Okay, so the last chapter of the book is ominous… I felt so bad for [the Falconer’s caretaker] Eganis.
Poor Eganis! He might have been a bit of a jerk, but he was really just doing his job.
So is this a direct lead-in to The Thorn of Emberlain?
Spoilers for The Republic of Thieves and The Thorn of Emberlain! I’m dead serious, you have only yourselves to blame if you keep [reading] and you don’t want to! Because I’m gonna tell you some things!
The Falconer does not return in book four. The Thorn of Emberlain is about the war in the north – the Falconer does not lead directly into it. Something is going to be happening to the magi quietly in the background. Make no mistake, the Falconer is off on a roaring rampage of revenge. He’s gonna get some – but it is not going to be front-and-center for the next book. The Falconer will return in Thunderbolt – I mean, book five – which is when we will really start to see the consequences of what he’s going to do.
But no. The thing about the series that I hope people realize is that I’m structuring it and playing it as a very long game. And that means there are some pieces that get set aside for a book or two and then brought back into play with some force – as the Falconer has in his return at the end of book three. So book four is definitely not, ‘The Falconer strolls onto the stage and starts kicking ass.’ The Falconer needs some time to recover himself, among other things, and it’s still four hundred to one against Team Falconer, so he’s gotta even those odds.
And meanwhile, Locke and Jean get on with their lives, and they get mixed up in the war of session happening in the Kingdom of the Marrows. This book is all about the war.
Ancillary question: Will we see the Navigator again?
The Navigator will return.
Awesome! Will we see Sabetha again?
Oh, hell yes.
Will we learn more about Locke’s first history, the Lamor Acanthus story?
That’s a really good question! In the immortal words of Yoda, “Already know you that which you need.” I don’t know if I’m ever going to layer on any more. The thing is, this stuff exists to be a question. And I don’t know exactly what I might or might not be telling you any further, because as we all know – those of us who have read the third book – the person who was either telling the truth or fucking with [Locke] has been pecked to death by ravens [laughs] and will not be providing any more testimony in the case of Lamore Acanthus.
Part of it is just the practicality of that fact, Locke’s source for this information has been savagely cut off. But there are survivors, and some of them are very close to Patience – ahem, Navigator – and may be able to provide nuggets of further information as to what may have been going on.
So I hope that that is simultaneously spoilery and not-spoilery!
Locke has a very interesting vision when he’s being de-poisoned, of his dead protégé Bug speaking to him in the afterlife. Will we be learning any more about the theology behind the theology?
Well… we are going to learn more. Locke and Jean and other characters are always going to be discussing it, and discussing what they’ve learned, and we’re going to see a little bit more of Locke’s grounding in theology and the theology of the Thirteen – and how it contrasts with the religion of the Vadrans.
The thing with that horrible, horrible scene is that it’s inherently suspect because Locke was dying. Locke was in excruciating pain, under the influence of magic and drugs and poison and his own exhaustion. And so it is not unlikely that in extremis, he may have seen weird shit. People do that all the time.
Speaking as somebody who is not religious… I don’t find it very weird that we have transportive experiences, that we see lights at the end of tunnels, that strange things happen to us when we’re hovering between life and death. I leave it to the reader to decide whether or not this is actual evidence of greater cosmic mechanisms in place, or whether Locke is just dreaming.
And that’s how I handle the religion in this entire book, in this entire sequence, actually. I’m never going to provide objective evidence for or against the presence of the gods. It’s simply up to the readers to decide – is it all in everybody’s head? Or is their existence self-evident?
Patience says something very interesting about magic possibly summoning something that scared the Eldren away, and it was more of a direct reference to the Eldren than I was expecting. Will we see more of that history in future books?
It is exactly the sort of really spooky idea I love. It hearkens back to a lot of work by people like Ray Feist and Lovecraft that I really, really like and enjoy. I like that kind of spooky shit, I really, really do! So I think there are going to be more hints dropped and more discussion of just what might have happened to this species, or this race, or this culture that vanished twenty or thirty thousand years before Locke’s people walked the earth. Or I should say, before Locke’s people began their history, we don’t even know where they came from yet.
Mwahaha.
But it’s something I enjoy playing with so much, I’m certain I am going to twist it around a little bit and dangle some more awfulness in front of the characters and in front of the readers.
Would you rather be a book, or a computer?
If you’ve ever seen Inspector Gadget, you will remember that Penny had a computer-book, so I don’t think it needs to be a binary question. I would be a computer-book.
About Scott Lynch
At one point or another, Scott Lynch has been (and may still be) a dish-washer, web-designer, office manager and a volunteer firefighter. Scott now lives near Minneapolis with several cats, and frequently visits Boston, another cold city on the east coast which is the home of his partner, fantasy author Elizabeth Bear. You can find out more about Scott and his writing at his website, keep up with his exploits on his blog and follow him on Twitter as @ScottLynch78.
The first three books in the Gentlemen Bastards sequence are available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers.
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