Red Seas Under Red Skies

The first I ever heard of Scott Lynch was him vehemently defending one of the characters in this book. The character in question is one Zamira Drakasha. She's a pirate captain. She's middle-aged. She's black. And she's a mom, who brings her toddlers on the high seas with her. Some fans were upset, claiming that this was unrealistic wish fulfillment. To which Lynch replied that he's writing speculative fiction, not history. Wish fulfillment is the name of the game.

Seriously though, you should go read his whole response. It's pretty amazing.

I filed that bit away until one friend and then another began gushing about Lynch's books, and I had no choice but to pick them up. Zamira wasn't in the first book, though it was still a very good novel. If a bit uneven. But I knew she featured in the second one, and I was excited to meet her.

Imagine my disappointment when it took her over half of the 760 page book to show up. Actually it wasn't that bad, because Zamira is far from the only interesting character created by Lynch. The book opens with Locke and Jean approaching the end of a two-year plan to rob a high-end casino. Flashbacks to the months following the end of the previous book help fill in the gaps, and it seems like everything is going well.

Until things start to get complicated. Locke and Jean find themselves unwilling servants of a man who knows too much about them. They try to balance his demands with their job until he forces them out to sea, effectively abandoning the initial plot thread of the book. It would be annoying if the pirates weren't so perfect. Everything eventually comes together in the thrilling conclusion, and I found myself having a hard time putting the book down. There are a few things I wish had happened differently, but for the most part it was excellent. Far better balanced than the first book


One of my favorite things about Lynch is the effort he makes to present both men and women equally. It's not that this is a perfect egalitarian society, that there aren't stereotypes and the like. But women are present in the background in a way that isn't always true. Even faceless groups of guards always have a handful of women in the mix. And the minor characters - the nobility and artisans and assassins - all have an equal chance of being a man or a woman. I'd have loved for there to have been some estrogen in the Gentlemen Bastards in the first book, but barring that it's nice to have so many female faces populating the rest of the world

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