Lies is a a first novel, and a very fine book indeed. I suspect that any Fantasy author would be proud to have written a book as good as this, and the fact that it is a first book makes it all the more remarkable.
The book is set almost entirely within the city of Camorr, a city of small islands separated by winding waterways. It is clearly based on medieval Venice, down to the characters' Italian-sounding names and titles.
One of the many ways in which Camorr differs from Venice is the presence of Elderglass. Five immense towers, many of the bridges and other aspects of the city's infrastructure was created by an unknown and long-vanished civilization out of this seemingly indestructible stuff. Many of Lynch's most evocative descriptions are reserved for this Elderglass, and Camorr must indeed be an amazing sight during Falselight, when all the glass in the city glows faintly just after sunset. The upper ranks of the aristocracy of the city live in the five Elderglass towers, but whatever system the Elders devised to carry them up into their glass spires no longer works, leading to hilarious scenes of the well-to-do of the city being winched up and down these towers in creations of rope and wood powered by hand-turned capstans. The Elderglass is not just used for infrastructure: the Garden Without Fragrance is one of the strangest and most imaginative things I've come across in Fantasy.
For the commoners of Camorr, life is very, very unpleasant indeed. Each island and district has its own characteristics, but disease, murder, theft, and filth abound. Dozens of gangs of criminals control much of Camorr, ruled over in turn by the top dog, the Capa, a man who murdered and tortured his way to the top. A Secret Peace is in place - the aristocracy let the criminal gangs do what they want in the low-class parts of the city, and in return the criminals never target the aristocracy.
It is into this hellish cauldron of a city that poor old Locke Lamora is orphaned. Most of the story is told in the 'now', with Locke in his twenties, but there are frequent interludes which describe formative events in Locke's life, and that of his gang. For the most part this is an effective device, as it serves to introduce multiple cliffhangers in to the 'now' story, and also gives believable and satisfying back-stories to the characters. The 'now' story deals with the confidence tricks that Locke and his small team of criminals - the Gentlemen Bastards - inflict on the aristocracy, in direct violation of the Secret Peace.
Magic is present in the world of which Camorr is a part, and while it's very powerful, it's also very rare, its practitioners very few in number, and very expensive to acquire: so much so that your average aristocrat would balk at the cost of hiring a mage. The miserable lives of the people of Camorr are made a little more present by ubiquitous alchemical devices, with alchemy playing the role in Camorr's world that technology does in ours. Thus there are alchemical light-globes, and even alchemical cooking devices. Putting it all together makes for a world that is pleasingly different from normal Fantasy fare.
The world-building is terrific, the characters engaging, and the writing frequently brilliant. My favourite line is probably: "Someday you're going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee."
Lies is the first of a projected seven books. I'm not sure that Lynch's idea will stretch that far, but I for one am certainly looking forward to finding out if it does.
The Lies of Locke Lamora is by Scott Lynch. It is part of the Gentlemen Bastards series.
