Sal is a thief who is trying to rise up out of a low income status. Queen Ignasi is the one who ended a massive Civil War and banished the land of magic. She always has 4 guards around her that coincide with the rings on her fingers. One position opens up. She enters a tournament to fill this remaining position. Will Sal come out of this one alive?
I’ve heard a lot of people compare this book to a Sarah J Maas and Leigh Bardugo writing. I couldn’t disagree more. I didn’t enjoy the writing in this book at all – and I REALLY tried. I stopped and started this one multiple times and finally just powered through. This seems to be a love it or hate it book. I didn’t love it. In my opinion, it was like someone wrote a generic YA fantasy novel combining Hunger Games with Game of Thrones. It just felt too cliché for me. I won’t be picking up the sequel for this one. I would give it a 2 out of 5 stars.

I do thank NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for providing me a copy of this book for an honest review.

I think this was over-hyped and doomed to not compare to the great YA books that it was compared to. I think it was honestly just average and didn't live up to its promise. The writing was not stellar and the plot has been overdone in YA lately. I would recommend it for anyone who wants "more" of the same.

The problem with <i>Mask of Shadows</i> is almost instantly noticeable. When the book begins, the exposition is baffling, overly intricate, and, most of all, incredibly dull. While the opening is intended to draw you into the story and let you get to know the characters, it's difficult to see any of these through the mound of words that I had to work through multiple times and still couldn't make full sense of. The characters themselves, once they begin speaking, have dialogue so oddly stilted that understanding the current plot becomes next to impossible.

Beyond that, this is a deeply common YA fantasy. While I want, so desperately, for there to be more queer representation in YA, I was so bored out of my mind by the world and the world building I could not get myself to appreciate a world in which the main character of a book I was reading was gender fluid. Sal is a character that I, and so many of my friends, want and need to read about. Unfortunately, they are buried underneath the weight of a dreadfully dull book that does almost nothing new.

An entertaining enough book with a lot of potential, but at the same time strangely light in tone and short on world-building. The way that the important geopolitical details of this high fantasy world were revealed -- i.e., slowly, on an as-needed basis as random facts suddenly popped up throughout the book -- was not really effective. I found that the best way for me to just sit back and enjoy the story and characters was to mentally place them inside some better, other yet vaguely similar literary construct, such as Scott Lynch's "Gentleman Bastard" series, and just pretend the book was set there.

I liked the main character, Sal, and appreciated that they were genderfluid, although this was not always handled deftly by the writing. I know that genderfluid people have a hard time in a binary world, but A) this story world is not presented as being particularly binary about gender or sexuality, so why is Sal then such a big deal to everybody else?; and B) for a book making such a strong attempt to undermine binary gender codes... this book sure does have a lot of binary gender codes. For example, after stating bluntly "I will accept the pronouns he, she, or they," Sal then gets upset when someone calls them they, rather than he or she, depending on... whether or not Sal is wearing a dress at any given moment, apparently? (Also, getting upset, about gender pronouns when one is at that moment competing to the death for a position on the Queen's Badass Assassin Squad is kind of untenable. Especially when getting upset involves talking back to the people who are judging your performance.)

If you can get past the glaring First Book Problems, turn off your brain, and just enjoy the bloody competition story, you may like this book. It's a bit like reality television; when it ends, you barely remember what happened, but you still find yourself tuning in next season. That is to say, I plan to read Book 2.

This wasn't a very enjoyable read for me. Not enough plot and too much descriptions of things that don't matter and left me bored for the most part. Too much like other popular ya fantasy to be anything special. It was cool to see a gender-neutral character however.

Interesting book with a good concept but it dragged on a lot

I actually did not enjoy this book as much as a tought... I could not finish it, the story did not catch my attention and i did not connect with the characters.

This is definitely worth reading. The gender fluid main character is highly likable, but I wonder if everything about them is realistic. I don't know and I haven't read a character quite like this one before- so there is nothing to compare them too, but that's the point. We need more like this. I enjoyed the overall story, but the pacing felt off when the main character learned to read and write in five days. This was just such an excellent fit for YA right now and I'm glad to have read it and I will certainly be recommending it to others.

I was really excited to get this book after reading the blurb, but really didn't know what I expected. If you like lots of fighting, violence and gore. I did not know that all that was going to be in this story.

I have to say that the main character being genderfluid really caught me by surprise as well. Needless to say, this was not for me. I really wish I could have liked this one but all things together just did not work for me.

I would say give this one a chance for yourself so you can make up your own mind. Not all books are for all people. I wish Linsey Miller all the best in this series though. I hope it turns out well for the readers as well!

This was certainly compelling, but the plot is a pretty close rip-off of Hunger Games and Throne of Glass, and many aspects of the writing are laughably bad.

The structure of this book is a mess. The transitions (or rather, lack of transitions) are horrifically bad. The action jumps from one scene, person, or plot point to a completely separate one from one sentence to the next with no connection between the two, leaving a confusing, sloppy narrative.

The political situation that supposedly set up the entire plot for this is explained in fits and starts and at totally inappropriate intervals. The information is doled out in a manner and order which has no logic to it whatsoever and despite endless references to it throughout the book, it still makes absolutely no sense in the end.

The are plot holes all over the place, inconsistencies in the "rules" which are blatantly ignored by the author when it suits, and manic swings from sullen guilt to giddy remorselessness in the main character.

Finally, while it's lovely that the author chose to make her protagonist gender fluid, it didn't feel particularly well rendered and had a serious whiff of gimmick to it. That said, I'd be interested to hear what someone who is gender fluid thought of the portrayal of Sal.

A lot of potential here, but ultimately subpar writing did this book in. Hard pass on continuing the series.

Sal is a viscious thief who kills a bunch of people in a contest to join the elite group that guards the queen. Sal is also gender fluid and is in love with the woman who is assigned to teach her how to read and write.

This book was a major let down. I have heard so many amazing things about it, but the writing? Not great and I could not care for the main character Sal. I am not interested in writing a review.

I wanted to love this book and am having trouble writing this months later because I didn't really enjoy it. I think the pacing was too slow in the first 2/3rds of the book even with the assassin's contest happening. I did appreciate reading about a gender fluid MC, where the main point wasn't the fact that the MC was gender fluid and we got to learn what gender fluidity meant to them.

I received a copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. And I'm not going to lie, I requested this book purely because I love the cover. Fortunately the story behind it did not let me down.

So Sal, the main character, is gender fluid, and that is made abundantly clear throughout the story. It's referenced so often that I actually spent a somewhat large amount of time wondering about Sal's genitals even though I don't think they're really relevant to the story. I actually feel a bit weird about spending so much time thinking about Sal's genitals in fact, but the book wouldn't let me forget how undefined they are (if that makes sense). And if you feel like I'm focusing on Sal's genitals a lot right now, you'll understand sort of how I felt about the focus on Sal's gender while reading the story.

Sal's gender-identity aside, this story had a bit of a Hunger Games feeling to it. The whole premise of the contest to become a member of the queen's hand revolves around a competition between various people and death is very likely because the easiest way to win is to kill your competition. Just don't get caught. And the competition was a bit more complicated than just don't die, and I appreciated the other aspects involved and loved seeing how Sal grew as a person, learning new skills to make him/her an even more formidable person.

Overall I give Mask of Shadows 4.1234 stars.

I DNF'd this book at 70%. I really tried to finish it but I just can't make myself go back to it.

It started off well. I was intrigued by the beginning, but never felt like I got to know Sal. I was intrigued by the premise that Sal was gender fluid but I didn't get enough information to really understand how that felt or what it meant to Sal.. If we found out what gender Sal was born as I missed it.

The story felt the same as many other assassin stories that have been making the rounds and I was willing to go along with it, but the use of the numbers as character names was very confusing. I never got a handle on who was who, so when they were being picked off one by one, I didn't really care..

But the thing that really bugged me and ultimately made me set this book aside was the part when Sal talked about their gender fluidity and said to address them as they dressed. This bothered me so much and I just couldn't get over it. As a woman, I feel I can dress however I like and the same should be afforded to anyone. But if I wear pants, should people think I'm mannish or address me as a man? Of course not. The way I dress does not define me.

This really stuck in my craw and as much as I tried to persevere, I couldn't finish this book.

This is the book that YA fantasy, or just fantasy, or YA, or literature in general needs! A book featuring a non-binary, genderfluid character that is not about being genderfluid on NB. Yassssss!
Recommended to a NB friend who nearly cried at the fact that Sal has male, female, AND genderless days.
I doff my hat to the author.

Also, it's a genuinely good read

I really liked the main character. I enjoyed their thought process for how they worked through each problem. A competition to the death is never boring.

I received a free copy of this book for review via NetGalley**

I really really liked this book. So much that when I put it down I wanted to start it again but instead I ordered a physical copy and will read that again this year for sure. I'm a huge fan of the Darker Shades of Magic trilogy and Nevernight and I found Sal very reminiscent of Mia & Lila but a bit more subdued. I loved her gender fluidity and how accepting or at the very least nonchalant everyone was about it in this book. And honestly, assassins and thieves and a competition to be be Queens hand. This book was filled with all the tropes that fill my heart with glee. It even had a couple moments that hit me right in the feels. I'd recommend this book, I highly enjoyed and cannot wait for more.

The cover and the blurb for this book are awesome. Like everything about this drew me into the book and made me want to start reading it right away.

Unfortunately, this book did not blow me away. The book is 80% descriptions of training. As a reader, I need to know a little but this book gave me a lot. It seemed that the engaging plot was nowhere to be found, which hugely disappointed me as the blurb gave it SUCH high hopes. The pacing was slow and there were far too many info dumps. The information needs to be weaved into the story instead on just two pages of information and then carrying on.

Sal the main character was hard to figure out as well. It was great to see a gender-fluid character in a book, but some of Sal’s reactions were a little odd. Especially when it came to clothes and how they represent people. Considering this was a book about celebrating gender diversity it felt really weird to have someone be so caught up about someone misrepresenting them because they were dressed a little more like one gender than the other.

Most of the other characters were named with numbers which made it SUPER hard to figure out or remember who everyone was.

Overall, this was an okay story let down by the info dumps and pacing.

This book was way too slow for my liking, I had absolutely no desire to pick it up because of how slow and unoriginal it seemed.