The Masked City

[sawyl]

I very much enjoyed Genevieve Cogman's The Invisible Library when I read it back at the start of the year and its sequel, The Masked City, is every bit as good. Following on from the steampunk fantasy of the first novel, the second features a rescue story set in a parallel version of Venice populated by the highly chaotic fae.

The story opens with a kidnapping: Irene Winters' assistant Kai, dragon and a trainee librarian both, is dragged off by the mysterious Lord Guantes and his wife. After a brief flashback showing the events leading up to the kidnapping, the story begins in earnest with Irene crossing worlds to pay a call on Kai's powerful uncle, the King of the Northern Ocean, who informs her of the consequences of Kai's abduction: that unless he is returned, and maybe even then, the dragons will destroy the world he was taken from as a lesson to others.

With the fate of her new home at stake, Irene travels to a alternate version of Venice where Kai is due to be sold to the highest bidder in an auction to be held at La Fenice. Arriving in Venice aboard a train that is actually one half of a powerful pair of greater fae, Irene quickly finds it to be a place where coincidence abounds as the magic of the place tries to turn every inhabitant into a character in story — something that makes it hard for Irene to steer clear of Lord Guantes and his bid for power.

Where Cogman's first book concentrates on the mythos of the Library, the second greatly expands the universe, filling in the roles of the fae and the dragons, the nature of their perpetual enmity, and the Library's role as a neutral third party.

The fae, whose lives are dominated by myths and stories, are shown to become less free and less individual as there power grows, changing them from people into stereotypes as their role in their own story becomes more clear cut. The dragons, meanwhile, are devoted to order and hierarchy and honour, in a way that seems to bind them just as much as it does the fae. And while lesser members of each group are able to exist on worlds where neither force fully dominates, the greater members — such as the King of the Northern Ocean and the Horse and Rider — are only able to make brief excursions and are completely unable to enter realities dominated by their rival power.

The novel's depiction of supernatural Venice seems to work very well, with the slightly cliched gothic and febrile atmosphere of the place — something that owes a great deal to Ann Radcliffe — emphasised by Irene's lack of support and the idea that the world's plot-driven magic means that she is always at risk of running into one of her nemeses if it will improve their story arc.

And having Irene along and unaided for a substantial part of the book also pays off, allowing her character to shine through. Brisk, efficient, amusingly snarky and frequently out of her depth, Irene is an enjoyable protagonist who takes on her role as rescuer with gusto. There are some fun moments with the lesser characters — my favourite being Irene's pragmatic acceptance of the possible necessity of a tawdry romance with Zuzana, a fae from some sort of hero worshiping cult, who complains that she never gets to seduce the heroes back home and who thinks that Irene might be just the sort of hero she's looking for — and two genuinely unpleasant encounters with both Guantes and Silver which threat the central part of Irene's being in a way that merely physical threads don't.