SCHEMES & SWASHBUCKLING | ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ Book Review
Dive deep into blood-soaked adventure on the high seas, in which very clever people do very risky things - and pay the highest possible price.
‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ is the second fantasy novel by Scott Lynch in the 'Gentleman Bastard Sequence'. It follows expert thief Locke Lamora, and his partner in crime Jean Tannen, as they plunge headlong into ingenious schemes designed to part the wealthy from their wealth.
Following the harrowing conclusion to the first novel, ‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’, ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ finds our brilliant, broken heroes putting as much distance between themselves and their past as possible. They’re even thinking about settling down. But nothing in life is free, so settling down means pulling off one last heist.
Having travelled to the imposing island city of Tal Verrar, Locke and Jean set their sights on one last rich, powerful man to be brought low. Two years in the making, this will be their coup de grâce, a crime like no other with a reward that will set them free. Or so it seems.
Unlike ‘The Lies of Locke Lamora’, where the cast is in their element, masters of their city and experts in their criminal trade, ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ catapults Locke and Jean into vast, unfamiliar territory. They are thoroughly not sailors, but the convoluted threads swiftly unravelling around them leave them no choice but to pretend. Watching Locke and Jean lurch from one near-miss to the next, barely scraping by, creates an incredible edge-of-your-seat tension in this story.
The stakes could not be higher for Locke and Jean; their success is quite literally a matter of life and death. The consequences for failure are monumental, the word has been richly expanded, and there’s a sense that the entire plot is a teetering monolith of cards ready to be brought down by one poorly calculated exhalation. Over the course of more than 500 pages, you are drawn further and further into this story until you find yourself sneaking off to read whenever you have a minute to spare.
Lynch’s tendency to be distracted by the (admittedly engrossing) intricacies of the world he’s built is on full display in ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’. This does slow the pace down a fair bit, with each period of swashbuckling action broken into by flashbacks, explanatory segues, and nuanced descriptions. Much like the first book in the series, however, Lynch is a technically powerful writer who manages to make this work. There may be a few sections where you’re feeling a bogged down by the weight of the story, but do persist - the swashbuckling always returns.
In ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ we find out a great deal more about who Locke and Jean are as people. They both experience devastating pain, steely determination, absolute terror, transcendent joy, and a sincere loss of hope. They grow, and it is a delight to experience.
Overall however, characterisation does remain an issue in this series’ second instalment. In ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ Lynch’s has yet again written a three-dimensional, empowering cast of women, and then promptly shunted them into the wings. Lynch writes women beautifully, but seems to have no idea what to actually do with them once they’re on the page. They have triumphant moments, they lead, they change the course of Locke and Jean’s lives forever. And then they are gone, their purpose served.
Locke Lamora himself still reads a little bit like a paint-by-numbers picture. He’s flawed, but only in muted, socially-acceptable ways. He’s not handsome, but no truly unattractive features are ever specified. He’s arrogant, but he’s brilliant so his cockiness is justified. He sulks, but fair enough - things haven’t exactly gone his way lately. None of Locke’s mistakes are too unforgivable or his personal failings too outside of what a reader would deem attractive. The result of this precise exercise in character creation is, ultimately, a bit bland.
Jean, on the other hand, has benefited from a lighter touch in his position as sidekick. His flaws are far more human, making Jean more relatable and ultimately likeable. Jean can be fat, angry, unreasonable, ugly, brutish, sappy, and flat-out wrong. His freedom to be flawed, away from the pressures of being an escapist fantasy for middling young men everywhere, makes him an absolute delight to journey across the seas with.
‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ sails effortlessly between young-adult and adult-adult. It’s a long and vibrant read filled with blood, guts, debauchery, and the most entertaining cursing you’ll read all year. However, the themes are straightforward and Lynch’s style is a tour de force in readability, so almost anyone can very easily be swept up in this adventure for page after page after page…
Who Should Read This? People who catch themselves wondering what would happen if Ocean’s 11 was actually set in the ocean.
‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ Kindle Edition can be downloaded for $12.99 from Amazon.com.au Or, you can (and absolutely should) go all-out and snap up the first three novels in the ‘Gentleman Bastard Sequence’ for $34.99 from any good book retailer.
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