The Mask Falling

Book Title: The Mask Falling

Author: Samantha Shannon

Series: The Bone Season #4

Date Started: December 23rd 2020

Date Completed: December 31st 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Dystopian, Sci-Fi

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Since I read the first Bone Season novel I've loved this series, and it always takes me reading the new instalment to remember just how much I do love it (I know I still like it, but it feels like each book rekindles the same feeling of excitement again, and that's priceless). The Mask Falling has, like each instalment, been a long time coming, and I'm very happy to say I enjoyed every minute of it.

These books are pure entertainment and excitement. The characters are fun and investable; the locations are recreated some real cities in full glory with such creativity and wonder; the plots feel like puzzles and murder mysteries without anyone even being hit over the head with a candlestick. It has the flair of revolution and literature and it's a little gilded, but that's where the fun comes from.

That's not to say that the book is perfect. While I love Paige, she, like many protagonists in stories leaning on the YA side, could do with engaging her brain a little more actively sometimes. And while the schemes are ingenious and the puzzles inventive, I can't help but feel it's a little too 'refined' for an attitude that would really nail it home (without drawing comparisons, I couldn't help being reminded that the Throne of Glass series has just as fiendish strategies, but has a bit of an attitude to make it really strike its crux).

And there are so. Many. Names. Samantha, I love you, take all the time you need between books, but please don't expect me to remember who everyone is by their mollisher names (or even just their normal names...) - I appreciate that in the physical books you can flip to the character glossary but it made reading this review galley a little difficult. And there is such strength in the immersion of this vividly rich world that I don't want to be taken away from it to look through a glossary just to be on my feet with the politics.

I do sometimes wonder if The Bone Season needs to be a seven-book series (a lot of similar antics happen over and over again - though the gaps in publication and growing layers of politics mean it still feels fresh) but, nonetheless, I'll be sitting here waiting for the next one, and the next, until we reach the end of Paige's story.