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A review by tani
Masques by Patricia Briggs
3.0
This was Patricia Briggs' first published book, and it shows. The edition that I read had later been edited by Briggs, but it was still fairly mediocre. The story is predictable, although enjoyable, and there's a distinct lack of tension. Even reading the last fifty or so pages, I wasn't drawn in. Important things were happening, but I felt an almost complete emotional disconnect from it. To put it bluntly, the climax of the book was anticlimactic. However, if you're a fan of the Mercy Thompson books, this still might be a worthwhile read, as it contains some of the elements of that series, such as a wolfish love interest and a shape-shifting protagonist.
For me, the best part of the book was seeing all the traditional fantasy elements come together. There's nothing exciting or groundbreaking here, but the elements are varied enough that I got a lot of enjoyment out of them. I also enjoyed the characters, although I felt no particular emotional attachment to them. The villain was suitably evil as well, and the truly reprehensible things he did helped to raise the emotional stakes past what they might have otherwise been.
On the downside, the pacing is pretty bad. There are a lot of scenes where the main character just reads book, and although it advances the plotline, it's not really exciting. As I mentioned earlier, there's no sense of urgency to the end of the book. I keep putting it down and then forcing myself to pick it back up, even though I was only thirty pages from the end, and in the thick of the ending action. Sometimes it feels like the emotions of the characters are just as detached from the plot as mine were; when one of the characters discovers a spell that they believe will be instrumental in defeating the villain, there's no more excitement to them than there was when Aralorn read a particularly interesting folktale.
Overall, I thought this was about what you might expect from a first novel. Pretty mediocre in a lot of ways, but with the seeds of later success.
For me, the best part of the book was seeing all the traditional fantasy elements come together. There's nothing exciting or groundbreaking here, but the elements are varied enough that I got a lot of enjoyment out of them. I also enjoyed the characters, although I felt no particular emotional attachment to them. The villain was suitably evil as well, and the truly reprehensible things he did helped to raise the emotional stakes past what they might have otherwise been.
On the downside, the pacing is pretty bad. There are a lot of scenes where the main character just reads book, and although it advances the plotline, it's not really exciting. As I mentioned earlier, there's no sense of urgency to the end of the book. I keep putting it down and then forcing myself to pick it back up, even though I was only thirty pages from the end, and in the thick of the ending action. Sometimes it feels like the emotions of the characters are just as detached from the plot as mine were; when one of the characters discovers a spell that they believe will be instrumental in defeating the villain, there's no more excitement to them than there was when Aralorn read a particularly interesting folktale.
Overall, I thought this was about what you might expect from a first novel. Pretty mediocre in a lot of ways, but with the seeds of later success.