Locke Lamora is the garrista, or head thief, of his gang called the Gentleman Bastards. He's merely one of hundreds of such gangs in the seedy city of Camorr who pay their thief tax to Capa Barsavi. All is well until other garristas start turning up murdered by a man who does not fear the Capa's vengeance. And when he turns his sights on Locke, well, the city's most brillant thief just might have to pay with his life to bring the Gray King down.

Fans of stories with non-traditional heroes, fans of Ocean's Eleven, and other theif stories will like this one.

It's a very unique setting with rich description

The very foul language. More on that below.

The back of the book describes this fantasy debut as a mix between Robin Hood and Ocean's Eleven, but I would submit that it's more likely a cocktail of The Italian Job, Ocean's Eleven, and The Godfather. Because while there is definately stealing going on, there is no 'robbing the rich to feed the poor'.

I'm not quite sure what to think of this book. Overall, it was a splendid piece of fantasy, original and engrossing. But there were some shaky moments. This book starts out very slow and it was only the promise of the interesting characters that kept me going--and I was glad I did because the pace picked up. By far the worst thing about this book was the extremely foul language. Not a page went by without some character dropping the "f-bomb" at least once, and usually more than that in a sentence. I don't swear myself so it was pretty shocking and distractng to me. I don't mind a scattering of swearwords in writing when it's necessary, but I also think too much swearing is a sign of lazy writing.

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Created Sep 12, 2007 at 7:51pm • Submit your own review...