The bolded sections represent quotes from the criticism he received. All the z-snaps are in order.
Your characters are unrealistic stereotpyes of political correctness. Is…
For anybody who’s curious about Scott Lynch and his books, I hereby recommend them. The first book is The Lies of Locke Lamora, and the second is Red Seas Under Red Skies.
They’re different enough that if you try one and it doesn’t catch your fantasy, it’s worth checking out the other to see if it’s more up your alley. While the second book follows the events of the first book, they’re both individual escapades that wrap up in such a way that you don’t need to read the first one to in order to understand and appreciate the other.
The stories are fantasy, but not epic fantasy, and in fact there’s a minimum of anything more magical than alchemy. They’re thief/pirate caper yarns, a little bit Robin Hood and a little bit The Sting. The main character is very nearly as clever as he thinks he is, and the world is cool if not remarkably unique. Better than uniqueness, though, is that Lynch really takes the time to build and explore the settings he creates, so that you get a rich, textural sense of place and the people who live there, and how they’ve shaped one another.
Also, as his comments here indicate, he includes dynamic characters of diverse skin colors, ethnicities, genders, and backgrounds.
I’ve been waiting for the third book for years (which he’s said will focus on the woman who is only hinted at in the first two books—you get the impression that the main character refuses to talk about her less because may carry a torch for her than because she’s just possibly better at this gig than he is). I didn’t know it was his depression that was putting it off. That’s terribly sad, and my best wishes go to him in that struggle.