We find the remnants of our band from The Lies of Locke Lamora stalking the pits of the Sinspire, patiently and calculatingly ascending Lady Luck’s ladder in Lynch’s Monte Carlo: the city-state of Tal Verrar. Marked on any map as the apex of high society and high stakes, Tal Verrar is the setting of another spectacular caper—but the absurdity of our “back-in-the-saddle” starting point becomes the first of many reminders of Lynch’s true gift: pacing.
The novel’s intercut flashbacks offer the anatomy of a scheme unfolding in the present, perfectly timed to arrive just as the current scene begins to stagnate. You never feel stuck in one timeline. You’re always precisely where you want to be—only Lynch doesn’t let you realize that until a chapter later. The reader isn’t sprinting or running a marathon. They’re doing shuttle runs—agile, breathless, and intensely focused.
Our “hero” does what any reader should expect after the events in The Lies of Locke Lamora.
The Thorn of Camorr is grieving.
Reduced to a melancholic lush, Locke is a hollowed-out man. The Gentleman Bastards have been reduced to a duo, and it is Jean who takes on the Samwise role—ensuring that number doesn’t get cut in half again. Their lifestyle was always inherently risky, but Locke is used to winning his gambits. And the weight of loss—real, scarring loss—is not glossed over by Lynch.
While Locke chooses to rot, we watch Jean explore other avenues, other friendships, other destinies. He becomes more distant, unreadable—even to Locke. For Locke, this moment is a dead end; for Jean, it’s a crossroad. They always knew the stakes better than anyone. They just hadn’t been forced to pay up before. Camorr wasn’t a heist—it was a shakedown of the soul.
So when we finally see the charisma and vigor return to Locke, we also see what’s changed: he has doubt. Not in himself or Jean—but in Jean’s faith in him.
There’s an Ocean’s Eleven vibe here, but what drives the duo isn’t revenge or riches. It’s the art of the con. Their passion for the trade burns beneath every beat of the narrative, even as Lynch cuts back to reveal the mechanics of the heist in play—while they’re being manipulated by factions on all sides.
If I had a single stumbling point in The Lies of Locke Lamora, it was the Bondsmagi. As a nation of essentially unstoppable ace-in-the-hole boogeymen, they felt like a narrative convenience more than a necessary element. And while Lynch made sure to show they can be touched—with extreme prejudice, in fact—their mere presence feels like an over-insurance policy against plot weakness. They still weigh down the narrative here. They remain a burden on Locke and Jean, a sword of Damocles they can’t do much to dodge, and I’ve never shaken the sense that they existed solely to justify the Grey King’s plot in the first book.
That said—Red Seas Under Red Skies isn’t just a worthy sequel. It’s the superior book.
Truly great pirate stories are rare. Most of us can name them off the top of our heads: The Scar, On Stranger Tides, The Princess Bride (yes, I’m stretching—but it belongs), Pyrates, Captain Blood. Some more dedicated readers might cite Rhys Hughes or Wells Tower. Now Lynch earns his place among them.
I love this book more because it gives us Locke and Jean being used as pawns in a power struggle for Tal Verrar—caught between a sharp-eyed warlord and Requin, the master of the Sinspire. All while learning the art of piracy, keeping an eye on the Bondsmagi, and constantly reworking their own schemes mid-play.
And yet… somehow the highlight of the novel is a brief detour to Salon Corbeau.
That chapter alone justifies the price of admission. The Thorn of Camorr—once a mask Locke wore as part of a long con—has become something else entirely. It’s now a separate entity. A hungry ghost that won’t be silenced.
“Let me out,” it whispered. “Let me out. The rich must remember. By the gods, I can make damn sure they never forget.”
The glamorization of thieves and their exploits isn’t new. But Lynch makes it feel fresh. His books have a coolness without being trendy—more Poolhall Junkies than Smokin’ Aces. Locke’s deep and abiding distrust of the wealthy doesn’t feel performative. It feels anchored. Honest. And that creates natural common ground with nearly every reader.
Chains’ words still rattle in Locke’s mind. Not to make him an equalizer, but to make him a memory—an embodied black eye to the elite.
Lynch promises a complete story in each book, and delivers. But it’s chapters like the one at Salon Corbeau that offer the deeper material—revealing the foundation of the Thorn persona. We see Locke’s obsession with perfection, yes—but also his stubborn empathy. His defiant sense of justice. It’s in those moments—when he spares a family of artisans or wages psychological war in a palace of cruelty—that we realize we’re witnessing a character being defined.
And so the question arises: who is Locke Lamora?
Is he a conman guided only by the thrill of the scheme and his bond with Jean? Or is he still a child—still searching for a father figure, a cause, or a god? The scene at Salon Corbeau hints at something darker. When Locke watches the game called The Amusement War, he doesn’t merely feel disgust. He feels hatred. Pure and total.
We know he’s capable of murder and mischief. But this? This was something else.
It’s disconcerting—and in the best possible way. Locke is not a balanced individual. He can focus like a surgeon, but emotionally, he is untethered. The world moves him more than he moves the world. That’s part of what keeps him believable, avoids the trap of many larger-than-life protagonists where everything feels like it revolves around them.
And make no mistake: this is as much Jean’s novel as it is Locke’s. Jean’s arc sustains the book in places where the secondary characters falter. We’re not given another Chains—no larger-than-life supporting characters that leap off the page. When we left Camorr, we left behind future stories waiting to be told. Red Seas Under Red Skies feels more like simply closing a chapter.
Still, Lynch writes some of the best conclusions in the genre—multiple epilogues that never feel like padding. His plots may be convoluted, but their resolutions never feel careless.
If Red Seas ends on a less impactful note than its predecessor, it’s only because it trades trauma for weariness. Locke’s body may be healed, but his spirit remains splintered. And yet there’s a composure to him now. A weary confidence. A game face.
You wonder if these red seas will ever lead him home.
Even the most casual fantasy reader will notice the symmetry with Mieville. Not in content—but in structure. Like Mieville in The Scar, Lynch leaves behind the urban setting that served as the backbone of his debut. Camorr breathed. It lived. And now, we launch into the high seas—becoming mystery tourists ourselves. It’s an echo of The Scar’s journey, with Locke as a kind of Bellis, running from the past and glancing back before every step forward.
We still smell of Camorr. It haunts the margins. And in being elsewhere, we come to understand it more deeply.
Where The Scar had bloodsucking mosquito people, Lynch gives us monsters of a more human variety. But the stopover horror remains.
In an era of bloated ensembles and endless grimdark, Lynch takes a path riddled with graves—stories unworthy of recall, characters lost not from lack of page time but from lack of resonance. He walks a road tread by only the greats: characters who don’t just inhabit fantasy—they define it.
There’s a reason we say Elric, Conan, Covenant, Drizzt—not just the names of their books.
Lynch is writing a character who may well join that company.
Sure, the human element remains the beating heart of good fiction—but we often underestimate the achievement of writing something that’s just fun. Cool. Books that have that timeless, jazzy “Summertime” feel. Something that makes you kick back, smirk, and think:
“Here it is, the groove slightly transformed… just a bit of a break from the norm…”
That’s what Lynch brings to the shelf. When will Locke find what he’s looking for? Can even the greatest thief steal what he truly needs? I don’t know.
But I know I want to read more of his untold adventures. And that’s an accomplishment.
The headstones don’t lie.
This is just fun fucking caper fantasy.
- check out my interview with Scott Lynch.