Early Review – The Mask of Mirrors (Rook & Rose, Book 1) by M. A. Carrick (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Length: 672 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Release Date: January 19, 2021
ISBN-13: 978-0316539678
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in Rook & Rose series
Source: eGalley from NetGalley to review
Rating: 4/5 stars
“This is your past, the good and the ill of it, and that which is neither . . .
Arenza Lenskaya is a liar and a thief, a pattern-reader and a daughter of no clan. Raised in the slums of Nadezra, she fled that world to save her sister.This is your present, the good and the ill of it, and that which is neither . . .
Renata Viraudax is a con artist recently arrived in Nadezra. She has one goal: to trick her way into a noble house and secure her fortune.This is your future, the good and the ill of it, and that which is neither . . .
As corrupt nightmare magic begins to weave its way through the city of dreams, the poisonous feuds of its aristocrats and the shadowy dangers of its impoverished underbelly become tangled—with Ren at their heart. And if she cannot sort the truth from the lies, it will mean the destruction of all her worlds.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Rook & Rose series. I got a copy of this book to review through NetGalley.
Story (4/5): This is a well done epic fantasy but is very long and at points you can really feel that length. The plot is a very political/intrigue driven plot. The beginning of this book is a confidence scheme of sorts but things get a lot more political and magic gets involved as you get deeper into the book. There are a lot of story threads to keep track of, they are well woven together but can be a bit hard to keep straight if you aren’t really concentrating.
Characters (4/5): I liked all of the characters in this book and thought they were well done. Many times in epic fantasies there are character POVs I just dread reading, that was not the case in this book. I enjoyed Renata/Arenza, enjoyed the Rook, and many others. They were all very well filled out characters with a lot of depth and dimension to them. I did struggle some with the names of all of the nobility, but despite this I didn’t find myself confused about who was who. So, good job on keeping all the characters distinguishable in a book that has a lot of complex characters. I do wish the index of characters had been at the beginning of the book rather than the end, I didn’t even know it was there until the end and would have loved to read it before or at least be able to reference it while reading this story.
Setting (4/5): While I ended up enjoying this very magical Venician feeling world, I struggled with it in the beginning. You really feel like you are just dropped in this world and are left struggling to figure out what is what with very little explanation. The world is intricate and has a lot of depth and is beautifully created. Some of this is explained in the index at the end, which I wish I had known was there at the beginning of the book.
Writing/Drawing Style (4/5): I liked this but it wasn’t the easiest book to read. The character names can be hard to keep track of and there are a lot of intricacies to the plot, a lot of the magic is left up to the reader to stumble through (I figured out how the magic worked by reading the index at the end, again wish this had been at the beginning). This was an interesting read and kept me engaged. It was good that I read it over vacation because it took some concentration and effort to get through. I wish the index and list of families had been at the beginning of the book; I didn’t realize that was there since I read this as an ebook and as a result didn’t get this information until after I had read the story.
My Summary (4/5): Overall this is a well done epic fantasy with a lot of interesting characters, an amazing world, and an intricate and complex plot. This is mainly a confidence scheme type of story but the story broadens to include politics and magic as it continues. This book would have been much more approachable if the world and magic system had been better explained (rather than just explained in the index at the end of the book). This lack of explanation left me struggling to understand the world and magic for most of the beginning of the book. This took a lot of concentration and effort to read, and although I enjoyed it in the end, I am not sure the payoff was worth the effort to read. This book probably took me 10-11hrs to read (I normally read about 100 pages an hour) and I really had to push through it. I probably don’t plan on continuing the series unless I am in the mood for high-effort reading material.
