) Are you as creeped out over the use of Wraithstone to create Gentled animals as I am?

Yes, I think that is the creepiest supernatural element so far in the story.  Something similar to ‘Wraithstone’ shows up often in fantasy stories (like the Dementor’s Kiss in Harry Potter, or the Tranquil in Dragon Age), but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying.  I think this kind of thing may show up so often in fiction because the loss of ‘self’ is such a deep-seated human fear.  It’s only used on animals in Camorr, but that does not make it any less disturbing to me.

5) I got a kick out of child Locke's first meeting with Capa Barsavi and his daughter Nazca, which was shortly followed up in the story by Barsavi granting adult Locke permission to court his daughter! Where do you think that will lead? Can you see these two together?

I could definitely see those two together.  I kind of want it to happen.  However, I don't think Nazca and Locke will end up married.  My guess is that he’ll stay too hung up on Sabetha, and she will continue to be uninterested in him romantically.  They’ll come up with some elaborate plan to get him out of it.  All I can come up with so far involves Nazca pretending to ‘cheat’ on Locke.  It would have to be Nazca, because I’m pretty sure there would be serious consequences if Locke did anything to slight Capa Barsavi’s daughter.

6) Capa Barsavi is freaked out over rumors of The Gray King and, in fact, us readers are privy to a gruesome torture scene. The Gray King is knocking garristas off left and right. What do you think that means?

It’s unclear right now, but I think either alchemy or some other kind of magic is afoot.  The dead garrista’s guards sincerely seemed not to remember what happened the night before, so something must have been done to their memories.  If the Gray King can kill that garrista, in the middle of all his guards, I don’t think staying on their fortified ship will keep the Barsavi's any safer than they would be on the streets.

7) In the Interlude: The Boy Who Cried for a Corpse, we learn that Father Chains owes an alchemist a favor, and that favor is a fresh corpse. He sets the boys to figuring out how to provide one, and they can't 'create' the corpse themselves. How did you like Locke's solution to this conundrum?

I was surprised by the simplicity of the solution.  Acquiring the corpse was hardly a con at all; they just used a bribe.  It’s possible the bribe would not have worked if Locke had not had a sob story and a religious affiliation, but it still seemed a surprisingly easy task.  His recovery of the bribe money, however, was hilarious.  That particular scam is one that will only work while Locke’s a cute little kid, though we see an echo of it in his ‘introduction’ to Don Salvara.