Masques

Masques (1993/2010) Patricia Briggs

This is a revised version of Patricia Brigg’s first published book, and unlike some of her more recent works, is not urban/supernatural fantasy but straight up fantasy. Luckily for me, it’s not high fantasy that takes 30k pages to resolve the story, but a fun story told in 300 pages.

Aralorn is a mercenary who is also (secretly) a green mage. Those hidden skills have helped her out of numerous scrapes, and also helps her to rescue a wolf–a strange wolf who eventually speaks to her, and seems to have skills beyond what one would expect from a creature with four paws. Her green magic eventually leads her to becoming a spy, and it is as a spy that she eventually runs into serious problems.

I actually quite enjoyed this story. Much of it isn’t subtle, but it is interesting and it’s quite fun. The nice thing about fantasy is you not just that you can have magic, but that you can swords and women with equal (or mostly equal) rights in the same world. As much as I love historical fiction, it’s hard to have a strong and interesting female lead character who is not also completely out of character for her time. Whereas if you make your own world, you don’t have to worry about such historical accuracies.

Please note that as I said at the start, this is not a new work, but instead a revision of an earlier work, so there are some problems with the writing and the story telling, but despite those issues, it’s still a fun and enjoyable read, and one I recommend.
Rating: 7/10

Published by Ace

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