The Masked City, Genevieve Cogman
The Masked City follows on admirably from The Invisible Library, providing the same madcap mix of genre with aspects of metafiction (one of the main characters is a Great Detective; the Fae are living archetypes who really get on best by living up to their cliches) and the same pacy narrative. Vale, Irene and Kai continue being a heck of a team, although they’re all separated for a while. There’s some fascinating new layers to the Fae, there’s more contact with the world of dragons…
If you didn’t enjoy the first book, I can’t imagine this would really hit any new notes for you. But as the second book of the series, it works quite well. There’s an element of middle-bookness, in that Alberich doesn’t play any kind of serious role, after being set up as a Big Bad. But there’s plenty of adventure and interest, and I mainlined it the second time just as much as I did the first.
I loved this instalment. The first one didn’t win me over; this one did – seems I’m WAY more interested in Fae and dragons than Alberich (which, on reflection, is entirely unsurprising). I really should reread the series from the start having enjoyed The Burning Page… but I might just race on to The Lost Plot instead 😉
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I’ve barely started The Lost Plot, but it does feature dragons!