greenstarfish 's review for:

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

1.0

adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Pros:
The flashback story starts off well by reacquainting the reader with

Sabetha and showing how she and Locke first met.

It also sets up her return and major role in the book.

Neutral:
The flashback story also provides some nice context for

how Locke's and Sabetha's romance started.

The problem is that the flashback story takes place of over the course of the entire book rather than just the first few chapters like in Red Seas Under Red Skies. It eats up a ton of pages that could've been used to flesh out the main story further (which I'll get to soon, don't worry) and the only thing gained out of it is a little extra context for the romance. Surely the same message could've been gotten across in fewer chapters. The flashback story does have one other aspect over the main story which is that it had actual stakes,

with Boulidazi exerting his power over the troupe and the complications that arise form his death.

The problem is that these high stakes are nullified because its a flashback story. I'm not worried about any of the main characters, because I already know they're going to be fine by the end of it.

Locke's and Sabetha's

romance in the main story showed some progression with

Locke learning to respect Sabetha's opinions.

However, it was missing one key element, which I was looking forward to, which is

why Sabetha left rest of the Gentleman Bastards 5 years ago.

For a reunion that was built up in the previous two books, it failed to answer the key mystery behind why that reunion had to happen in the first place.

The end of the main story did have one scene I liked which was

Falconers return. It revealed as to why he went into a coma in the first book after attempting a routine spell and yet it also made sense for Patience to take pity on her son and release him from it as she was leaving Karthain. But she underestimated his power and will which let him get the upper hand and take revenge. It will be interesting to see how he avenges the Gentleman Bastards actions against him in the first book.

This all sounds great, but the problem is that it has to be resolved in a book that hasn't been written yet.  (This is going to become a bit of a side tangent, so bear with me here.)

Normally I give writers the benefit of the doubt, if a work is unfinished, because I know they've written good stuff in the past and can write more in the future. However, with Scott Lynch I am conflicted. I enjoyed Red Seas Under Red, but Republic of Thieves has been massively disappointing and apparently it took him 6 years to write it after Red Seas Under Red Skies. It's been 12 years since Republic of Thieves was written and we're still waiting for the 4th book, Thorn of Emberlain to release. I would be able to give that book the benefit of the doubt, that it could wrap up the loose ends and provide a satisfying conclusion IF it was the last book in the series. However it isn't! Lynch is planning to make Gentleman Bastards a 7 book series, at this rate the last book will release in 2061! With a writer like Brandon Sanderson, who also plans out his series in advance, he writes books at a fast enough pace that I can trust the books will release while I'll still be interested in the series they're a part of. The same can't be said for Gentleman Bastards. By the time the series is finished, who knows when it'll be finished or where I'll be. 

Cons:
The biggest  flaw I saw in the flashback story was the overly detailed emphasis on all the

theater acting.

There were multiple scenes where it went over entire parts of

the play

and I was bored out of my mind, because none of it had any relevance to the plot whatsoever. It seemed like it was trying to recreate the same level of detail that was given to

the nautical

elements in Red Seas Under Red Skies, (Lynch says as much in the afterword), however it fails due to one key reason, stakes. The detail given to

the nautical

elements in Red Seas Under Red Skies worked because

Locke and Jean had to pretend to be masters at it while being amateurs and if they performed poorly, the ruse they had built up with the prisoners would go up in flames.

In Republic of Thieves, those stakes don't exist, the only consequence for the Gentleman Bastards messing up is a slightly

worse play.

Those scenes feel detailed and in-depth just for the sake of being detailed and because it worked in the previous book.

I've been avoiding talking about the main plot this entire review and that's because it isn't very good. It starts off promising with

Jean trying but failing to save Locke from the poison he ingested at the end of the last book. Then Locke gets cured by the Bondsmagi, so they can help rig a political election in Karthain. However it turns out that the Bondsmagi have actually pitted them against Sabetha.

It's a great hook for a story with a lot of potential, but it goes absolutely nowhere. The main story stagnates for the rest of the book. That's because the main goal of

gathering votes

is too vague and not concrete enough. There's not weight to any of the schemes done by the Gentleman Bastards, it all feels like a meaningless back and forth fight. The only scheme that feels like it makes a real difference is the very last one, right before

the election.

Alongside

the Falconer returning,

Republic of Thieves also uses plot twists to reveal some of the other mysteries that it was building up within the main plot. However these it completely butchers instead. Starting with the less egregious one, which is related to the plot twist that

the Bondsmagi abandon Karthain.

There were a couple

interlude's between the Bondsmagi

throughout the story, but they were so vague, that I didn't understand

what the factions within the Bondsmagi were and what they were trying to accomplish. But maybe if I had analyzed the interlude's between the Bondsmagi a little more,

it could've made sense. The latter plot twist however is so horrific, I can't begin to grasp how it came to be. It's related to

why the Bondsmagi are so interested in interfering in Locke's plans.

While reading Red Seas Under Red Skies and the beginning of this book, the reasonable conclusion that a sane person would make is that

it's because they want revenge for what the Gentleman Bastards did against the Falconer. But instead it is revealed during a conversation with Patience,

(which comes completely out of the blue mind you,) that the real reason is because

Locke is actually a Bondsmage who became so obsessed with resurrecting his wife from the dead that he started dealing with very powerful magic. Such powerful magic that he transferred his conciousness into another body, so he could continue his magical experiments despite his original body getting too old.

Let that sink in. A completely earth-shattering plot twist revealed in

an out of the blue conversation

with no real foreshadowing whatsoever. I say real foreshadowing, because the foreshadowing was

the fact that Locke didn't remember anything from his time before the catchfire plague except the word seamstress, which is actually Patience's true name and that Locke Lamora is also just a codename and not actually Locke's true name.

These would've been decent pieces of foreshadowing, if they had been given ANY ATTENTION AT ALL within Republic of Thieves! They were

brought up as off handed pieces of mystery like they had been in the first and second books and left at that, like they would be addressed later down the road.

It felt like all of these interesting plot threads were chucked into a dumpster fire for the sake of a "shocking" plot twist. If the time that was spent dragging out the flashback story was instead spent of fleshing out the main storyline, maybe the plot twists could've been foreshadowed better and wouldn't have ended up so awful.