Mask of Shadows

I received a copy of Mask of Shadows through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

What is Mask of Shadows about?
Sal is an orphan from Nacea, a country destroyed during their childhood by the shadows. Pulled into a thieving gang after escaping from Nacea as a young child, Sal hopes to save up enough to one day join the queen's army. After finding a flyer for tryouts to be the new Opal, one of the queen's assassins, Sal has to use skills learned from a lifetime a thieving to defeat the other contestants while seeking revenge for Nacea along the way.

What I Liked
I loved the world. It's amazing and dark and scary and just gets in your head. The stories of the shadows will you nightmares. I can't think of a magical creature in a book that's scared me as much as these.

I loved the gore: the sudden and brutal deaths that come with an assassin competition. I loved Sal and their absolute brutality to achieve their goals. If you enjoyed The Hunger Games, I highly recommend this book.

I loved the idea of the Left Hand, a group of assassin's named after the queen's rings who are part of court life despite literally living behind a mask. I'm a huge fan of court life in books and the idea of people talking to someone who could kill them at any moment is just great.

I loved the romance. I'm not a huge fan of romance in books but this one got me. It was sweet and intense but also didn't take over the story. This isn't a romance novel.

White I Didn't Like
The book started off a bit rocky. Things happened so quickly that I felt I didn't have time to really understand Sal and their motivations as a character, which made it a bit harder for me to get into the story. I will say though that it was 100% worth finishing the book. The book continued to get better and better as it went and I ended up finishing the last half of the book without putting it down.

I also found the dialog to be a bit awkward. The characters were a bit too straightforward with each other, especially between characters that hardly knew each other. I found it hard to care about most of the friendships.

On Gender-Fluidity
What really excited me about this book was the gender-fluid main character. This book is really important because gender-fluidity is just not represented in fantasy. I will say that gender was not a plot point of this book. It was a very real part of the story and the characters and the social interactions, but the book was not about Sal *being* gender-fluid. It was about Sal, who *is* gender-fluid, trying to become Opal and get revenge for their country.

My Review

4 stars! While I had some trouble getting into the story at first, and found some of the friendships to be awkward, I still found this book to be incredibly interesting and intense. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the assassin competition. I loved the shadows. I loved learning about the history of the world. Mostly, I loved how brutal Sal was and reading it all from their perspective. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves dark worlds and non-hero characters.

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