The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
The events of this novel are highly influenced by Red Seas Under Red Skies so don’t do what I did and let most of a decade pass between reading the previous one and this one. Scott Lynch doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to worldbuilding and complicated plots. You’re going to need all your wits about you when following along with the exploits of Jean and Locke.
In the previous book, Jean and Locke got poisoned by a sorcerer known as the Falconer. I can’t remember the exact details of what happened, because it’s been a loooong time since I read the previous book, but I remember there were a lot of double crossing and tragedy and violence and complicated schemes. Suffice it to say that Locke is dying from a poison which all the physickers are powerless to contend with. Jean and Locke are given an offer they can’t refuse: work for the Bondsmagi again to rig an election, or let Locke die from his poison. Locke hates sorcerers, but they are over a barrel.
The second plot involves flashbacks of when Jean, Locke, the twins Calo and Galdo, and Sabetha were pretending to be actors to put on a production of The Republic of Thieves. But first they have to get the producer/director out of prison, and then they have to keep thwarting their newfound patron’s lust for Sabetha. The previous two books alluded to Sabetha’s existence, her being Locke’s true love, but we knew almost nothing about her or why she left. The play itself is quite Shakesperean, with a romantic tragedy between famous and powerful historical figures. It’s described as being one of the “forty corpses” which are plays so famous and overdone that it’s almost impossible to make them into anything fresh and new.
So we have the main plot, rig the election, the secondary plot, put on a play, and the tertiary plot, the actual plot of the play, all of which involve violence, double crossing, elaborate schemes, lying and deception, and the strong possibility of a tragic ending. This is one of Lynch’s strengths; the complicated plotting and schemes. Lynch’s other strength is in his language. The characters have a rather florid way of speaking reminiscent of the characters in The Three Musketeers, and the dialogue in the play is metered prose. I just adored some of the witty banter between the characters and commend Lynch for coming up with a world in which such prose felt appropriate instead of outdone. I also love the way in which, in this world, women are actual people instead of background scenery only brought out when a hero needs a love interest. Women are sometimes powerful magi, pirate captains, scheming nobles, political candidates, spies, or queens of a thieving empire. The point of fantasy, after all, is to bend the world in a way in which the reader can imagine themselves as being among the characters. I loved Jean and Locke and their affection for one another, but I found Sabetha less plausible. She didn’t always react in rational ways and I had a hard time understanding some of the motivation for her actions.
The only real weakness of the book for me, was that it was all a bit much. The novel is around 600 pages. There were so many characters and so many plots that I just lost the thread of some after a while. The scheming in and among the magi, for example, were so hard to follow that I just gave up, especially in the asides where the different speakers were represented by different formatting but there’s no attribution to anyone. I should have re-read the previous novel; it would have made things easier. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been more about the scheming and less about “how the events that took place in the previous novel have continuing repercussions in this vast and complicated world.” I also feel like the culture of Karthian wasn’t as unique and clear as the culture of Camorr, but that could be because when I read The Lies of Locke Lamora I was blown away by the brilliant worldbuilding and in this one I had high expectations going in.
This book was not a fast or easy read, and if it had been any more complicated I might have not been able to enjoy it. Do yourself a favor and make sure the first two books are quite fresh in your mind before picking this one up. The trilogy as a whole is an example of what high fantasy can aspire to, but it’s not especially accessible, especially for people who are used to reading YA or psycho thrillers or more straightforward literary fiction.
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