This book was just as the series title described: 
 A gentlemanly bastard. 
 How so genteel? 
 The innerworkings of the plot were like the pieces of a puzzle- if one piece was missing, the whole picture wasn't complete. Maybe you could see the gist of it- but it just wasn't the same without that one, vital addition. Staring from the very beginning, you kept getting these pieces chucked at your head, but you had no idea what to do with them, or even that they would ever possibly fit together- until you had been hit with every single one of them. Then began the quicker, more astonishing process of putting them together- 
 You realized that the piece chucked at you on page one wasn't just a meaningless corner piece. 
 You realized that when connected to a piece tossed to you in the middle, it became an important fit for the one that hurt particularly bad when it smacked you in the eye- 
 And then it all fell together perfectly. 
 And then the picture was too painful to look at. 
 How so a bastard? 
 I often come upon a book that neglects to hurt me, and for this I am glad, because I want a book that I can cry for. In this situation, when my favorite characters were killed (nothing but tertiary characters- oh, why did they have to die?) I almost wished that they hadn't, something extremely rare to hear from me, indeed. 
 And in the end, over the last one hundred pages, I couldn't pause to blink. It was painful to read- it was the most horrible thing I could imagine happening to anyone, anyone, and it happened to poor Locke Lamora, the child who became the man he is from an orphan bastard on the streets. 
 I wanted to scream at the antagonist. I wanted to hurt him just as much as Jean Tannen and Lamora combined. 
 It made me that angry. 
 A small boy, none too old, with a lot to learn. 
 To twin men, witty as the Thirteenth himself. 
 A huge man carrying twin hatchets, softer at heart than anything, but a thief nonetheless. 
 And a small, thin, whisp of a man with a secret past, a lost love that we know nearly nothing about, and a mind with the power to move mountains- Our dear Locke. 
 I am quite glad I came upon this book- and I am anxious to read the next.