Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch (Bantam Spectra)

Red Seas Under Red Skies is the second installment of the already very popular Gentlemen Bastards sequence, with the first being the Lies of Locke Lamora (which I read in July of this year). It took me a while to get my hands on a copy (specifically the US version since it beats the UK cover hands down – love the burning ship on front), but I finally got around reading it before the end of this year. Before I will take a closer look at the synopsis of this book, I just wanted to warn that it is fairly impossible to outline the plot without giving something away with regard to the Lies of Locke Lamora. For fear of spoilers I suggest skipping the part below.

” Locke Lamora stood on the pier of Tal Verrar with the hot wind of a burning ship at his back and the cold bite of a loaded crossbow’s bolt at his neck.” (p. 1)

The novel starts with a rather explosive prologue that -typically like Scott Lynch- manages to spark my imagination immediately. As was the case with the Lies of Locke Lamora in the first chapters of this volume Lynch loosely plays with time and structure of the tale he is telling, rewinding to show the reader some of things that have been going on before in the past (in the so called ‘reminiscene’ part at the end of each chapter) and the fast-forwarding again to the present events. This gives the reader a good impression how Locke and Jean have fared since fleeing from the chaos they left behind in Camorr. We learn that Locke went through some sort of depression (actually a foreboding in tone for the rest of the novel, that particular scene) and Jean has focused his attention on doing some other ‘jobs’ that did not directly correlate with the ploys of the Gentleman Bastards. At the point that these reminiscence are wrapped up at about a third in the novel, we find our two friends in a heist to rob Requin, owner of an illustrious gamble house the Sinspire in Tal Verrar, of most of his money. The knot tightens considerably when somebody else in Tal Verrar wants the Gentlemen Bastards’ expertise and is not gentle at all in compelling Locke and Jean to devote their talents to an even more unlikely and suicidal proposition. Soon the two find themselves co-opted into an attempt to bring the pirate fleet of the notorious pirate Zamira Drakasha to justice. On top of that, old enemies of their past in Camorr show up to haunt them in the form of the powerful Bondsmagi of Karthain.

” ‘Just what? Am I special, Jean. Am I our own liability? When have I ever doubted your skills? When have I ever treated you like a child? You’re not my fucking mother, and you’re certainly not Chains. We can’t work as partners if you’re going to sit in judgement of me like this.’
The two of them stared at each other, each trying to muster an attitude of cold indignation, and each failing. The mood within the little cabin turned morose, and Jean turned to stare sullenly out of the window for a few moments while Locke dejectedly shuffled his cards.” (p. 83)

I noted above that one of the reminiscences illustrated the tone of this novel, relatively ‘darker’ than in the Lies of Locke Lamora. The first volume of the Gentleman Bastards sequence was a bit shallow at times, it was more about the heists, the adventures without caring much about consequences – generally the breath of fresh air with the lighter tone and I loved that. With Red Seas Under Red Skies one can see clearly how the events in Camorr have affected the lives of Locke and Jean (how could they not?) and that makes it all the more realistic and deeper. In a way Red Seas Under Red Skies is the more grimmer of the two and the scenes with that “fresh breath of air” to it were less frequent. Although it is still Locke and Jean doing the math and pulling off the tricks, they seem argue more (as the citation clearly illustrates) and at some point almost split up. Red Seas Under Red Skies is also a very character-driven book with Scott Lynch’ characterization of Locke and Jean as one of the main pillars holding up the foundation of this novel. One could argue that it in fact his main strength, the reason why Locke and Jean are such fascinating characters. In comparison to his previous work, the characterization is much deeper, the protagonists much more fleshed out. Moral dilemma’s surface more frequently, and psychologically the personalities of our two protagonists are further fleshed out.

The world building aspect did not play a big role in Lynch’ debut, but even less so with Red Seas Under Red Skies. With the city of Camorr the author created a lively, buzzing backdrop for an exciting adventure – at the very least the city had something unique on its own – but with Tal Verrar, Port Prodigal and other locations Lynch does not even come close to matching Camorr.

” Tal Verrar, the Rose of the Gods, at the westernmost edge of what the Therin people call the civilized world. [...]
The islands of Tal Verrar are unweathered, possibly unweatherable – they are the black glass of the Eldren, unimaginable quantities of it, endlessly tiered and shot through with passages, glazed with layers of stone and dirt from which the city of men and women springs. ” (p. 8)

After this passage Scott Lynch zooms in on the Sinspire, the illustrious gambling house in Tal Verrar and that’s about it as far as world building for Tal Verrar is concerned. He is not interested in building up a realistic, immersing world – and we should not be either as readers. Still, at times I felt that the setting could have been polished a bit more, just too make it all more interesting (although I do wonder what M. John Harrison would have had to say about all this).

“Three boats’ worth of pirates boarded from three separate directions; the ketch’s meager crew was swept into the waist by shouting, club-waving lunatics, all hollering a name that was meaningless to them, until at last they were subdued and the chief of the tormentors came aboard to exalt his victory.” (p. 475)

The pace is brisk and the five hundred fifty pages won’t put a strain on the reader. Scott Lynch does not waste any time meandering on meaningless details, he does not get sidetracked easily but instead focuses on things that truly matter. That is all for the better of it, the caper-pirate storyline works especially well with the fast pace that Lynch is maintaining. With the Lies of Locke Lamora Scott Lynch had a tendency to slow the story down in order to provide the reader with background information on the Gentleman Barstards’ past, and that affected the pace tremendously. In Red Seas Under Red Skies he improved in that area, the ‘background scenes’ are less numerous and managed to keep up – more importantly- the fast pace while still providing you with amusing interludes.

Red Seas Under Red Skies is, despite some flaws, still an immensely enjoyable novel by a talented author. Scott Lynch managed to improve in some areas, namely the characterization of his protagonists and maintaining a fast pace. It is, however, not so much the fresh breath of air through fantasy scene as the debut novel the Lies of Locke Lamora was. When you keep that in mind, I can guarantee that will find this novel extremely rewarding at heart.

8.5/10