July Books 21) The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch
I'm coming late to this one, which was the source of one of the original slapfests and which also made it to joint 15th on the Locus poll of Best Fantasy of the 21st century. Big fantasy novels are often not my thing, but this was generally pleasing after a slow start - our hero, Locke Lamora, flits between underworld and ruling classes in the city where we lay our scene, attempting to pull off audacious scams which sometimes fail and sometimes succeed, risking and indeed losing friends along the way. The end of the book has a couple of spectacular twists. Those who generally like this sort of thing will really like this (see for instance Patrick Rothfuss); I certainly found it a better holiday read than Disch's 334!