Book 4: The Mask Falling
Not sure why I didn’t write this one earlier in the year, since I wrote the reviews for books 1-3 fairly soon after reading. Maybe just too much of the same thing at once?
This is the fourth novel of the series, and like the previous ones, this ends up expanding the world quite a bit, following Paige and Arcturus to Paris. Paige needed out of England after the last one, and she owes the organization for they help they gave her so Paris has dual purposes – recovery and hiding, as well as information gathering and mission.
Like Scion-run London, Paige and people like her are hated and oppressed in France and there is one influential government official they want her to infiltrate and get information on. Naturally we also get information about the Paris underground and as usual, there are layers upon layers with intrigues and double crosses.
I actually did quite like this one from what I remember but there were a few points where Paige made some rather reckless decisions and seemed too easy to trust. This one also ends on a huge cliffhanger but book 5 is available so it won’t require a huge wait.
In fact, that review I have had written for months but didn’t want to publish it before writing the review for the 4th of the series.
Book 5: The Dark Mirror
And it’s an amnesia plot! When the novel starts, Paige wakes up in an unknown location, disoriented. After she escapes, she realizes she is in Eastern Europe and it’s been six months of the events of the last novel in Paris.
Fortunately, Paige soon is able to find her way back to espionage network she had worked for in Paris, and is reunited with some of her friends and allies from the previous novels, including Maria and Nick. Having not been in the free world since she lived in Ireland as a child before it was conquered, Paige takes some time to adjust to the freedoms and attitudes around her. After some traveling through Eastern Europe, the majority of the novel takes place in Italy.
Paige also feels guilty about her last interactions with Arcturus, and how quickly she lost her faith in him. She still doesn’t know exactly what happened but she knows they need to rescue him.
The world building continues to be interesting – this is a fully developed world, like ours, where there are myriads of alliances with different goals working together. Many of the free world countries have also recently been succumbing to Scion influence, and there are reasons to fear Italy might be next. While I appreciated the world building, I also wish the story would go back to London soon (this one doesn’t end on a cliff hanger but London definitely isn’t in the cards for the beginning of the next book).
Between the amnesia and a plot line where two people make assumptions about each other’s feelings instead of talking to each other, there were a few parts that were a little frustrating about this novel. Overall, though, I enjoyed the story, and I certainly felt Paige’s frustration with the new clairvoyant council that was introduced and how they felt more like an obstacle than the allies one would expect.
As far as I know, this is supposed to be a seven book series, so even with the ever growing landscape, I’m hoping that by midway through the next one, we start narrowing in and setting up for the end game.
