Mask of Shadows
Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller
(Mask of Shadows, Book 1)
SYNOPSIS
I Needed to Win.
They Needed to Die.
Sallot Leon is a thief, and a good one at that. But gender fluid Sal wants nothing more than to escape the drudgery of life as a highway robber and get closer to the upper-class—and the nobles who destroyed their home.
When Sal steals a flyer for an audition to become a member of The Left Hand—the Queen’s personal assassins, named after the rings she wears—Sal jumps at the chance to infiltrate the court and get revenge.
But the audition is a fight to the death filled with clever circus acrobats, lethal apothecaries, and vicious ex-soldiers. A childhood as a common criminal hardly prepared Sal for the trials. And as Sal succeeds in the competition, and wins the heart of Elise, an intriguing scribe at court, they start to dream of a new life and a different future, but one that Sal can have only if they survive.
REVIEW
⭐ ⭐ ☆ ☆ ☆
Concept vs execution. 💭✍️
Finally, a YA fantasy novel where things actually happen… and it sucks. On paper, Mask of Shadows has a lot going for it: the concept is strong, the pacing is decent, the cast of characters has potential, and the story itself sets up an engaging competition filled with action and intrigue. All the ingredients are there for a solid book.
But one fatal flaw ruins everything: the writing. To put it bluntly, it’s extremely rough. Clunky prose, awkward phrasing, and flat delivery drag down what could have been a genuinely fun, fast-paced read. When looking at just the foundation of the book (the idea, the setup, the direction of the plot) I could easily see this being an 8 or 9 out of 10. But the execution killed any momentum it might have had. It’s like trying to watch a great movie on a broken VHS tape: the story is there, but the medium makes it painful to get through.
Then there’s the protagonist, who is written as gender-fluid. The book’s attempt at representation is clumsy and distracting, as it insists on making the character’s shifting gender identity part of the text in a way that constantly pulls you out of the story.
If the goal was to keep the character’s gender ambiguous so readers could envision them however they liked, that would have been a clever and effective choice. Instead, the novel over-explains it, shoehorning the idea into the dialogue and worldbuilding without much subtlety. In a story that’s supposed to be about assassins, deception, and survival, the execution of this element feels heavy-handed and inconsistent. Worse, because the protagonist constantly changes their appearance, there’s never a strong baseline for readers to hold onto, it ends up being more confusing than immersive.
At the end of the day, the biggest problem is the writing itself. If you decide to pick this up, be prepared: the premise is exciting and the competition angle has promise, but the experience of actually reading it is rough.
