The Republic of Thieves The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Three

His way of telling a story is truly very enjoyable to me. The way his characters engage with each other has me falling in love with all of them, even though most of them are sooo dark grey that I’d probably have quite a few issues with them irl. Also, this angsty slowburn between Locke and Sabetha was right up my alley - maybe a tad too angsty and slowburn-y at times but overall I liked it a lot! It was easy to see why they would (re-) act the way they did with each other which, at times, made it so frustratingly wonderful to witness. Yet, Locke’s and Jean’s friendship is on another level completely and is probably one of my most loved portrayal of friendship.I think this is also the reason why I keep coming back to this series. Though I do have to say that I found this third book in the series to be too detailed. The background story to Locke and Sabetha felt too elaborate - maybe because it was all in this book (not much was told about their relationship in the first two books). In my opinion, it was just a bit too much and at times a bit too irrelevant to the story. Also, in comparison to the first two books, I was a bit disappointed by the plot and the 'heist' in this third adventure. It just couldn’t grab my attention as much as the other two. Which is why this book will get 4 stars. As I said, I’m still very much in love with the author’s style of writing and his character-work, but overall I didn’t like the story as much as the first two.

I find this trilogy very problematic. The main character has a lifelong fixation on one woman. The whole book reads uneasy, it is a man's abstract, uhealthy and very imature view on the world, life and women. The charakters never grow, never develop, they only get older. Always going though the same motions. Eternal Peter Pans, refusing to grow up and therefore lacking charakter, depth and substance. I made the mistake buying all three books at once. Since I had, I read all three of them but it was really hard, tedious labour. I read books for almost 30 years now. I love books. It gets difficult to be surprised anymore but still it's very rare for me to throw one away. Had to do with this three. What a shame.