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A review by songwind
Masques by Patricia Briggs
3.0
Masques is a fantasy adventure with romance elements.
In the author's forward to the latest edition, she talks about her lack of fantasy genre education when writing it, and her heavy use of fantasy cliches. She's not wrong, but I didn't find them especially odious, either.
The story revolves around Aralorn, a half-human mercenary, and Wolf, her friend and companion who is on the run from something in his past in the shape of a... wolf.
The villain of the piece is the ae'Magi, a powerful sorcerer tasked with controlling the world's magic to avoid a repeat of the vaguely defined "magic wars." As people in such positions tend to do, he ends up overstepping his bounds.
As the story goes on, a romance subplot becomes more important, but never becomes the motivation for the story as a whole. I think it was well handled and added depth to the characters involved.
In the author's forward to the latest edition, she talks about her lack of fantasy genre education when writing it, and her heavy use of fantasy cliches. She's not wrong, but I didn't find them especially odious, either.
The story revolves around Aralorn, a half-human mercenary, and Wolf, her friend and companion who is on the run from something in his past in the shape of a... wolf.
The villain of the piece is the ae'Magi, a powerful sorcerer tasked with controlling the world's magic to avoid a repeat of the vaguely defined "magic wars." As people in such positions tend to do, he ends up overstepping his bounds.
As the story goes on, a romance subplot becomes more important, but never becomes the motivation for the story as a whole. I think it was well handled and added depth to the characters involved.