The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (2006, scott_lynch

[Been trying to post this since early Friday morning. Please to be biting me, lj]

Book one of a projected seven in the Gentleman Bastard series. The titular Locke Lamora is a con artist – con man does not seem adequate, quite – in not-really-an-Italian-city-state Camorr. He and his gang are sworn initiates of the unnamed thirteenth, the god of thieves, the crooked warden, the benefactor of necessary pretexts. They also put on elaborate charades to relieve the nobility of their wealth, become embroiled in a nasty power struggle brewing in the city’s Underworld, get blackmailed by the shadowy ‘Gray King’ and his vicious bondsmage, and become targets of the city’s secret intelligence forces. Which is to say that no one really has a good time of it, except I suspect that they actually do.

A lot of people have been talking about this book, and while I’m not all flaily and incoherent about it like some (it’s a guy thing, I think, which I say with all due airquotes of gender studies sarcasm) I still think it’s pretty awesome. The Gentlemen Bastards are talented and often hilarious, and Locke himself is brilliant in that way of someone who functions at his best while teetering on the very edge of destruction. It’s all quite madcap and delightful.

“Bug,” Calo said, “Locke is like a brother to us, and our love for him has no bounds. But the four most fatal words in the Theran language are ‘Locke would appreciate it’.”

“Rivaled only by ‘Locke taught me a new trick’,” added Galdo.

And I can honestly say that I got more than I was expecting from the decisive, crusty writing and the nicely balanced plot. Locke makes mistakes while not being stupid, and most elements of character and story make the sort of sense that leaves a reader feeling pleasantly respected. Which doesn’t happen nearly enough in this genre, thank you.

There are stumbles. Lynch overplays his hand at the beginning in terms of telling us how brilliant Locke is, to such a degree that it makes his demonstrated brilliance actually a bit less impressive. And the omniscient POV, while handled with surprising elegance to my hair-trigger sensibilities, wavers a bit here and there to show too much too plainly of the structure beneath. But it’s a first novel, after all.

I think the greatest praise I can offer this book is to say that not only do I look forward to the next book in the series, but I also trust Lynch to deliver me a story free from the more irritating tropes, offering up the excitement and skin-of-their-teeth hijinx of the thieves, but also real and painful consequences. That last, by the way, should be taken as a warning.

Highly recommended.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (2006)

A book which sets out to discuss (not answer, and thank goodness) that rather thorny question of what we should be eating for dinner. Pollan traces four food chains from, uh, roots to the dinner table: the industrial food chain (beef, corn, and all things processed), the organic industry (Whole Foods), an actual self-sustaining organic operation unaffiliated with the industry, and the shortest food chain of all, local hunting and gathering.

The first three-quarters of this book are really fabulous, well-balanced discourses on what we eat and where it comes from. The writing is candid without insisting on judgments, packed with Pollan’s many personal experiences without being obnoxiously drenched in his personality. (I like him, you understand, but many nonfiction authors make the mistake of assuming they themselves are as interesting as their subjects. They are almost always wrong). The last section really fell apart for me, because the book lost a lot of its narrative focus and informative punch and lapsed back into Pollan’s interesting but still rather aimless philosophical and personal observations, a la The Botanny of Desire. Still, I’m very glad I read it. It’s vastly informative, well-organized, and mostly engaging.

I find myself recommending this book to a lot of people, which I usually don’t do – I tend to select prospective audiences very carefully. But food is a pretty universal topic, and I greatly appreciate the style of this book, which encompasses the same horrifying information as something like Fast Food Nation without bludgeoning the reader to death with an agenda. We’re supposed to draw our own conclusions, which is what we all do each day, every time we choose what to eat, and I really appreciate that.