Locke and his trusted sidekick, Jean, target the grandest prize of all: the Sinspire, the most exclusive and heavily guarded gambling house in the world. Its nine floors attract the wealthiest clientele—and to rise to the top, one must impress with good credit, amusing behavior… and excruciatingly impeccable play. For there is one cardinal rule, enforced by Requin, the house’s cold-blooded master: it is death to cheat at any game at the Sinspire.

But someone in Tal Verrar has uncovered the duo’s secret. Someone from their past who has every intention of making the impudent criminals pay for their sins. Now it will take every ounce of cunning to save their mercenary souls. And even that may not be enough. 

 

Schemes, Heists, False facing, Robery, Cliff jumping, sass, broken hearts, friendship, love, brotherhood, stabbing, sea monsters, magical assassins, normal assassins, poison, Kitties, AND OW MY HEART HOW DOES ONE BOOK CONTAIN SO MUCH EPIC?

“ I want to hug you. And I want to tear your gods-damned head off. Both at once.”

“Ah,” said Locke. “Near as I can tell, that’s the definition of ‘family’ right there.” 

Goddamn I love this series, I love these characters, I love this world, I love this so much. If you haven’t read my review for the first book The Lies of Locke Lamora you should do that but there’s no spoils in this for the first which is somewhat awesome because it could work as a standalone but you’d be missing out on some background that explains the characters actions.
Red Seas Under Red Skies is just as great as the first book if not better because I already knew all the world building and could read it easier than the first. Not only do we still have the amazing sass of Locke and the beautiful person that is Jean we have a whole cast of new characters that I fell hard for.

The one problem with the first book was the lack of female baddass’s and this book more than made up for it. A whole boat load of baddass woman were in this book and I mean boat load BADASS LADY PIRATES YES! I want baddass lady pirates in all my books I don’t care if it’s a highschool contemporary baddass lady pirates for all stories please.

Locke is once again hatching a crazy scheme and gets caught up in even more crazy, blackmail, card tricks, thievery, assassins on assassins trying to kill him.

Basically if you read and enjoyed The Lies of Locke Lamora you’re going to love this book. I’m torn about jumping straight into the third book because I need to know what happens next but also I won’t have the 4th book BECAUSE ADULT FANTASY SUCKS AT PUBLISHING ONCE A YEAR and this was supposed to be published in 2015.

“We may need to ready ourselves to repel boarders.” “With what? One stiletto and hurtful insinuations about their mothers?”

The Gentleman Bastard series may be one of my favourite Fantasies of all time 5/5 stars

Have you read Red Seas under Red Skies? What did you think?