Venice is such an obvious and wonderful setting for fantasy, it's hard to imagine why it doesn't get more use. Everyone always jumps on medieval England or France, maybe with a bit of Scandinavian, but Renaissance Venice? With its glass works, its intrigue, its cloaks, its daggers, its Carnival... That is a rich and fertile ground for fantasy! 
 I had a little trouble getting into this one at first because it does an awful lot of time hopping. I can understand why this was done - giving us the exhilaration of the adult Locke Lamora on a heist, while also feeding us some of his backstory in the form of child Locke. On the one hand, I'm not sure it was necessary to do it this way since child Locke gets up to quite a few exciting adventures of his own. On the other hand, it gives us a tighter narrative in which the beginning connects directly with the ending. Having gotten through the difficult beginning, I can appreciate it. But having to keep track of time skipping on top of all the new characters, the new setting, the new terms... it makes the book just that little bit less accessible. 
 Once I got into it, though, I loved this book! It was exciting! It was fun! There were times when the main characters got themselves into a scrape I couldn't see a way out of and my stomach tightened and I read as fast as I could to find out what would happen. 
 I wish that there were more central female characters. There are women around - really cool and interesting women, women with power, active women - but none in the core group. Well, that's not quite true. There is one woman in the Gentlemen Bastards, but we don't see her in this book. She's talked about, but always out of the picture for one reason or another. It's obvious from the first mention of her that she's Locke's One True Love, and this gets brought up a lot, so having her be completely absent from the first book is a very interesting choice. It's a good choice, too, since it lets us see more of Locke's friendships. We need more books that centre platonic friendship! But now I'm worried that we'll meet Sabetha and she'll just be your standard "pretty but tough as nails" love interest. I like that she's held back from the story for now, but my fingers are crossed that she'll be given some proper development. 
 In conclusion, I loved this book. I devoured it. It was fun, it was exciting, it had some great character development, it had a fantastic setting, and it had one of those excellent plots that feels meandery but then ties up neatly at the end and I loved it so very very much.