Thoughts On Scott

So, it turns out that Average Joes aren't the only people that really think Scott Lynch is great at what he does. I've been tweeting around, and found out that there are several people that think he's the bee's knees within the author community as well. Sam Sykes is one such person (his twitter avatar is a monkey, but don't be fooled. I'm 87% sure he's human).

Sam's Bio: Sam Sykes is the author of The Aeons’ Gate trilogy, a vast and sprawling story of adventure, demons, madness and carnage.  Suspected by many to be at least tangentially related to most causes of human suffering, Sam Sykes is also a force to be reckoned with beyond literature.

At 25, Sykes is one of the younger authors to have arrived on the stage of literary fantasy.  Tome of the Undergates and Black Halo are currently published in nine countries.  He currently resides in the United States and is probably watching you read this right now.

Sam Sykes has done many things worthy of note, most of them involving violence of one manner or another.  Amongst his feats of strength, he counts the following:

• Wrestling a Kodiak bear to the earth
• Defeating nine of ten prime ministers
• Founding, and later destroying, the East India Company
• The Renaissance

Those are most likely true, as Sam Sykes is not given to lying without cause.

Sam Sykes currently lives in the United States with his two hounds and, at any given time, is probably yelling at something inanimate.  Tome of the Undergates is his first book, but far from his last.  At 25, Sam Sykes is in an excellent position to provide entertainment while other authors are dying from various infections and stress-related illnesses.  Sam Sykes looks forward to being one of the sole providers of fantasy entertainment, assuming no other authors are actually discovered in the next forty years.

Sam's Thoughts on Scott

Like most predators, Scott Lynch came into my life at a very opportune moment.  I was in that awkward phase of life where I wasn't certain where I stood with fantasy novels.  It all used to be so simple when I had began reading Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, with concepts like good and evil clearly illustrated by feasting scenes and training montages.  But as I went on, I started to think that maybe I no longer thought that moody dark elves were the pinnacle of literature, no matter how badass their swords were.  Oh, sure, I had started on George R.R. Martin, but his was a name etched on a restroom door behind which the hardcore fantasy kids dwelled, smoking cigarettes, shaving neckbeards and talking about how incest was okay in very certain circumstances.

Like most readers, I fell in with that crowd.  And I devoured the books.  And when they were done, I realized that, occasionally, one does long for a story in which someone getting some good news does not necessarily forebode an imminent sodomization.  One does, occasionally, long for a story where conflict is a many-sided thing, depressions are all the more depressing for the good times that were had, where shock simply happens without expectation.

Admittedly, I had no idea that the sort of book that had a cover of a weird kid in tight pants looking at a sparkly phallus against a pink sky was that kind of book.  But I picked up The Lies of Locke Lamora, anyway, and went to town.

In many ways, things simply don't get any better than Scott Lynch.  His characters are genuine, his plots are vast, he relies on no gimmicks but his own skill.  He might not be the book that launched a thousand thief stories, but he was surely one of them that took tropes and set out not to subvert them, but to make them his own.  In every page does his love for what he's doing come out and it's that kind of love that can draw a reader in more deeply than rage and sorrow can.  Yes, I love Scott Lynch.

And I have gone deeply into him.