Review: Red Seas Under Red Skies

[megwrites]

Title: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Republic of Thieves, Book 2)
Author: Scott Lynch (scott_lynch; Author's Website).
Genre: Fantasy
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Spectra





The Positives: I was initially wary about the sequel because the Amazon reviews said that it wasn't as good as the first due to the bits on the ship and because I'd just got through being bored to tears by Throne of Jade in that same regard. Those reviews were wrong, I'm happy to say.

Lynch makes the nautical terms and lifestyle a lot more interesting and understandable to someone who knows nothing about boats or the ocean. It doesn't hurt that Locke and Jean start out being just as land lubberly as I was and their education was also my education, but entertaining. So this time around, I was actually interesting in what was going on aboard the ship. I even liked the doomed shipboard romance.

Locke and Jean remain as snarky, clever, unlikely, and exciting as they were in the first novel, and it helps to see that they do fight, and they do contemplate separating or even punching each other's lights out in fits of frustration. Their grief and their need to move on were palatable in between the quips and jibes.

The supporting cast in this book really sparkled. The pirate captain Drakasha, with her two children on board and her snarkiness and her impeccable competence, was my favorite. I really would have loved for her to get her own novel, because she was a woman, a CoC, a mother on the high seas, a pirate, equally as witty as Jean and Locke at moments, tough, strong, proud, and just all around awesome. Not to mention that there's a curiously wonderful mingling of pirate life with the ordinary life of a mother raising two children.

For instance, Drakasha thanking Jean for the gift of a daughter who will be up all night repeating the new word ("piss!") she's just learned really made me smile, but also gave Drakasha an interesting dimension.

I remain impressed that Lynch can write a 784 page book that actually justifies every page. I can't think of any bit of the book that wasn't essential to the plot or that I, if I were the editor, would have cut. I can't say that about a lot of the larger fantasy tomes that come out these days.

I also note that this book's organization was much more linear than the last one, and there wasn't as much jumping between flashbacks and present time. I enjoyed that.

I do know that when I finished this book yesterday, I felt the same thing I felt when I finished the first book. I missed it. I missed have a nice, thick, juicy, rip-roaring adventure to sink my teeth into each night before I went to bed. It was nice to have a fantasy novel that was fun, that I enjoyed reading. Because so many books, while well written and plotted and very intelligent, just aren't that entertaining. This was.


The Negatives: There isn't too much negative to say about this novel. I did feel like the initial heist that Locke and Jean were after was wrapped up much too quickly, and I certainly wouldn't have minded if Lynch had taken another hundred pages to let that come to fruition.

I will say that I could have wished that the pirate plot didn't feel like it was budging in on the heist plot, but it wasn't enough to spoil my enjoyment.


CoC Score: 7.5. There were a lot more characters of color in this novel, and one of the most important and vivid characters in the book, the pirate captain of the Poison Orchid who was more awesome than awesome was a CoC. Tal Verrar is a much more cosmopolitan place it seems, with lots of different cultures derived from various continents all mixing around. Would've gotten a ten if this had been the awesome pirate captain's novel. Alas, it is still a book about two white guys. But it is loads better CoC-wise than the first one. And none of the major CoC's bite it, either!

Two and a half points deducted for a skanky moment when, at a night time market, Jean and Locke see a dark skinned man and the narration notes: "the speaker was a cloaked, bald-headed man with the coffee-colored skin of an Okanti islander; the man was several thousand miles from home. his well-kept white teeth stood out as he smiled and bowed slightly over his wares."

While I have no doubt that Mr. Lynch was probably unaware of it, the "he's so dark, all I can see is his eyes and teeth" has been a very racist thing used in literature, and it's something that I, as a white Southerner, have heard my fellow white Southerners comment upon when they wished to demean and denigrate African Americans.

Also? I'm getting a little tired of seeing dark skin described in relation to beverages. Mocha, coffee, cafe-au-lait. I'm not sure why some white authors seem to feel that people of color are somehow more caffeinated than them.

While this may seem nitpicky to a white reader, to a reader of color, particularly any that have had to see people like themselves described in these ways, it might just be enough to make them throw the book across the room.

GLBT Score: 6. There are mentions of same-sex escapades in the background during shipboard parties, but it seems to be as equitably tolerated as heterosexuality. Not much in the way of any major GLBT characters, but nobody died who was identifed as being GLBT. Otherwise there's very little mention of it.

Gender Score: 9. There are more women in this time around in various positions, and the pirate captain is a woman, as well her first mate and the ship's doctor. So, it's not just a sausage fest going on here. A point taken away because the pirate captain really deserved her own novel. She was too awesome for words.