Lies To Believe In

I am a lover of good fantasy. I cut my teeth on Tolkien when I was young, and have always been looking for good stuff ever since. I enjoyed David Eddings and Terry Brooks, and love Terry Goodkind and George R.R. Martin. But I have found that good fantasy is really hard to come by, and that there is usually a long wait in-between books by good authors. So I have been searching for more good stuff. And boy did I find it. I won't go into detail about how I found it, but I will say that Scott Lynch's books are fantastic. I think that far too many fantasy authors these days think that good fantasy has to have lots of epic battles, magic and monsters. I don't think that is the case. I think that good fantasy has to have believeable characters, and the reader has to believe that the world in which the story takes place could actually exist. That means that the author needs to provide enough details about the world, but not get bogged down in those details. Who cares about magic, monsters, and battles if you don't care about characters? Lynch does both of those well. I cared about Locke and his friends, and they functioned in the world that they were in. I wont go into plot details, but I will say that the plot of the first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, is like a fantasy version of a crew like in Ocean's Eleven, whose plans go south. The second novel is very different because of how the first ends, and has a very different feel, but enjoying the characters of Locke Lamora and his companion Jean make these worth reading. I just found out his next book comes out next month. I am really excited.