A review by poisonenvy
City of Masks by Mary Hoffman

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

3.5

Lucien is a teenage boy who's suffering from brain cancer. One day, his father gifts him with a journal that depicts, they think, Venice. And one night, Lucien goes to sleep holding this book, and wakes up in a parallel universe, four-hundred years in the past, in Bellezza, that universe's version of Venice. There, he finds himself thrust into intrigue with his new friend Arianna.  

For the most part, I did enjoy this book. The writing style was more simple and much more choppy than I usually enjoy my books to be, with very sudden scene changes and sometimes very short scenes (one or two sentences with a character before swapping suddenly to another one). While the narration usually follows Lucien or Arianna, it often swaps to other people, sometimes people who we only see for half a page.  

A lot of the problems seem to wrap up too cleanly, and too easily, which lessened many of the conflicts for me. 

But this book is a middle grade book (I assume), and it's a middle grade book that really shows that it's a middle grade book.  I can understand why my friend recommended it to me (they love stories set in Venice), and I certainly enjoyed it enough that I'll continue on for a while (and might even finish the six book series), but this book didn't grab me as an adult as much as it probably would have had I read it twenty years ago, when it was first published.