20 books to read while you wait for The Winds of Winter

4. The Gentlemen Bastards

If epic quests, dragons, trolls, and goblins are your cup of tea…then get lost! The Gentlemen Bastards is a series about a gang of thieves doing a bunch of thiefly stuff, and it. Is. Great!

Currently made up of The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, and Republic of Thieves, these books cater to people who like a darker, grittier brand of fantasy with a healthy dose of humor. Scott Lynch is one of those rare authors whose prose stand up to the likes of GRRM or Ursula K. Le Guin…and he often drops in lines that are laugh-out-loud funny. Cursing is an art form in this series.

The Gentlemen Bastards follows the titular character of the first book, Locke Lamora, as he and his best friend Jean go on one crazy criminal job after another. One very cool thing about this series is that, while it does have an over-arching plot, each book tells a very specific style of story and is self-contained. The first book is the “gang of thieves conning people” book. If you’ve ever played Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, imagine if the Thieves Guild plotline was a novel, and you’ll have a pretty solid idea of what Lies is like. The second is a pirate novel, and the third focuses on politics, magic and the theatre.

The Gentlemen Bastards is, however, another one of those series that has dragged on in the writing process for quite some time. The Lies of Locke Lamora came out back in 2006, and while Scott Lynch has made somewhat quicker progress than, say, Patrick Rothfuss, Gentleman Bastards is still widely regarded as one of those “it-will-be-finished-when-it’s-finished” series.

That said, Lynch announced earlier this year that he’d finished a draft of the fourth book in the series, The Thorn of Emberlain. Considering that we’re likely to get a new book soon, it’s a great time to get into the criminal underworld of the Gentlemen Bastards.