I seem to be on a roll with great fantasy novels lately and this was one of the best yet.
I just loved this, the first in the author's Gentleman Bs series (I won't annoy the gods of the mbs by typing the full title, but suffice it to say that these guys never had a father marked on their birth certificates ).
It's pretty much a book of two halves - the misadventures of our hero, Locke and his gang of scam artists in the present, interspersed with flashbacks showing the history of how he came under the wing of the Fagan-like Thiefmaker as an orphaned child and then learnt his trade under his mentor Father Chains as he grew up.
The two things I loved most about this were the thread of sly wit running through the book, which had me LOLing more than once, and the wonderful detail of the world the author has woven to set his story in. From mirror wine to Gentled animals to cat bridges made of spun Elderglass...it was beautifully rich and endlessly fascinating. But it also had all the great themes of the genre in spades - drama, adventure, comedy, betrayal, revenge, brotherhood, friendship....this is a book that I would love to see translated into a movie.
I can't wait to read the rest of this series.
LabRat
Athos: If you'd told us what you were doing, we might have been able to plan this properly. Aramis: Yes, sorry. Athos: No, no, by all means, let's keep things suicidal.
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