Red Seas Under Red Skies

Rating this book is hard because I loved some parts of this story and I felt so bored during other chapters.
What I really like about this series is going back and forth between the past and the present and see how everything connects, but this book didn't execute that as well as the first one. In fact, the second half of the book is told always in the present and our characters aren't planning to trick anyone for a long time. So, even though I loved Drakasha, I liked the first part of the book better and I was disappointed with the second half.

I was bored reading the chapters where Jean and Locke were learning to sail and with most of the chapters at sea because they felt repetitive. I felt like those chapters could have been shorter because they didn't add much to the main story.
I expected more from the bondsmagi and from the people at Salon Corbeau. Those chapters in the first half were amazing and a little scary. My expectations were high and I was so disappointed by the second half.

There are still some great things about this book. The relationship between Jean and Locke is still one of the best I have ever seen in fiction, Drakasha was great and I liked to see that the people from the first book were not forgotten and that what happened still had a lot of impact on the main characters. That was handled so well.
Overall, I enjoyed it but I was a little let down by some of the chapters. ( )

7 stars ( )

Skemmtileg og spennandi fantasía sem tekur upp þráðinn hjá svindlurunum Locke og Jean frá fyrri bókinn eftir að líf þeirra hrundi til grunna í blóðugu uppgjöri. Þeir eru teknir til við fyrri iðju sem þeir kunna best sem er að ljúga, svindla og stela. Þeir hafa náttúrulega sett markið á mestu og best varðveittu gersemar smáríkisins sem þeir eru staddir í. Vopnin snúast hins vegar í höndum þeirra þegar þeim bjóðast ógnartilboð sem þeir geta ekki hafnað og gamlir fjandmenn sem vita sannleikann um þá gera vart við sig og hóta að koma upp um svindlarana. ( )

The series continues with more complicated capers and an ever revolving skein of loyalty and betrayal. ( )

This book was as enjoyable as the first part, [b:The Lies of Locke Lamora|127455|The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard #1)|Scott Lynch|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386924569s/127455.jpg|2116675]. Most importantly, it is not a rehash of the same story, it feels completely different and goes into a new direction, but without loosing the overall sense of it all belonging to the same story.
There are many unsuspected twist. The pirates fell a bit romanticized at first, but a) why not? and b) is it well founded in the world building. They are not the pirates from our history, they are from the Sea of Brass, and rules apply accordingly.
Aside from Locke and Jean themselves, there are few characters we already know. But I simply loved many of the new characters.

In my review for The Lies of Locke Lamora, I criticized that Scott Lynch was not making good use of the female characters he designed. That is certainly not a problem this time. ( )