Gollancz The Republic of Thieves: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Three

Lies of Locke Lamora was a stunning piece of literature.Red Seas was a step down, but lower quality isn't unheard of in middle volumes of a trilogy, so it gets a pass.Now we come to the conclusive crescendo: Republic, which should have been amazing. Instead, the series hit a new low. The "romance" was lifeless and unbelievable, the excuse provided for Locke's stalkerish obsession came way too late, the characters acted uncharacteristically, Sabetha was a manipulative AnythingYouCanDoICanDoBetter jerk, and worse, the tale kept us booing her, yet the author persisted in trying to make us feel sympathy for her as well. In general the whole story was an astonishing let down that dragged on.Bottom line: it was boring. Not worth a purchase. At all. I wish I had something better to write.

This series is going off the rails. This book was very messy and mostly pointless other than fleshing out the Locke/Sabetha romance. Unfortunately Sabetha is built up in the first two books to be something amazing and she turns out to be pretty meh. Locke constantly tells us that Sabetha is better than him and that just doesn't appear to be true at all. Her one good move against Locke was a low blow whereby she manipulated his personal feelings for her and then claimed it was just business. Furthermore, we find out that while Locke was planning and executing crazy cons and heists Sabetha was mainly sleeping with wealthy men in order to steal from them. Her exploits leave much to be desired and I wished she had remained absent.I'm still going to read Thorn of Emberlain (if it ever releases) but my opinion of this series is rapidly diminishing. If the trend continues, book 4 will be my last trip with Locke and Jean

As with all trilogies, the third act always returns to issues in the first, this one is no exception. Locke is dying after being poisoned by the villain in the last book. There is no cure, except for our old friends from book 1 and early in book 2, the Bondsmagi. Those tarts have a wonderful plan for Locke, Jean and the love of Locke's life, Sabetha. One of the Bondsmage, one connected to Locke and The Falconer from book 1, helps Locke, but with a serious price.Locke and Jean go against Sabetha in political warfare. The book also has a secret war among the Bondsmagi themselves, and the ending is a shocking, stomach turner. I truly hate the ending, which means the book was excellent. The name of the book comes a from a play that The Gentleman Bastards have to perform in the city state of Espara. Of course it is filled with unexpected events and one even that turns out in their favor.Lynch pours in philosophy, religion, atheism, art, literature, science, myth, and the question, "Who are we really?" A good read, it has the action of the second book and the skill of the first one. I am ready to read the long awaited, "Thorn of Emberlain." After this book, I can see why Lynch is taking his time on the fourth. It is tough to follow greatness.

Disappointing after the other 2 books in the Gentleman Bastards - which is to say it's still good, but not as good. I think there is a level of intensity of emotion and angst and history between Locke & Sabetha that is never fully realized despite the explanations. How it ends up reading, she's an emotionally unstable bitch and he's forever a lovelorn puppy she's kicking. I am 100% certain this wasn't the intent. But her motives are too mysterious, it makes her actions seem capricious and cruel.It is easier to get lost in a fantasy when the people still seem real, Locke's awkwardness around her, her flightiness, his undying loyalty - they all push me out of the story and make the characters seem thinner.

I have such mixed feelings about this book and what it portends for the rest of its series. In part that's because it's trying to do three very different things, and I think it accomplishes them with varying degrees of success.First, this novel aims to fill in the backstory of Sabetha Belacoros, a key figure who has been mentioned but never seen in the first two Gentleman Bastard books. She's long been the missing member of the central gang, and we finally get to see her as a young girl and teenager interacting with our returning heroes. These scenes are fantastic, easily slotting into the gaps that author Scott Lynch has left in the backstory and paying dividends for the disjointed flashback structure he's employed from the beginning. Sabetha herself clarifies the group dynamic a lot, and the story unfolding in the past is poignant and fun. I wish Lynch had included the sole female Bastard well before this, but he does a lot in these pages to make her feel like a real character and not just a requisite love interest for his male lead.The second goal of the book is to tell the latest adventure of the Gentlemen Bastards gang in the present, including their reconnection with an adult Sabetha. This part of the story just about works on a character level, but there are simply no stakes to the actual plot. The conmen protagonists are forced into rigging an election for a puppet government, but since it literally doesn't matter whether they succeed or not, it's hard for me as a reader to really care or even believe that the characters do.And finally, there are moments in this novel that are presumably intended to set up further adventures in the series (although five years later, there is still no word of when the next book can be expected). These parts succeed the least for me, and I find pretty much everything to do with the Bondsmagi and Locke Lamora's mysterious background frustratingly clunky and trope-filled in a way that Lynch has previously managed to avoid.On balance, I'm not sure how to weight these different elements against one another or judge this title as a whole. I love most everything to do with the added character history, but I worry that the series is rapidly losing its way with the story being told here and now.