With their options seemingly exhausted and Locke virtually on death's door due to poison Locke and Jean receive an offer of assistance from a source they would never have expected, one of the Bondsmagi. The Bondsmagi in question, Patience, is willing to heal Locke in exchange for the gentlemen bastards' aid in rigging an election in the city of Karthain. However the opposition have an interesting cats-paw of their own, Sabetha Belacross Locke's former lover and someone whose skills are a match for his own.
The story is divided into two main parts; the events in the present and events in the past detailing Locke's first meeting with Sabetha, interesting turning points in their relationship before detailing efforts of the teenage gentleman bastards to stage a play while juggling an overbearing patron and other obstacles. One advantage to this strategy is Lynch gets to use some interesting characters such as father Chains and Calo and Galdo who were killed in earlier books. There is however a major drawback which I will come back to.
The book starts with a roar and hiss but runs out of steam in the middle and never really recovers. Part of this is due to a lack of tension. Sabetha obviously has no intention of doing serious harm to Locke and Jean and we know that the main characters are under no threat in the past storyline, ie the major drawback. Part of this could have been alleviated by focusing more on the conflict between the two Bondsmagi factions as this is clearly a major plot point but an underdeveloped one.
Having said that the characters remain engaging and there is an interesting touch of world-building which hints at the direction this series will take.
While there are some pacing issues and a serious lack of tension strong characters make for a worthwhile read. 7/10.
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