Scan barcode
A review by thefussyreader
The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick
3.0
The Fussy Reader
2.5*
Venice inspired setting, long con plotline, thief who did something really bad as a child, merchant families. The Lies of Locke Lamora, that you?
I wanted to like this. I really, really wanted to like this, but I felt far too disconnected to rate this any higher than three stars. And I think I'm being a tad generous giving it that much.
It's not at all a bad book. So much about this should marvel, but it's simultaneously underwhelming and overwhelming at once. Overwhelming in the sense that so much information is given with very little context or explanation. But also underwhelming because this book feels vastly underdeveloped in terms of plot, deeper world-building, and character stakes. And I'll explain my thoughts on each presently.
Characters
It was a little difficult for me to truly connect with Ren as herself because she spent more time in her fake persona of Renata, that I felt like I knew Renata better than I knew Ren. In order to make me care about the face behind the mask, I really think one needs equal, if not more, page time than the other. Ren gets far less page time than Renata does, and at points, I almost started to forget that Renata wasn't real. It was a little difficult for me to care much about her outside of her own con.
As the story went on, I came to realise that Ren is a terrible con artist, and gets far too attached to her marks. That's literally the one thing a con artist shouldn't do. And then the con is all but abandoned halfway through the book.
Leato was all right.
Vargo was better.
Gray I cared little for, but I rarely connect with cop/detective/PI characters in books, so there was little surprise I didn't connect with Gray either.
But the Rook was cool, even though I guessed his identity pretty early and was a tad disappointed by it.
Perhaps the only character I truly liked and wished well for in the end was Tess. She was a sweetheart and I just wished she was utilised a bit more than just the best friend/maid/seamstress. She had bags more personality than Ren and I can't help but lament that Tess wasn't the main character instead.
Plot
This is a very intricately political novel, and I love me some politics. I enjoy any scenario in which corrupt merchant families run a city. It makes a great breeding ground for lies and deceit, and this book certainly delivers on that front.
But, I'm a little torn. I love anything to do with con artists or heists because there's always a feeling of clever whimsy. I love how intricate and well-plotted and often foreshadowed con/heist books are. Normally they're a delight to read, yet nothing in this book felt overly clever. There were some interesting lies going on, but no risks were taken. I didn't feel particularly nervous about Ren getting found out. She was so easily accepted into high society and never challenged. Even when someone vaguely suspected foul play, Ren still wasn't physically or verbally challenged, so she just felt pretty safe most of the time, when really any great con story should have a near-constant feeling of tension
As mentioned above, halfway through the book, the con is pretty much abandoned and the focus of the plot becomes about something entirely unrelated to anything previously established in the book, and while I'm being honest, it harmed the story. When the plot was a con, I was interested. Sure it was slow, but so was Locke Lamora. A long con is all about watching it slowly unravel and investing time into the con and its consequences, so when the plot objective completely shifted I felt miffed that I'd spent so much time involved in the development of a con that went absolutely nowhere. Perhaps that's the greatest con in this book.
Ren's motivations aren't made clear enough. While I certainly enjoyed the con she was pulling --while she was actually pulling it-- I felt a disconnect to it because I never truly knew why she was doing it. Money? Sure. But what else?
To fully invest a reader in any storyline, the main character needs personal stakes. Simply, I want this because I want it, isn't enough. Why do you want it? What will happen if you don't get it, and how will it affect your life going forward? It's these details that make readers care. I don't care that you want money, but I might care about what you want the money for.
On a side note, I don't like dream sequences at the best of times in any book, so the 40+ pages worth of dream sequence in this book was painful for me to read. Despite how this dream sequence is meant to be important, it still feels totally fucking pointless. God, I hate dreams in books. Especially the fact that I didn't know what the fuck was going on.
Went on far too long. I could definitely have done without chapter 12. Waste of an hour.
Setting
Beautiful descriptions sprinkled throughout with little details bring the world to life and create a distinctive contrast between the upper class and the lower class people. Not over-cooked. Just the right amount of information is given when it's needed to visually bring the world to life. The only problem is that it feels very shallow.
The world-building is surface level, like a deception in itself. It distracts the reader with lovely, flashy, evocative imagery, but never deigns to go much deeper than the facade we're shown. I can certainly tell you what the world looks like. I can see it very clearly. But if you were to ask me about the history between the Nadezrans and the Vraszenians, or the religious system, or social structures, or god forbid, the magic system, I honestly couldn't tell you a thing.
And while we're discussing magic...
The blurb priorities magic within its tagline like it's a prominent part of the book, and yet I totally forgot there was meant to be magic in the book until I reread the back of the book.
I don't always need magic in books. Look at Locke Lamora. A fantastic example of a long-con book that doesn't lean on magic. But the difference is, it doesn't advertise as being a magic book. For at least half of Mask of Mirrors there's nothing that reassembles magic.
In the latter half, magic is mentioned a lot more, but the magic system is so complicated, I can't begin to explain how it works, cause I have no idea. But I think it has a lot of rules and uses. Again, what those actually are, are lost on me. The magic system was only ever brought up when the plot seemingly felt it necessary, but because it hadn't been established or built upon in the first half, it made the latter half of the book a chaotic mess of information.
Writing Style
Undoubtedly the book's strongest asset. The quality of the writing is so articulate that it almost reads like poetry at times. It's just gorgeously written. However, gorgeous writing only goes so far. There also needs to be a coherent plot, logical world-building, and a character's personal stakes to invest in. As poetical as this reads, I can't help but feel like some storytelling fundamentals are missing here.
One vital component to any good con/heist book is humour, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on. It gives the reader a stronger connection to the characters. This is particularly important because conning and thieving are activities generally reserved for the bad guy. So when the story's 'heroes' are being the 'bad guys' we need to form a stronger attachment to them from the start so we can support what they do. Humour is a good way to do this -- Make them loveable. Personal stakes is another (as I said, if I know why this con matters so much to the characters, I can invest more in its success.)
Unfortunately, this book lacks in both humour and personal stakes.
Perhaps the book didn't need to be this long, considering the lack of stakes and tension in the first half of the book. I think a few chapters could've been shaved off here and there and it wouldn't have affected the overall flow of the story. Sometimes less is more.
Final Impression
I'm aware of how critical this review sounds, but I'm struggling to word my feelings for it. I'm undecided if I'd like to continue the series, but I didn't have as much fun with this as I thought I would.
Even the blurb for book two suffers from some of my critiques here. The flowery language used paints an evocative image, but offers nothing of substance. I have no clue what book two is about because it forgot to mention it, too busy being proud with its own lyrical prose.
Instagram
Twitter
2.5*
Venice inspired setting, long con plotline, thief who did something really bad as a child, merchant families. The Lies of Locke Lamora, that you?
I wanted to like this. I really, really wanted to like this, but I felt far too disconnected to rate this any higher than three stars. And I think I'm being a tad generous giving it that much.
It's not at all a bad book. So much about this should marvel, but it's simultaneously underwhelming and overwhelming at once. Overwhelming in the sense that so much information is given with very little context or explanation. But also underwhelming because this book feels vastly underdeveloped in terms of plot, deeper world-building, and character stakes. And I'll explain my thoughts on each presently.
Characters
It was a little difficult for me to truly connect with Ren as herself because she spent more time in her fake persona of Renata, that I felt like I knew Renata better than I knew Ren. In order to make me care about the face behind the mask, I really think one needs equal, if not more, page time than the other. Ren gets far less page time than Renata does, and at points, I almost started to forget that Renata wasn't real. It was a little difficult for me to care much about her outside of her own con.
As the story went on, I came to realise that Ren is a terrible con artist, and gets far too attached to her marks. That's literally the one thing a con artist shouldn't do. And then the con is all but abandoned halfway through the book.
Leato was all right.
Vargo was better.
Gray I cared little for, but I rarely connect with cop/detective/PI characters in books, so there was little surprise I didn't connect with Gray either.
But the Rook was cool, even though I guessed his identity pretty early and was a tad disappointed by it.
Perhaps the only character I truly liked and wished well for in the end was Tess. She was a sweetheart and I just wished she was utilised a bit more than just the best friend/maid/seamstress. She had bags more personality than Ren and I can't help but lament that Tess wasn't the main character instead.
Plot
This is a very intricately political novel, and I love me some politics. I enjoy any scenario in which corrupt merchant families run a city. It makes a great breeding ground for lies and deceit, and this book certainly delivers on that front.
But, I'm a little torn. I love anything to do with con artists or heists because there's always a feeling of clever whimsy. I love how intricate and well-plotted and often foreshadowed con/heist books are. Normally they're a delight to read, yet nothing in this book felt overly clever. There were some interesting lies going on, but no risks were taken. I didn't feel particularly nervous about Ren getting found out. She was so easily accepted into high society and never challenged. Even when someone vaguely suspected foul play, Ren still wasn't physically or verbally challenged, so she just felt pretty safe most of the time, when really any great con story should have a near-constant feeling of tension
As mentioned above, halfway through the book, the con is pretty much abandoned and the focus of the plot becomes about something entirely unrelated to anything previously established in the book, and while I'm being honest, it harmed the story. When the plot was a con, I was interested. Sure it was slow, but so was Locke Lamora. A long con is all about watching it slowly unravel and investing time into the con and its consequences, so when the plot objective completely shifted I felt miffed that I'd spent so much time involved in the development of a con that went absolutely nowhere. Perhaps that's the greatest con in this book.
Ren's motivations aren't made clear enough. While I certainly enjoyed the con she was pulling --while she was actually pulling it-- I felt a disconnect to it because I never truly knew why she was doing it. Money? Sure. But what else?
To fully invest a reader in any storyline, the main character needs personal stakes. Simply, I want this because I want it, isn't enough. Why do you want it? What will happen if you don't get it, and how will it affect your life going forward? It's these details that make readers care. I don't care that you want money, but I might care about what you want the money for.
On a side note, I don't like dream sequences at the best of times in any book, so the 40+ pages worth of dream sequence in this book was painful for me to read. Despite how this dream sequence is meant to be important, it still feels totally fucking pointless. God, I hate dreams in books. Especially the fact that I didn't know what the fuck was going on.
Went on far too long. I could definitely have done without chapter 12. Waste of an hour.
Setting
Beautiful descriptions sprinkled throughout with little details bring the world to life and create a distinctive contrast between the upper class and the lower class people. Not over-cooked. Just the right amount of information is given when it's needed to visually bring the world to life. The only problem is that it feels very shallow.
The world-building is surface level, like a deception in itself. It distracts the reader with lovely, flashy, evocative imagery, but never deigns to go much deeper than the facade we're shown. I can certainly tell you what the world looks like. I can see it very clearly. But if you were to ask me about the history between the Nadezrans and the Vraszenians, or the religious system, or social structures, or god forbid, the magic system, I honestly couldn't tell you a thing.
And while we're discussing magic...
The blurb priorities magic within its tagline like it's a prominent part of the book, and yet I totally forgot there was meant to be magic in the book until I reread the back of the book.
I don't always need magic in books. Look at Locke Lamora. A fantastic example of a long-con book that doesn't lean on magic. But the difference is, it doesn't advertise as being a magic book. For at least half of Mask of Mirrors there's nothing that reassembles magic.
In the latter half, magic is mentioned a lot more, but the magic system is so complicated, I can't begin to explain how it works, cause I have no idea. But I think it has a lot of rules and uses. Again, what those actually are, are lost on me. The magic system was only ever brought up when the plot seemingly felt it necessary, but because it hadn't been established or built upon in the first half, it made the latter half of the book a chaotic mess of information.
Writing Style
Undoubtedly the book's strongest asset. The quality of the writing is so articulate that it almost reads like poetry at times. It's just gorgeously written. However, gorgeous writing only goes so far. There also needs to be a coherent plot, logical world-building, and a character's personal stakes to invest in. As poetical as this reads, I can't help but feel like some storytelling fundamentals are missing here.
One vital component to any good con/heist book is humour, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on. It gives the reader a stronger connection to the characters. This is particularly important because conning and thieving are activities generally reserved for the bad guy. So when the story's 'heroes' are being the 'bad guys' we need to form a stronger attachment to them from the start so we can support what they do. Humour is a good way to do this -- Make them loveable. Personal stakes is another (as I said, if I know why this con matters so much to the characters, I can invest more in its success.)
Unfortunately, this book lacks in both humour and personal stakes.
Perhaps the book didn't need to be this long, considering the lack of stakes and tension in the first half of the book. I think a few chapters could've been shaved off here and there and it wouldn't have affected the overall flow of the story. Sometimes less is more.
Final Impression
I'm aware of how critical this review sounds, but I'm struggling to word my feelings for it. I'm undecided if I'd like to continue the series, but I didn't have as much fun with this as I thought I would.
Even the blurb for book two suffers from some of my critiques here. The flowery language used paints an evocative image, but offers nothing of substance. I have no clue what book two is about because it forgot to mention it, too busy being proud with its own lyrical prose.