Before I start this review, I think I ought to be clear that this isn’t a bad book. It’s actually quite good, from an objective standpoint. But it’s also a book that pissed me off no end.

The Mask of Mirrors follows Renata, who plans to infiltrate a noble house by pretending to be a long-lost cousin, for reasons which are currently lost to me but we shall assume involves wanting their money. Only, by doing so, she finds herself entangled in some sort of conspiracy (although this takes a good 300+ pages to become clear. I’m summarising a plot that took nearly 700 pages in two lines but I promise you, it’s not as quick as it sounds).

I may as well make this my first point then: the book moves at a snail’s pace. Nay, slower than a snail. A snail would outstrip this book’s plot in a footrace by a country mile. That’s how slow it moves. And, on one level, I expected this. It’s an adult fantasy, so I knew it’d move a bit slower and be a bit more in depth. However. There’s slow, and then there’s this. Things happened so incrementally they might not have happened at all. I got to the halfway mark, when something finally happened, and it just made it so clear how little had actually come before. I think you could cut out almost the entirety of the first half, that’s how little it adds to the plot.

So the book is slower than usual, fine, but it also seems to have missed the memo on in depth worldbuilding. There’s a lot of description, but I don’t think I could tell you a whole lot about the world itself. There’s a ruling class and a ruled-over class (and the former seems to be sort of colonisers, in a sense? But that’s so barely touched upon it’s easy to forget). They seem to have different religions, although this is only mentioned right at the end of the entire book, and the ruled-over class wants to be free (again, only seen through a single character. There’s no continuous unrest or anything which might display that more obviously). It’s very… light touch worldbuilding, I would say. The sort that’s just told about as and when it becomes necessary. Case in point: the magic system. For the first half of the book, you might be convinced you’re reading a world that doesn’t have magic. But you would be wrong! When the plot requires there to be magic, there is magic. Much like almost every other aspect of the worldbuilding. When the plot requires it, it gets introduced (and barely explained). In all, it’s very much hand-waving look at this lovely description of the physical world. There’s no groundwork for anything that the plot relies on.

As for when the plot itself finally gets moving, well, let’s just say none of the problems Ren encounters ever seem to bother her for long. It takes so little time for a solution to be found that it’s almost ridiculous. It feels like the authors were too busy patting themselves on the back for describing the world, they forgot to do anything else. There is, quite literally, a magic-using woman who, given a problem, knows exactly what the solution is. And Ren has an uncanny ability to hear exactly the information she needs to hear, at exactly the right time. I know that such plots must, out of necessity, contain some degree of happy coincidence, but the number of times it happened truly took the biscuit.

Moving onto the characters, then. My favourite by far was Grey, and he is the only reason I might actually be tempted into continuing the series, but for the fact that he gets about a fifth the page time of anyone else (also that reveal at the end was so obvious). Vargo was also interesting enough but again suffered from having not that much page time. Leaving Ren.

I’m not saying I hated Ren. At the start, she did interest me a fair bit. But after a while, I couldn’t really stand reading her POVs. It’s like, she’s a perfect character. Okay so she’s trying to swindle that noble house, but it’s pretty clear she won’t be able to early on, and thus she starts becoming perfect. She has no major flaws and there was nothing about her I could latch onto and like because of it. She was just… there. And her burgeoning romance with Leato? Who everyone thinks is her first cousin? No, thanks! The most positive feeling I had about this book was when that went nowhere.

All of which meant that, by the time the ending came around, an ending which was supposed to be a holy crap kind of ending, I was just too frustrated to appreciate it. But then again, given the lack of groundwork for that ending in the first place, perhaps I shouldn’t have been too surprised.

I knew I wanted to read this when I realised it was in part written by Marie Brennan because as you may know I am a huge fan of Turning Darkness into Light and I just knew I was going to have a good time with this. I love a fantasy mystery and I also love a long con – this book just felt like it was pulling in a lot of different elements that I really love and it was either going to be really great or a big dissapointment.

I’m delighted to say that this book was really great.

One thing I enjoyed was the worldbuilding. I read the setting as very Venetian – which is always a pro as I love Venice, and I think that the various settings in the book are well done. I particularly enjoy the details involved in the furnishings of rooms and the clothing – I was delighted that a big part of the story is to do with Ren’s ‘handmaid’ Tess making her clothes as we get to see a character using fashion to influence the nobility – not only do you therefore get gorgeous ball gown descriptions but also you get to see how clothing can be used for politics and it’s just exactly what I want in a story like this.

I thought the magic in the world was interesting. While it wasn’t a totally explained hard magic system (usually my preference) there is a hard magic system in place. I particularly found the use of card magic/clairvoyance to be really impactful on the story. I think I almost preferred that to some of the ‘bigger’ magic in the book purely because there was an added element of interest – the potential to use that card magic to con someone.

Because it’s the plot that really shines through in this book. Ren’s mission is clear from the off and although there are various things that change throughout the book the core mission is still there. I think it works really well as a focal point for a much wider story and gives you as a reader an anchor to keep coming back to when the plot is a bit more far flung.

Because this story is so much more than just ‘trick the nobility’. There is much more going on than any of the characters know and to the very last second there are new pieces of information being thrown at you. That can get a little bit overwhelming at times especially if you’re like me and you have a hard time keeping track of moving pieces, but the book does a good job of including some explanation points within the story to catch you up on occasion. It’s a good balance of showing and telling – the only time I got a little confused was a classic ‘Judith’ moment where I thought two characters were one character and got muddled up with who was doing what – but that’s definitely a me problem.

This book was a lot longer than I was expecting, to the point where I almost think it could have been two shorter books – I can even think of where I would have split the story. But I can understand why, there’s oodles of information to pack in and a lot of things to set up. For the most part the pace remains high, but I don’t know if that’s because I was reading this book in quite dedicated chunks, I wonder if it would feel the same if you were picking it up in smaller pieces over a longer period? But a lot of the issues I was having with the book in the first half were solved in the second half so maybe it was a good thing that it was so long?

I had a really good time reading this book and I think a lot of people are going to like it, mostly because it encompasses a lot of different elements that I know for a fact people enjoy. It’s definitely a book I’ll be rereading and a series I will be following in the future.

My rating: 4/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

The Mask of Mirrors Publishes January 21st

What an absolutely, incredible, marvellous book. It took me a little while to get into it but then I was completely hooked. Full of twists and turns, intrigue and magic, the first instalment of this trilogy doesn’t put a step wrong.

With a cast to rival Game of Thrones and everyone wearing a mask, you’ll constantly find yourself questioning who is on the side of good. All the characters especially Ren and Vargo (my favourites), are all brilliantly drawn characters.

Absolutely adored it, and I can’t wait for book two. Wholeheartedly recommend.

I had super high hopes for this one. It has all of the usual stuff that I look for in an engaging fantasy read, but alas, this one just didn’t work for me. I found it really hard to follow the various characters and plot lines. Maybe it’s a case of right book, wrong time. But at the minute, this one is not for me. I may come back to it again in the future though because it’s the kind of story I usually enjoy and the writing is great!

5*

This book was outstanding!

It's quite challenging to put into words just why I loved this book so much so I'll go with a list;

Setting - The Venetian setting is stunning, beautifully build, and oozing magic.
Society - The make up of our characters is heavily influenced by the cities "elite", the upper echelons and surrounded by corruption, and the lingering benefits of a post colonial world.
Characters - Thoroughly developed, believable and likeable. It's hard to pick whether the worldbuilding and characters are the highlight of this book, they're both masterfully managed. I think I will go with characters as the in a somewhat unique book for its use of grey. Everyone has light and dark to them, and even the lord of the criminal underworld has likable moments.

I would recommend this to anyone who has enjoyed City of Brass, and Daughter of Smoke and Bone.

My only complaint... I can't seem to pre-order this in hardback, I'll have to keep an eye out.

The Mask of Mirrors is filled with political intrigue, deception, and a wonderfully detailed world. It should have been everything I love in a book. However, with so many characters, places, and conflicts, I found it difficult to hold onto the threads. Nothing felt explained enough, I kept losing track of the plots and characters, and after finishing I couldn't say much of what happened in the plot or world. I often read detailed fantasy with large casts, so I was surprised to have felt this way.

The Mask of Mirrors is filled with political intrigue, deception, and a wonderfully detailed world. It should have been everything I love in a book. However, with so many characters, places, and conflicts, I found it difficult to hold onto the threads. Nothing felt explained enough, I kept losing track of the plots and characters, and after finishing I couldn't say much of what happened in the plot or world. I often read detailed fantasy with large casts, so I was surprised to have felt this way.

I want to start with the positives of this book because it was filled with intriguing mysteries that I thoroughly enjoyed. Firstly, I appreciate how rich the world is. You can tell that the authors know every detail of the setting they've constructed. The city feels alive, bubbling with different groups, rivalries, conflicts, and alliances. Despite feeling out of my depth, I was brought into the setting with beautiful descriptive language and a city that excited me.

Morally grey characters are the best, and no one can convince me otherwise. I loved that this book was stuffed full of them. Our main protagonist is a con-woman, but she's also incredibly loyal to the people she cares for. She's fighting for a place she can be safe. Unfortunately, I'm not sure anywhere in the city would fit that description. I love that every character has something to hide. They sneak around behind their families back, manipulate people into doing their bidding, and hold their enemies close. The political intrigue aspect was by far my favourite part of the book, and it remains the reason why I want to continue with this series.

The complexity of the book is one of the reasons I enjoyed it, but it was also why I struggled. Every single thing in this book is named with a proper noun. The places they visit, every minor character, every faction, every family, all of it had specific names. I couldn't keep track of what I was supposed to be remembering and what was irrelevant, especially when you mix in characters being referred to as either their first name, family name, title, or secret identity. There were so many named characters I'd struggle to remember them usually, let alone when they each have three or four names. I was spending the beginning of each POV shift trying to figure out who was I was following.

Sometimes large events would happen, and I'd be so caught up trying to understand what was going on I'd miss major parts. I managed to completely miss a character death because I couldn't figure out what was happening. The magic system, or systems, aren't explained fully and were based around interpreting tarot cards, or astrology, or doing something to make items magic. I couldn't tell you how any of that worked. I spent my time almost entirely lost. I enjoy books that thrust you straight into the world to figure it out for yourself, but you shouldn't have to be completely blind. Information dumps aren't your enemy if used in moderation to explain complex points that are difficult to understand alone. It was only at the very end that I began to understand how the world functioned, and by that point, I was tired of trying.

I remember being similarly confused in Gideon the Ninth. The main difference is I adored the characters in that book; I had a reason to fight the muddling complexity. I didn't understand the characters in The Mask of Mirrors; I couldn't get at their motivations or their true personalities. The amount of deception was both an interesting feature, and a difficulty.

Weirdly, despite being confused for the majority of the book, I still managed to figure out one of the major mysteries early on. It's a strange decision to create a mystery with three likely suspects, and have the main character suspect two of them. It's obviously going to be the third.

Overall, this book had a lot of my favourite features, but the complexity wasn't handled in a way that was easy to understand. People who have a better memory for proper nouns and following along with complex relationships in a huge cast would have a better time with this read; it wasn't for my brain. Regardless, I'll be picking up the next book as I can't help but be intrigued by what's going to happen next.

I think if you like this genre of book, this will be a phenomenal read. It wasn't up my street but I did love the story and concept of the book. Written excellently and characters are well developed.

Thanks NetGalley and M. A Carrick for allowing me to read this!

I did enjoy this book, although I found it hard going at times. There is a lot of character and world building to help you emerge yourself. It is definitely a more complex read

After a slightly rocky start (the prologue feels too similar to the opening scene of The Name of the Wind), I am quickly sucked into this rich, immersive historical YA fantasy, and struggle to put it down.

The story follows Ren, an orphan who decides to con her way into a life of wealth and privilege but soon realises she may have bitten off more than she can chew. As she navigates many layers of politics, family feuds and societal expectations alongside her loyal sister Tess, Ren discovers that her masquerade is only one of many.

I love shades of grey characters, and in this A MASK OF MIRRORS doesn't disappoint. Ren's development from self-interest to self-sacrifice makes her a character you can cheer for. But what keeps me reading is that Ren's story is just one piece of a larger puzzle centering on the city's colonial history and corrupt elite. Other notable characters include criminal underlord Vargo, who is more than Ren's match in beauty and manipulation; Captain Grey Serrado, torn between his duties and morals; and the mysterious masked avenger The Rook.

The Venice-style setting has been done before, but there's originality in the worldbuilding: the magic takes a backseat at first, but develops into a blend of dreamscapes, tarot, geometric runes and mind-altering drugs. That said, this isn't a fantasy for the uninitiated. In addition to a lot of terminology unique to the world, there are more side characters than I can keep track of. Furthermore, the varying religions, cultures and magic systems could be better explained, particularly as they play an important role in the second half of the book.

As a personal preference, I would have loved a romantic subplot to add another dimension of complexity to Ren's masquerade. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there'll be more romance in the sequel - which, yes, I'll definitely be reading!

Read this if you like the sound of multi-character complex fantasies with the culture clash of CITY OF BRASS in the setting of CARAVAL.