The Masked City Review

This week's novel is The Masked City, the sequel to The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman.

Irene is enjoying being the Librarian-in-Residence in a magical, steampunk world.  But when Kai (her student and secret dragon) gets kidnapped by Fae and brought to a high chaos world, Irene has to rescue him before the dragons declare war on the Fae, potentially destroying whole universes in the cross fire.

There's a cool thing going on here where the Fae get power from inhabiting leading roles in stories.  So the more stereotypical and overly-dramatic they are, whether they're playing villain or hero, the more powerful they are and the more easily they can draw random passersby into their story.  This leaves the humans in worlds controlled by Fae to act like puppets whenever a Fae walks by, shifting in and out of stories without any control at all.  Lesser Fae gain power by getting closer to the main plots and being less like side characters.  So you've got this culture where everyone is trying to be a main character, and everyone is trying to out-drama each other. 

The thing I like best is that Irene has to keep asking herself what role she's playing in a story.  If she's the villain, she's likely to be caught through unbelievable coincidence.  If she's the hero, she's likely to out maneuver the people chasing her.  It's a cool set up, and I wish more time was spent digging into it.  Aren't we all the heroes of our own stories?  And if so, how do two conflicting stories interact?  I would have liked to see Irene consciously grab the reigns of someone else's story, or I would have liked to see one of the lesser Fae rise up to become a main character.  I would have liked to see some investigation of genre or tropes.  I want to know more, because this is a cool idea.

As with the last book, I think Irene is neat.  She's collected and reasonable and she has sweet Librarian powers.  And as with the last book, I'm pretty ambivalent about Vale, the detective.  I outright got irritated with him when he showed up to announce that he'd figured out everything Irene had figured out, but more easily and stealthfully, plus he'd figured out the one thing she couldn't get.  On the one hand, it was fortuitous in the way that a story with Irene as the hero would be overly-convenient.  But on the other hand...shut up, Vale.  I don't need some dude coming in to make Irene look stupid and show that the last hundred pages or so of her investigating stuff was worthless because he'd already done it.

Shut up, Vale.

***

Next week: Central Station, sci-fi by Lavie Tidhar.