Gentleman Bastard

by Scott Lynch

Locke Lamora was picked out of an orphan pool as a child for being dangerously clever, and has spent his adult life proving it. He leads the Gentleman Bastards - a small crew of con artists operating in Camorr, a city of ancient alien glass towers and Venetian canals - pulling elaborate long-cons on the nobility while technically satisfying the terms of a peace treaty with the city's criminal overlord. The series is sharp, funny, and extremely violent, with some of the best-constructed heist plotting in fantasy. Scott Lynch's world is built around the tension between Locke's extraordinary competence and the repeated discovery that someone else is always playing a longer game.