A review by chalkletters
The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick

adventurous mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

I love a fantasy heist or fantasy con artist, so I was pleasantly surprised by the opening chapters of The Mask of Mirrors. I didn't realise until the end that M A Carrick is a pen name for a collaboration between Marie Brennan (who I've read some books by) and Alyc Helms (who I haven't). Despite being written by two people, the narrative is seamless, with no obvious divide between different prose styles or characterisation.

What’s immediately interesting about The Mask of Mirrors is that M A Carrick invites sympathy for both sides of the con. Most con artist narratives invite the reader to be interested in the cleverness of the con, and Ron certainly has that going for her. It's more unusual to also be presented with the financial straits of the victim, raising the question of whether they can afford to be conned. It was an interesting twist on the usual plot, leaving the reader wondering how it was all going to work out.

As well as the plots and subplots, The Mask of Mirrors is rich with worldbuilding. So much so, in fact, that it was almost overwhelming for a first time reader. The intricacies of the political system and the connection between families and factions definitely deserve either slowing down or rereading the book a second time. M A Carrick establishes at least three separate cultures, all intertwined to various degrees, and the layers of meaning and metaphor are impressive. Fortune-telling is a big theme, and of course there are multiple possible interpretations for many of the characters' predictions, so it would be fascinating to track what different symbols represent to different characters. 

The Mask of Mirrors has a good mix of characters the reader is obviously supposed to sympathise with and those that are potentially (or definitely) behaving in underhand and manipulative ways, and some who are somewhere in between. While it's obviously satisfying to see M A Carrick's protagonists succeed against the power-hungry family at the centre of The Mask of Mirrors' political situation, it's the characters who get close enough to double-cross that bring the most potential excitement, especially considering there are two more novels in the series.

I could tell I was going to like The Mask of Mirrors immediately, but I did struggle to hold the whole world in my head until partway through the novel. It’s so obviously worth a reread that I think I'll buy the audiobook so I can revisit the early section while my understand is still fresh.
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