Hello, you gorgeous individuals, it's Kav here and today I'm going to be talking
about MASK OF SHADOWS by Linsey Miller. I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of
this novel from a friend of mine - I will link her blog in the description below,
so you all can give her some love and as this is an ARC review, this review will
be spoiler-free, so you don't have to worry about spoilers you can just watch
this review and decide whether or not you want to get this book when it comes
out. MASK OF SHADOWS is out on August 29th 2017 and I highly recommend it, so
you should pre-order it or request it at your library or whatever your method of
reading books is - I highly recommend giving this one a chance because I did
really enjoy it. MASK OF SHADOWS is a fantasy novel about a gender-fluid thief
named Sal who, kind of, "auditions" to be some sort of assassin type as, kind of, a
right-hand person for the Queen. There are four of them who are named after jewels
as to conceal their actual identities and Sal auditions to take the place of
one who recently passed away. I gave this novel 4 out of 5 stars, so as you can
tell I really really enjoyed it, so I'll be covering all the usual aspects I
cover in my reviews, so just sit back and let's jump right into it. The thing that
really drew me into this novel was the narration, which I think is kind of a
weird thing to find appealing because I never really find that to be what sucks
me in - I generally just read the narrator and I don't really have any
strong positive or negative feelings towards the narration, but the narration
in this novel was by far my favorite aspect because - I don't know what it was
about it, I don't know if it was something about the character of Sal
because I didn't feel that Sal was our usual hero character I found them as
more of a antihero, but not exactly an antihero type character and so the
narration just felt a lot more believable than someone who was just all
good. Something about the quality of this character
just really really appealed to me. The narration was definitely the first thing
that drew me into the novel, but there were many other aspects of the novel
I enjoyed - particularly the diversity. So Sal is gender-fluid and I really
admired how the author wrote Sal's gender fluidity because Sal didn't just
use one set of pronouns they used he, she, and them and they dressed how they felt,
so that people could gender them based on how they were dressing at the moment.
There are some slight issues with that in the sense that clothing doesn't
necessarily have gender and I did recognize that while reading it, but that
was briefly addressed in the novel where they pointed out how they wore clothes
that were kind of what were considered to be the gender as to simplify it for
binary and cis people, but they didn't really think that that should have been
how it was - they should have just been able to dress how they felt, I do wish
that had been addressed more in the novel as to, kind of, stray away from the
idea that clothing does have genders, but I did admire how Sal used all sets of
pronouns to show that that is a possibility and that all gender-fluid people
may not just use they/them pronouns or just use one of the binary pronouns, they can
use a variety of them depending on how they identified that day. The main
romance was by default queer because of Sal's gender orientation, but the love
interest also acknowledged that by acknowledging that they had kind of only
liked a certain gender for the majority of their life, but now they wanted to be
able to like the same gender because they did like the same gender, so I guess
she could be portrayed as bisexual, but that wasn't written on the page it was
just kind of hinted to that she liked more than one gender. Plot-wise, I also
really enjoyed this novel. I've seen it compared to, kind of, THRONE OF GLASS and
books like that and whereas people who view it that way are totally justified
in their views on the novel, I thought that that wasn't
really a fair judgement of the novel because I felt that it had so much more
than a lot of typical fantasy stories because if you see contemporaries that
are similar you don't really make the same statements that you would about
fantasies that are similar which is how I kind of view that, so I didn't really
find it overused or anything. I thought it was a lot more than those books - plus
it has diversity, but, of course, anyone who believes that is justified in that -
my viewpoint is that it is more than the arbitrary fantasy novel that it was
compared to. I found that the experience of auditioning was done very well - I
thought that there was something very unique to it in, kind of, the assassins
vibe we're getting and that's what I'm saying by saying this wasn't a typical
hero story, it kind of veered off that into more of an antihero type story, but
I don't think it would necessarily be classified as that either, but I liked
that appeal of it where it wasn't like a good person saving the day - it was kind
of more of this person getting involved in this court that was corrupt. I think
the corruptness of the court really became more apparent towards the end of
the novel, but that was probably one of my favorite aspects of the novel kind of
addressing that and addressing how everything wasn't how Sal kind of
wanted it to be, it wasn't as black and white as they wanted it to be, it was a
lot more complex than that and I really enjoyed seeing those dynamics and seeing
that darkness of the novel because I think the darkness of the novel really
appealed to me and that's what, kind of, sucked me into the story. I also really
loved how the title played into the fantasy elements of the novel because
the auditioners had to wear masks, so that their identities would be
concealed and there were also shadows involved as a fantasy element in the story,
so I liked how the title really connected to the story because sometimes
I kind of find titles just very random, I never really understand them, but this
one, I think, really tied in to the story and that was just something I
really loved because I remember at the first mention of shadows I was kind
of like "oh my god the title makes sense now." And talking about the title I also
think the cover really connects to the novel, so I think that as a whole the
packaging for this novel is done in a way that you get what you get - like it's
not selling something it's not, it really is what you think it will be and that's
something I really like because who likes getting a book and then finding
out it's something different than they expected? I doubt people like that, so I
really liked that this one kind of really was what I wanted from it and
really was what I expected from it. My one issue, I guess, with the plot or with
the fantasy elements was that I felt that like it wasn't clear enough for
some of the novel - that was really why I give it 4 instead of 5 out of 5
stars, I just felt like it could have been explained better because it really
took me a while to fully understand the fantasy of the novel and I felt that
that did need more clarification than was given, but I don't think that that
was a huge issue in the novel - it did get me confused a few times, but overall I
didn't really find that to be a negative, like it wasn't something so impacting
that it ruined my read - it was just something that I wish could have been
done better - maybe in the future. Character-wise, it also did take me a
little bit for other characters to grow on me because I felt like Sal was the
main focus of this novel, I really felt like their character was the primary
focus that other characters weren't focused on as much. Again, as I got more
into the novel, I really did see the appeal of some of the other characters - I
especially liked the relationship between Sal and the servant Sal was
given when auditioning. I really loved their relationship and the dynamics
between them and, again, I think the dynamics between the characters were also
really interesting in this novel because none of them were really smooth-sailing,
there was a lot of, kind of, sarcasm laced with the dialogue and such, so it was
really fun to read that - that kind of dark, not that sarcasm is dark or
anything, but kind of that dry sense of humor or kind of that underlying not
necessarily all pure goodness really contributed even in the relationship
between the characters and in the characters themselves, so I really liked
how it really played with all of that and I think that was the main appeal of
the novel - kind of the lack of being pure goodness, it kind of dealt with a lot more
than that and I think it was a lot more than it's been sold to be because when I
heard about it I just heard 'gender-fluid pickpocket' and that was the extent of my
knowledge and I wanted it because of gender fluidity because I identify as
gender-fluid, so I wanted to see myself represented and I really liked how that
was done in the novel, but I think that the book is so much more than that and
that you see so much more with the characters and with the plot and I think
that it has a lot of positive - whereas it has two negatives I can think of it has
millions of positives that I think really really contributed to it, but by
far the biggest appeal for me was the narration and the lack of being your
typical 'hero saves the day novel' - it really dealt with a lot more than that. Overall,
as you can tell, I really enjoyed this novel. I thought I handled most of the
elements in it really really well, so I do recommend it everyone because I think
that you probably will enjoy it too because I'm not one who always falls for
fantasy novels, so when I do I tend to say that they definitely are good
because that is a pretty big statement coming from me, so I do highly recommend
this novel if you have the ability to support it I
definitely recommend you do because it was a wonderful read and I'm so thankful
that my friend Cat sent it to me and, as I said, I will link her in the
description below, so you all can show her some support. I hope you all enjoyed
this video and if you did please give it a like and subscribe because that stuff
makes me happy. Comment down below what you thought about
my review - do you think you might pick up this novel now? do you think that you're
not very interested in it? If you have managed to receive an ARC, let
what your thoughts on the novel were or come back here you've read it and let me
know what you thought after that and if you agreed with me or not.
As usual, all my social media and my Goodreads will be in the description
below if you're interested in following me anywhere else. Thank you all so much
for watching, I hope you're having a lovely day or night wherever you are, please
remember you're beautiful and you deserve the world, and I will see you
next Sunday with a brand new video, goodbye!
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