The Lies of Locke Lamora read along [part one]

Dear fellow readers! This week is the first week of the Lies of Locke Lamora read along hosted by the Little Red Reviewer and her comrades, and it's the first time I am joining one! Every week we'll read around 120-140 pages of the book and every Saturday, each participant will reply to a bunch of secret questions and discuss around it.
Like the book? Good!
Want to have fun? Same here!
Groupie of Scott Lynch but afraid to tell? It's ok, we won't say anything...
Join the read along or come check the discussion every week!

Ahum, ok, I maybe omitted a little something... I will now actually (re)read the book along. I am already cheating, how lame is that? But though I won't be doing it thorougly, I will browse the concerned part of book every week and answer each question as well as I can. After all, I did read it, and enjoyed it like crazy (see?), so it's not actually cheating. Well, almost.

Anyway, here is this week discussion!

1. If this is your first time reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, what do you think of it so far? If this is a re-read for you, how does the book stand up to rereading?
It was my first time reading it, but the book is definitely going to the re-read list for later. I don't think I got gripped to the story at the first page, the beginning is a bit slow and quite different from the tone of the rest of the story, so maybe it was quite a challenge to go through this first part. I'm glad that I was smart enough to keep going, because it only gets better and better.

2. At last count, I found three time lines: Locke as as a 20-something adult, Locke meeting Father Chains for the first time, and Locke as a younger child in Shades Hill. How are you doing with the Flashback within a flashback style of introducing characters and the world?
It was a bit confusing at first, this back and forth in time, especially while you don't know the characters enough to really be interested in their past. However, I found that the youth of Locke in Shades Hill was as rough as it was pleasant to discover, and I loved his already building temper, humor and skills. What a sweet little one! I think I still like it better when the "introduction" is done through amusing anecdotes and past stories instead of heavy descriptions and boring monologues.

3. Speaking of the world, what do you think of Camorr and Lynch's world building?
Did I love it right away? It's kind of foggy in my mind now. Camorr left a blurry kind of feeling in my memory, in a way I can picture it so clearly and in another, I am absolutely convinced that I picture it completely wrong. It reminds me a bit of Venice (minus the tourists) and also of a very dark, old and foggy city, full of mysteries. A perfect city for the perfect thieves, no?

4. Father Chains and the death offering. . . quite the code of honor for thieves, isn't it? What kind of person do you think Chains is going to mold Locke into?
I think it's pretty hard to mold Locke into anything, but honor is something really serious for him, and I don't think he would do anything that would harm his friend or disrespect another thief's work. He's got the charm that Chains lacks, and the need to have adventures, and I think he'll stick to be the best thief one has ever heard of. I don't think he'd be able to do anything else!

5. It's been a while since I read this, and I'd forgotten how much of the beginning of the book is pure set up, for the characters, the plot, and the world. Generally speaking, do you prefer set up and world building done this way, or do you prefer to be thrown into the deep end with what's happening?
There's good and bad in both, I guess. With the slow set up, you always fear that the reader might be bored and give up, but if you don't set up anything he'll get confused and annoyed. Here, it's a bit in-between, the set up is still pretty heavy but as there are this time change in the middle, it still keeps you going. I suppose it's really hard to find a good balance, but Lynch managed it pretty well.

6. If you've already started attempting to pick the pockets of your family members (or even thought about it!) raise your hand.
Gosh, digging secrets already? Hum, I'm not really a good pickpocket... I did probably "borrow" some candy money when I was a kid, but nothing really subtle. And running elaborate scams like Locke team's do... I'm way too shy for that!!


Check out other discussion on the Little Red Reviewer blog, and come back next week for more!

Posted in: read along,Scott Lynch