Happy release month to The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick.
If I had to describe the recipe for The Mask of Mirrors, it would look something like this:
– Take Six of Crows (+ grishaverse) as the basis, and add…
– The police and street force of Beka Cooper
– The vaguely-Romani influences + child-napping of His Dark Materials
– The Blue Spirit from Avatar
– A dash of courtly Venice
Synopsis:
Renata Viraudax is a con artist who has come to the sparkling city of Nadezra — the city of dreams — with one goal: to trick her way into a noble house and secure her fortune and her sister’s future.
But as she’s drawn into the elite world of House Traementis, she realizes her masquerade is just one of many surrounding her. And as corrupt magic begins to weave its way through Nadezra, the poisonous feuds of its aristocrats and the shadowy dangers of its impoverished underbelly become tangled — with Ren at their heart.
My thoughts:
Overall, this was a strong first book in the new Rook & Rose series, and I am definitely planning on reading the second one. The aesthetics of the city and the magical clothing Ren wears, combined with the political aspects of the story, made me keep turning the pages. However, the overabundance of terminology, magic semantics, and politics without much backstory that we get–particularly in the first chapters–made me almost DNF the book. It was just so many terms, some of which aren’t explained until over 50% of the way through the book. Some of which aren’t explained, period.
Like City of Brass, the story focuses on one city’s ethnic divides based on subjugated vs. colonizers (which I enjoyed), but the different ethnic groups are a bit murky. At first, it seems the three classes of citizens are divided strictly on racial lines, with there being a distinction between one race that’s mixed-race and the other two, but later on, this seems to not be the case. It also doesn’t help that 2/3 main groups have quite similar-looking names. The terminology for each group within the city also seems to want to be heavily influenced by “real” societies, namely Italian and Romanian(?). But, there’s a lot that’s hard to pronounce in one’s head and hard to figure out. I’m hoping the map that final readers will have will help with this, as trying to sort out the city is hard enough, let alone sort out the 2-3 other countries/regions that are mentioned (I think one seems to be Francophone-inspired, and another, Welsh).
I think this shows promise, for sure, and the political aspects of the story really caught my attention, but I would love to see the different magic systems (particularly the “numinatria”–which is numbers, but also gods, but also shapes) fleshed out and explained a bit more in future installments.
Other things of note:
– lgbt+ themes throughout, with one sub-culture having what appears to be trans characters
– No real romance to focus on, but hints at some to come
– A bit of a dark academia feel, for those who enjoyed Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
– If you want Nina from grishaverse but sweet, this is the niche book for you
