Some eight months ago, I found myself face-to-face with an obscenely assured debut—a story that radiated confidence from every page. At the time, it had no binding, just a modest stack of paper. And yet, not halfway through, I realized I was reading something of rare quality. An adventure that paid homage to the fantastic and familiar, while forging something entirely its own.
“Someday, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comments with glee. And I just hope I’m still around to see it.”
“Oh, please,” said Locke. “It’ll never happen.”
If you can imagine stepping out of nineteenth-century East-End London, nodding to the Artful Dodger, turning a corner and finding yourself pacing Cheap Street in Lankhmar—add a touch of Venetian flair—you may begin to envision the city-state of Camorr.
The Making of a Master Thief
Our protagonist, Locke Lamora, is introduced as a six-year-old plague orphan—the uninvited thirty-first recruit taken in by Camorr’s resident kidsmen. Locke’s unnatural cunning is so dangerous it forces even the hardened Thiefmaker of Camorr to remove him from the streets, delivering him with a pat on the shoulder and a shark tooth charm—a kiss of death—to a new master.
That master is Father Chains, a so-called priest of Perelandro, god of mercies. Chained to the temple with irons that have no locks and eyes publicly plucked from his skull, Chains appears a pious legend. Only he’s not blind, not bound, and certainly not devout—not to Perelandro, at least. He serves a thirteenth god in a twelve-god pantheon: the nameless god of thieves.
Chains becomes Locke’s teacher and father figure, shaping a gifted pickpocket into a refined, worldly con artist. For a couple of coppers, he buys a new member for his Gentlemen Bastards—a gang whose name will one day be whispered through Camorr’s underworld, accompanied by another name: the Thorn of Camorr.
A Caper Among Kings and Killers
We meet the Gentleman Bastards mid-scheme, targeting Don Salvara, a wealthy noble, with a delightfully complex fraud involving foreign conflicts and a rare, aristocracy-adored spirit called Brandvin Austershalin. It’s a virtuoso performance by Locke—until it’s violently derailed.
A mysterious figure known only as the Grey King begins a brutal campaign, assassinating garristas (Lynch’s spin on caporegimes) and igniting an all-out gang war. This is where Lynch’s love for The Godfather, Scarface, Goodfellas, and their ilk becomes evident. Camorr has a criminal underworld just as complex as any modern city, with Locke as a garrista paying tithe to the charismatic boss-of-bosses, Capa Barsavi.
Lynch wisely doesn’t ask us to believe such a structure exists without high-level complicity. Figures like the Duke, the Midnighters, and especially “The Spider”—a shadowy intelligence chief—cast long, lethal shadows. As Locke explains:
“When the Spider puts the finger on someone… the poor bastard in question falls right off the face of the world. And Capa Barsavi doesn’t say a thing. So when you realize that Barsavi doesn’t fear the Duke—looks down on him, actually—it follows that there’s someone out there who can make him wet his breeches.”
Voice, Vernacular, and Vicious Wit
Lynch’s criminals don’t talk like English majors. Their slang is distinctive and pointed. From locker-room banter to violent threats, their voices carry the weight of hard lives and harder choices. Even Barsavi, once a scholar, speaks with the sharp edge of the streets.
The Gentleman Bastards are more than a crew—they’re a family. There’s Jean, the group’s burly, bookish muscle; the mischief-making Sanza twins, Galdo and Calo; the currently absent Sabetha (whose shadow looms large); and the youngest, Bug, a recent recruit. It’s a colorful, chaotic dynamic that’s difficult to resist romanticizing—but Lynch refuses to let sentimentality obscure reality. Hardship and loss are constants, woven into both past and present.
A Flashback Structure That Flows
The true strength of The Lies of Locke Lamora lies in its structure. Lynch intersperses flashbacks between chapters—some delve into character backstory, others into the deep history of Camorr. They work like story-footnotes, providing insight without stalling momentum. What could easily have been clunky exposition instead feels like a masterclass in pacing.
As author Matt Stover aptly put it:
“Scott Lynch is a con man, a conjuror, a wickedly entertaining juggler of words with knives up his sleeves and hatchets down his back.”
That’s exactly right. Lynch keeps the story moving forward while slipping in history and worldbuilding with deceptive ease.
Not Without Flaws
There are shaky spots, as with many debuts. The Bondsmagi—a powerful, absurdly expensive order of mages—feel more like a plot necessity than a fully realized element of the world. Chains explains their reach:
“Kill a Bondsmage, and the whole guild drops whatever it’s doing. They come after you. They kill your friends, your family, your associates. They burn your home. They destroy everything you’ve built. Then, finally, they let you die.”
The premise is chilling, but the execution occasionally feels contrived. Despite this, the Bondsmage subplot delivers darkly satisfying turns.
There are also moments of overwriting—descriptions that feel ornamental rather than purposeful. But these are minor blemishes, likely to be ironed out in later installments.
A Standalone Worth the Heist
Though The Lies of Locke Lamora is the first in a planned seven-book series (The Gentlemen Bastard Sequence), it functions beautifully as a standalone. From a six-year-old street rat to the rooftops of Elderglass towers, Lynch gives us a complete journey. We prowl necropolis tunnels and scale alien spires. We eat with nobles and bleed with thieves. Most importantly, we have fun—a rare and undervalued quality in modern fantasy.
This is a novel that doesn’t apologize for being a page-turner. It’s cunning, cutthroat, infused with natural humor, and deeply immersive. The Lies of Locke Lamora is a debut with genuine substance—because it never tries to fake it. Lynch wrote what he wanted to read. And we’re lucky he did.
Check out my review of Scott Lynch’s next book Red Seas Under Red Skies and my interview with Scott Lynch.