Scott Lynch‘s The Lies of Locke Lamora (2013) surprised me. The mixture of world-building, long con game, and more traditional inverted-hero plot takes a while to get going, but once it does, the book is a very fast, very engaging read.
The inverted-hero trope is met through Locke Lamora himself, a preternaturally gifted thief and con man operating in the underground of the city of Camorr. The novel moves around in time quite a bit, from Locke’s youth as an apprentice-thief to (some of) the initial adventures of five young thieves known as The Gentleman Bastards to the dominant plot, which involves a brutal attempt to gain control of Camorr’s underground by a mysterious figure known as The Grey King.
Camorr and the surrounding lands are clearly intended to hold more stories, and are filled with both backstory and mystery, and if some of the touches are a bit over the top (ritual shark fighting from floating logs, anyone?), it’s all energetically and richly done.
The story just increases in momentum and interest as you move through it: if you are moderately intrigued by the first 100 pages, you will be fully hooked for the last 100 (and the 500 in between–it is a quick read, but not a short book).
I don’t know that I will return to Camorr, but the time spent there was worthwhile, and a TV or movie or video game franchise is certainly possible.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
Just go for it. It feels like Lynch has a deep affection for things, and then just finds a way to fold them into his fiction–from sharks to long cons to the way cities in early Dungeons & Dragons type games were a connected series of distinctly flavored neighborhoods, each with its own challenges and themes. There is something energetic and enjoyable in reading about things someone else loves.