Scott Lynch, okuduğum iki kitabında da zaman örgüsünü kafasına göre eğip büküyor. Bölümleri aralara serpiştirmesinin okuyucuyu zorlayan bir durum olduğunu düşünsem de bu durum, kitabın, gizem unsurunu perçinleyerek, amacına ulaşmasını sağlıyor.

I loved the first in this series, but it was a while before I got to the second. I started it on audio (Michael Page is a very good reader, by the way) for my work commute, and later picked up the print version to read at home-I blew through about half the thing that way.

I liked this a whole lot, almost as much as I liked the first. It stalled for me a couple of times while they were in Tal Verrar (some incredibly long conversations with the baddies for one thing-I swear I drove for 90 minutes over the course of one of them), and when the whole pirate scheme was hatched, I felt almost like I was starting a new book. But that was also when I really started enjoying the action. There had been some good stuff here and there up until then, but I didn't start really getting into it until Drakasha and Delmastro joined the fun. What great characters!

I love the unpredictability of Scott Lynch. I wasn't sure how the fake pirating plan was going to go, but I didn't expect the sudden death that hampered their plans. It was perfect. And I adore Locke and Jean. Their friendship is moving, and their dialogue makes me laugh out loud. I haven't seen such elaborate insults since reading Shakespeare in college. Can't wait for the next. ( )

Read twice ( )

Rating this book is hard because I loved some parts of this story and I felt so bored during other chapters.
What I really like about this series is going back and forth between the past and the present and see how everything connects, but this book didn't execute that as well as the first one. In fact, the second half of the book is told always in the present and our characters aren't planning to trick anyone for a long time. So, even though I loved Drakasha, I liked the first part of the book better and I was disappointed with the second half.

I was bored reading the chapters where Jean and Locke were learning to sail and with most of the chapters at sea because they felt repetitive. I felt like those chapters could have been shorter because they didn't add much to the main story.
I expected more from the bondsmagi and from the people at Salon Corbeau. Those chapters in the first half were amazing and a little scary. My expectations were high and I was so disappointed by the second half.

There are still some great things about this book. The relationship between Jean and Locke is still one of the best I have ever seen in fiction, Drakasha was great and I liked to see that the people from the first book were not forgotten and that what happened still had a lot of impact on the main characters. That was handled so well.
Overall, I enjoyed it but I was a little let down by some of the chapters. ( )

7 stars ( )