Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller

Publication Date: August 29th, 2017
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Source: eARC from NetGalley
Link to the author:
http://www.linseymiller.com/

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RATING: 3 Stars

SYNOPSIS:

“Sallot Leon is a thief, and a good one at that. But gender fluid Sal wants nothing more than to escape the drudgery of life as a highway robber and get closer to the upper-class and the nobles who destroyed their home.

When Sal Leon steals a poster announcing open auditions for the Left Hand, a powerful collection of the Queen’s personal assassins named for the rings she wears — Ruby, Emerald, Amethyst, and Opal — their world changes. They know it’s a chance for a new life.

Except the audition is a fight to the death filled with clever circus acrobats, lethal apothecaries, and vicious ex-soldiers. A childhood as a common criminal hardly prepared Sal for the trials. But Sal must survive to put their real reason for auditioning into play: revenge”

THOUGHTS:

I am feeling really torn.

Immediately after finishing Mask of Shadows I would have given it a 4-star rating, based on the fact that I flew through it even while in a reading slump. I appreciated that the assassin killed without much hesitation or emotion as an assassin is supposed to. As someone who hasn’t read many competition stories, I really enjoyed the competition based way of choosing a new assassin for the queen. The cover was also GORGEOUS. However, as I sit here to write this review I can think of very few individual things that I enjoyed and instead as time passes I am reminded of all the things I didn’t like. I won’t give it less than 3 stars though because while reading my general feeling was “I’m really enjoying this” and upon finishing it “I wonder what happens next” and I think that means there was quality in this story and the writing.

Moving on to what took a star away from my initial rating.

I didn’t feel like I really got to know Sal, our main character, beyond wanting to be an assassin and seeking revenge I know nothing about her. It seemed to me she wanted to become an assassin to change her life and then all of a sudden it was about getting close to the right people to inflict revenge. And there’s a scene where she’s plague by a shadow in her room that I later determined as some kind of PTSD? At the time I had no background on the main character and was really confused as to whether the shadow was real or not and what part it played.  I felt like an outsider in the story, seeing the actions of the main character and not getting a window into her motives. I also had a hard time believing she could be such a flawless and heartless killer when she herself said she had no talent for it. She made a very good assassin, I liked her as an assassin but I could not buy that she became so good so quickly.

If I had a hard time bonding with Sal I had no chance of bonding with any other characters except perhaps Maud. I did love her but I sort of wonder if that’s because she’s the only one I got to know. I got more of a backstory from her than from Sal. All the other characters are anonymous, referred to by their gemstone names of auditioners numbers. It was necessary to the story but at the cost of not being able to become invested in any of the characters.

From a technical standpoint, the pacing was ok, quickly switching from really fast paced to really slow, so I think it could have used more transition. Obviously, that didn’t stop me from flying through the pages but it could have been smoother. There was something about the style of writing though that constantly brought me out of the story. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was but it was as if the author changed the subject really abruptly. Sometimes it was the conversation between two characters or just the thoughts of the main character. They would change so abruptly from subject to subject that I would go back thinking I had missed something. The flow of talk and thought didn’t feel natural.

I feel like I can’t end this review without touching on the diversity, however, I also feel that I cannot comment on the authenticity of a gender fluid character when I myself and (to my knowledge) no one I know identifies as gender fluid.

To summarize, I did enjoy my reading experience of Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller and this is a book I think everyone should read to form their own opinion. I went into it not knowing much more than “Assassin competition” and “gender fluid main character” so I was unaware of the comparisons to The Hunger Games, Sarah J Maas and Leigh Bardugo. To that, I would like to say that a book should never be given such big shoes to fill, that sets it up for failure. Nothing is ever going to be as good as Six of Crows except for Six of Crows. Readers need to be given the opportunity to come to their own conclusions without comparison, especially when it’s an author debut novel. And while I see the similarity to The Hunger Games now that someone pointed it out, I didn’t make that connection myself while reading. I liked Mask of Shadows simply for Mask of Shadows and not how it compared to other books I’ve read.

Thank you for reading this review of Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller curtsy of Sourcebooks, in return for my honest opinion. I hope you enjoyed my insights and look forward to more reviews from me in the future.