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A review by vampyrizm
Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller
2.0
Mask of Shadows is about Sal, a thief who decides to enter themself into a competition for a place among the Queen's left hand, her group of personal assassins. The premise itself is pretty interesting, and I was really excited to pick up a book with a genderfluid main character, but honestly I found myself very bored. I had mostly made up my mind to push through it, but around the 70-75% mark I'd had enough.
At its core, I think the issue probably stems with the pacing of the novel. I listened to the audiobook and was genuinely surprised at how quick in the runtime we went from Sal being a thief to Sal deciding to enter the Queen's competition. We had very little time to care about Sal as a person or even gain a solid understanding of the world before introducing a change to set off the rest of the story.
For me, this greatly affected how I felt about later exposition and Sal themself. I couldn't really seem to care about what Sal was going through. Their burning anger about the state of their home country didn't resonate with me because I was barely introduced to the concept before it became Sal's driving motivation in the story. Everything I learned about Naveria (hopefully I'm spelling that right) felt ham-fisted, because all our info about Sal's character had to be tucked between meeting new characters and developing a plot, which I felt took away from getting the reader to feel like Sal was actually in danger during this competition.
Overall, it left me feeling very unmoved by everything going on, listening to the book was like putting on background music while doing homework.
At its core, I think the issue probably stems with the pacing of the novel. I listened to the audiobook and was genuinely surprised at how quick in the runtime we went from Sal being a thief to Sal deciding to enter the Queen's competition. We had very little time to care about Sal as a person or even gain a solid understanding of the world before introducing a change to set off the rest of the story.
For me, this greatly affected how I felt about later exposition and Sal themself. I couldn't really seem to care about what Sal was going through. Their burning anger about the state of their home country didn't resonate with me because I was barely introduced to the concept before it became Sal's driving motivation in the story. Everything I learned about Naveria (hopefully I'm spelling that right) felt ham-fisted, because all our info about Sal's character had to be tucked between meeting new characters and developing a plot, which I felt took away from getting the reader to feel like Sal was actually in danger during this competition.
Overall, it left me feeling very unmoved by everything going on, listening to the book was like putting on background music while doing homework.