Tuesday, January 5, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on January 19 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.    

The Mask of Mirrors is the first in a new fantasy trilogy by "author" M.A. Carrick - really a pen name for authors Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms.  I've loved much of Brennan's solo work (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, Driftwood) and so seeing a new series at least cowritten by her was enough for me to request a copy of this on Netgalley the moment I saw it.  The book's blurb on Amazon comparing it to Swordspoint, City of Brass, and Guy Gavriel Kay's work only made me even more interested - even if the book was listed at over 600 pages and thus longer than I usually like.  

And for once, that blurb isn't really inaccurate, The Mask of Mirrors features a story that is part Fantasy of Manners (ala Swordspoint), part clash of cultures/colonizers (ala City of Brass, as well as also at times part Heist novel, part Horror novel, and more.  It winds up in the end reminding me also of another book, Robert Jackson Bennett's Foundryside, in how all of the above themes, plus worldly mechanics, wind up coming together in a final confrontation for the fate of this setting.  The above are all books I've loved, and The Mask of Mirrors certainly showed signs of becoming another one until it's conclusion, where it just couldn't live up to its potential, with it often confusing me at times too.  I'll be back for book 2 just because of the potential, but I wish I'd found this more satisfying on its own.

Note:  This fantasy world is seemingly Slavic-inspired, including in the names of Places, People, Things, and Concepts, complete with letters with accents/carons on top of them.  As I don't have a slavic keyboard and my spanish keyboard doesn't quite accomplish the same thing, I will be spelling these names without the accent marks, and I apologize if that offends somehow.  

---------------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
The arrival of Renata Viraudax to the City State of Nadezra makes a big splash in the social scene of the Nadezra's nobles.  A woman of unusual fashion and tastes from the foreign city of Seteris, Renata appears to be the daughter of an estranged former-member of House Traementis, a noble house in decline, and seems to seek the impossible task of reconciliation to a House that never forgets any slights.  And so Renata ingratiates herself to the Traementis' young heir, all the while acting and dressing in ways to draw attention as the hot new thing in the city.  

There's just one problem:  Renata Viraudax doesn't exist, she's just a creation of Ren, a Vraszenian con artist and thief of a girl who fled Nadezra 5 years ago with her adopted sister Tess after poisoning her adopted mother, a brutal gang leader.  Now Ren seeks to attach herself to a noble family so that she can get a hold of their riches for her and Tess - after all, it was Nadezra that made her suffer as a child, so why shouldn't it reward her now with riches?  

But Ren's arrival comes in the middle of a time of secret unrest, in which some unknown forces have their own plan for Nadezra - a plan that may carve the city in blood for the sake of their own unknown and horrible purpose.  And so Ren may want only to exploit the city, but to do so, she may have to save it first.....
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The Mask of Mirrors is, like so many other fantasy books these days, a story that is told from a number of perspectives.  That said, this is Ren's story - while we will jump around at times to seeing the story from the perspectives of a number of other characters - most notably Donaia Traementis and Giuna Traementis of the Traementis Noble House, Grey Serrado of the City Vigil (the Watch), and Drossi Vargo (a crime lord trying to gain legitimate power with a secret), among a bunch others - most of the story is told from the perspective of Ren.  And as Ren's story gets more involved with the magical and monstrous plotting going on behind the scenes in the city, the story begins to sort of shift genres to go along with the change.  

And so we start off with what seems like a combination of a heist/con-artist novel with that of a Fantasy of Manners type plot - you have Ren, trying to con herself into high society for riches, you have the nobles all plotting against each other, you have Vargo trying to use both his criminal and legitimate connections to get himself higher status in society, you have the honest cop in a corrupt police system, and you have the mysterious Rook - the legendary champion of the people in his unbreakable mask: these all combine to form a plot that is fascinating to read for the book's first third.  There's one particular moment, where Ren manages to manipulate about a dozen noble families with their own agendas into doing small things that all add up to help one big noble family with its problems so that they will help Ren that is just tremendous to read, for example.  

And then the book shifts.  The book introduces some of what's going on behind the surface in spurts at first - the conflict between the city's original people and the foreigners who once conquered it, the magical symbols inscribed in places for various aims, the mysterious drug going around that is causing strange deaths, to the kids going missing off the street without the nobles caring.  And of course there are two clear mysteries: who is the Rook and who is the mysterious person whom Vargo seems to have in his head.  These aspects hint that the book will shift into a tale of dark magic, of angry peoples warring over cultures, and of a conflict for the heart of the city, one that Ren will find herself at the center of, and the book shifts well into these aspects, with tremendous emotional and horror-filled impacts at times.  

Unfortunately the payoff doesn't quite fully work out, as the story moves on from being one about the characters to one about the magical and setting aspects coming together.  This is not a book that really well explains its magical systems (unlike the aforementioned Foundryside) and has a umber of them - a tarot-card like deck that tells the future, an astrological system that reveals fate, and most importantly the Numinatria system of inscribed sigils which can seemingly have very powerful magical effects.  And so when the finale relies on that last system and deals in large parts about how unprecedented certain magical feats are or relies upon a protagonist realizing something about how the magic works, it kind of falls flat, because well, it's just sort of "huh, okay."  Which is a shame, because the setting - with its conflict between peoples, its class issues, and interesting characters - is really strong to set up that finale, which just amounts to a mess. 

And then it ends, like Foundryside, with a few reveals which portend new things coming in the book's sequels.  One of those is more interesting than the other (one involves the true allegiance of a character who the book can't decide whether it wants to suggest he's good or bad) but there's enough again still in this setting and characters to make me want to continue with the series.  And it's possible that some of my confusion with the magical finale is drawn from my own reading style - which is pretty fast and can overlook miniscule details.  Still, I hope that the sequels to this one continue the strong character and theme work while becoming more clear about its underlying fantasy elements, to truly draw out its potential.  

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