The Lies of Locke Lamora

Camorr is a city on the make, an urban sprawl squatting ostentatiously in the remnants of an ancient and alien civilisation, where power is shared between a corrupt Duke and an all-powerful crime lord. The rich are rich, the poor are poor, and a secret pact maintains the status quo and binds all parties to keep to their own. All, except for the Gentlemen Bastards.

Scott Lynch's debut novel reads like The Hustle meets a prequel to Gormenghast, set before the latter's precursors completely decayed, and written before Mervyn Peake went completely bugnuts. It's a caper novel set in a grim fantastic world of alien glass and sorcery, featuring a band of rogues who survive - when they do - through an alchemical mixture of competence, luck, and balls-to-the-walls audacity.

It's not a deep novel with a lot to say about the human condition, but it doesn't try to be. It's a layered story peopled by entertaining characters, with enough complexity to make things interesting, but not so much that you need a diagram to follow it. It does something a bit different with its core concepts, and has a lot of fun about it, even if it gets a bit grim in places.

If I hadn't picked them up as an omnibus, I would definitely look at getting the next book in the series, Red Seas Under Red Skies, but as I did I don't have to.