The Lies of Locke Lamora
A con-man and thief in a fantasy Venice. Lynch's 2006 debut plays as heist novel and coming-of-age story at once, with the most fun voice in epic fantasy since Leiber's Fafhrd tales. Camorr is a city you want to live in, even knowing it will probably kill you.
Readers say the first hundred pages do not grip until well past where most novels would have hooked them. Lynch tells rather than shows, worldbuilding delivered through “only people hanging around, eating or drinking” rather than dramatised scene, “a lazy, inconsiderate sort of writing” to one blogger. The flashback interludes break momentum exactly as the present-day tension builds. The “antagonists make some really dumb decisions,” letting the crew win through what one reader calls “an idiot plot” rather than earned cleverness. And the near-total absence of women among the crew draws repeated complaint.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
