Masks by Karen Chance

A Spoiler Free Review

I was honestly very bored with a lot of this novella. There were bits and pieces sprinkled in that kept me reading, but I was bored for a great majority of my reading experience. Ms. Chance also did that thing where she info-dumped the “twist” for about three chapters. I was not pleased.

Masks just felt really tedious, to me. It’s a portion of Mircea’s backstory punctuated by a flashback of right after her was turned. It just seemed to go on and on forever. Seriously, an almost blow-by-blow account of Mircea’s time in Venice, during which we meet some characters who mostly don’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of the Cassie Palmer/Dorina Basarab universe. I guess I don’t actually know that, as far as I haven’t finished the series yet, but… yeah. Given how far back in time this is versus the present day setting of the series and Cassie’s utter lack of knowledge of Mircea’s past… yeah… I don’t really see Bezio and Jerome and Auria showing up in the main books.

I also think the sheet amount of sex in the book was also a turn off (pardon the pun). I don’t have a problem with sex scenes being in books, I think it’s healthy to show every part of life, however, personally, I’ve been skimming or skipping the sex scenes for years. Too much saturation of sex stuff personally from the massive amounts I’d get in fanfiction when I was younger… so having this part of Mircea’s life be when he was forced to be a whore in Venice and everyone around him being oversexed… yeah… not a fun read for me.

It was kind of nice to get “The Consul’s” identity confirmed. It’s heavily inferred in the Cassie books, but I like actually knowing the names of characters.

Basically, if you’re super interested in how Mircea’s life went directly after his Change or are interested in how “The Consul” came to power, read this. If you’re not interested in either of those things, skip this.

Also, on a separate note, whoever edited the Wikia for this universe and put Masks at this point in the chronological reading order DOES NOT understand what chronological means. Or else I just don't understand why this one's at the point in the reading order... really seems like it should be muuuuch earlier.