(M.A. Carrick is the pen name of two friends writing collaboratively. References to them will reflect that.)
Complex worldbuilding presented naturally. Complex plot woven deftly into a narrative so intricate it *should* be difficult to follow, but isn't. Complex characters whose decisions may not always be the right ones, but always feel realistic.
I cannot stress how highly I recommend this book.
Politics, scam artists, vivid dream sequences, fleshed-out divination techniques, plot-relevant spiders that aren't inherently evil... what more could you want?
One street rat's effort to con her way into a noble house lands her at the heart of a hundred dangerous schemes targeting everyone she knows. A crime lord risks his life to uncover the origin of a deadily variant on a popular street drug. The city of Nadezra's elite battle for social and political power through the theatre of dances, duels, and dinners. A sleep-depriving illness turns deadly, but only one officer cares enough about the improverished children it targets to investigate. All of this played out among magic, gods, divination, dreams-turned-real, and children's stories that may not be fiction after all.
No summary of The Mask of Mirrors can encapsulate a fraction of its tangled intruige. Descriptions like "crime lord" and "street drug" fail to capture the nuanced position those thigns take in both the story and its setting. I cannot begin to imagine what the notes for this plot must have looked like. A novel in themselves, probably.
I say all of this in the best way possible. No side character or diversion from the "main" plot feels superfluous. Everything meshes together against a common backdrop and plummets toward the same climax. I would not cut a thing.
The Mask of Mirrors could have easily been another story about rich people. The main character, Ren, is running a long-term con to work her way into noble society. Many side characters are nobles, or at least wealthy, and much is said about their lives. Enough happens among the elite to compromise its own novel, if that novel were told a certain way.
Yet this book remains, emphatically, about regular people. This is not another story about exceptional individuals and powerful people where everyone else serves as little more than a depressing statistic in the background. It contains seamstresses and streetside divinators and grandmas who all live a world apart from the politics Ren finds herself immersed in, yet who nonetheless drive the story in crucial ways. For a book so wound by political intruige, The Mask of Mirrors does not ignore the daily citizens of Nadezra for one second. We are put into their lives. They have voices. We are told about the whole of Nadezra from its poorest to its richest, and the story is that much more engaging for it.
Despite the depth of worldbuilding and the dizzying number of characters, clear prose keeps the story straight. Easy to read without being simple, descriptive without being flowery, the prose sinks into the background and allows action to take focus. This is not to say the narrative style is bare-bones; itss descriptions are well-crafted and rich with detail. But never once is readability sacrificed for a turn of phrase.
In a book this large--it's over six hundred pages--the importance of that flow cannot be overstated. I read this book faster than I have read books a third its length, and only part of the difference can be chalked up to fascination with the plot. The narration is an exact fit for the story being told. Any more fanciful and it would be too much; any crisper and it would do a disservice to the world being built.
I enjoyed the decision to never pause and say, "okay, now here is how the magic works," as many fantasy novels do in some way or another. The Mask Of Mirrors is told from in a tight point of view with characters who grew up knowing their world as normal. Nobody needs it explained to them.
So it isn't. Magic is discussed as it come into play and not elaborated one hair further. It doesn't need to be. The absence of explicit technical information brings realism through omission.
That decision also allows for multiple cultures to have their own religions and arcane traditions--and for *all of them to be right*. There is no authorial curtain being pulled back to show us who is "correct" about how magic works or what gods exist. That's a touch of realism I haven't seen before.
Unrelated: I'm a sucker for a glossary. That might just be me. I love opening a book and seeing up front that the authors spared no expense in building a second world for us to live in.
I do wish they hadn't waited for the second book to explain the time system, though. I could glean from context when things happened very early or at night, but that's about it.
Overall impression: 10/10
Desire to live in the setting: 4/10 (I would get played too hard)
Spiders?: yes