Amazingly fascinating world, thrilling story, very original. ( )

Superb debut novel, not totally without faults, but very worthwhile reading for all fantasy fans. The light fast style is reminiscent of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, without the clever magic.

Locke Lamora is an orphan and a stray, and also even at less than 6 yrs old a pickpocket, thief and conartist of the highest calibre. When a plague decimates the city he is sheparded into graverobbers gang, but his brilliance quickly gets him into trouble, and he is promoted (sold or passed on) to Chains, high rpiest of the unmentioned thirteenth God - The benefactor of prudent Necessity and patron saint of the Abandonded - in other words conartists heaven. If you put up a begging bowl people will give you money without you even having to pick their pocket. The city of Camorr of course is also full of Nobles and the Secret Peace negotiated between the Capa of the underworld and the nobles maintains sufficiency of lifestyle between them. Locke of course isn't content with sufficieny, but then fortunetly for him The mysterious grey King isn't content with submission to the Capa either, and matter rush to bloodthirssty head.

The writing is light, delicately descriptive without being overwhealming. There's lots of action and some detailed fights, but plenty of humour (at least in the early passages) and some opposition that almost seems properly clever. There are also lots of flashbacks through to Locke and Co.'s training. I don't like flashbacks in general, but these were clearly highlighted as new chapters and generally didn't interfere with the main plot too much. However they did foreshadow events a little too obviously - for example one of the gang is apprenticed to the death priests in a flashabck and in the very next chapter uses the death priests as a disguise. Just a bit too clumsy a mechanism for introducing the nature of the city guilds. There are other minor quibbles - a few plot holes where and obvious connection isn't made, or continuity fails slightly, but in general much less than occurs in many novels. The worst is the oft alluded to but no details given of his love interest and then the unresolved issue of Locke's death Offering promised to Chains - why is this never refered to again?

Annoyingly one major plot device is left completely unexplained: the city is formed around several 'glass' towers left by preivous non-human civilisation. No other details given, no sense of time, no explanation of who why or where they were or are. Unnecessarily mysterious, especially as there are no other non-humans in the story. The magic system is also unexplained, but as none of themain characters actually do any magic that is perhaps allowable. As a redaer though I have an unresolved curiosity about it.

Locke is the star, obviously but as with a lot of fantasy of this type we don't get a great deal of character development for him, other than revenge very little seems to motivate him, His companions are also very one-track, the angry Jean, and the trickster brothers. However it is a short book and it moves very fast, which like any conman's game keeps your attention rivited to what the author chooses to show you. Action, plans and plots. And these are very well done.

Great debut - I very much hope the sequel holds the same level of quality and that some of our questons are answered.
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A terrific adventure story, it's got a little bit of everything. Heroes, villains, swashbuckling, monsters, revenge, humor, sadness. Like the blurb on the back cover says, it reminded me of Ocean's Eleven and Robin Hood, but it also reminded me of The Godfather in a way. Too long to read in one sitting, but I did read the latter half in one day. And it was a really good day, too. ( )

I love books about thieves and this is one of my favorites. Full of twists and turns and all sorts of plot moves I didn't expect, and also more gore than I expected from a book about thieves. It took me about 150 pages to get into it, but once I did I didn't want to put it down. Locke Lamora is generally awesome and I loved all of the characters; I feel like I know them well. The only thing confusing for me was the different names for cities and cultures in the Lamora world, but I tend to mix things up like that anyway. Some of the scenes in the book--with all the detail Lynch uses to describe them--are genuinely film-worthy and just totally amazing. Loved it! ( )

An annoyingly overwritten yet well plotted fantasy novel about a gang of thieves who rob from the rich and erm.. rob from the poor. There are far too many neologisms which seem to be littered about the page, capitalized for no good reason apart from that's what the scifi/fantasy genre expects. This is the sort of fiction which no doubt develops from RPGs, which is not in itself a weakness but it certainly leaves its mark.

The setting, the fictional city of Camorr, appeared to be a sort of Venice with go-faster stripes, but you can't really see what the author has gained by not simply setting his novel in Venice. You see many of the plot twists coming but the hero, Locke, is compelling enough, audacious and witty. I only wished the supporting characters could have been similarly nuanced. My love of books about stealing will probably mean I dip into the sequel.