Ren, a former child thief turned con artist, seeks the security that she believes can only be found in large sums of money. So she embarks on her greatest scheme yet, returning to her native city of Nadezra in the guise of Alta Renata Viraudax, a foreign daughter of an exiled member of local family House Traementis, in an attempt to worm her way into their affections and finances. She has her beauty, her wits, and the skillful needle of her adopted sister, Tess, who’s posing as her maid. But there are several complications. To begin with, House Traementis is almost broke and significantly diminished in political and social status. More seriously, Ren becomes a tool in a sinister plot involving kidnapped street children unable to sleep, a dangerous new drug that turns users violent and at the physical mercy of their own fears and nightmares, and unrest between the city’s two ethnic groups, the ruling Liganti and the downtrodden but defiant Vraszenians. Despite her initially self
Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:00pm
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M.A. Carrick is an open pseudonym for writing team Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms. Brennan’s track record needs scant introduction, with twelve books to her name including, mostly recently, the acclaimed Memoirs of Lady Trent series and its spin-off sequel
Turning Darkness into Light. Helms is perhaps less well known, though they have previously published two solo novels, 2015’s
The Dragons of Heaven and 2016’s
The Conclave of Shadows.
The Mask of Mirrors is the first novel to come jointly from their pens, and it reminds me strikingly of the Astreiant novels of Melissa Scott and the late Lisa A. Barnett’s Astreiant novels, albeit more in worldbuilding and tone than in characters and concerns.