An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors by Curtis Craddock – Review

Published: August 29, 2017

Publisher: Tor Books

Genre: Fantasy

Series: The Risen Kingdoms #1

Pages: 384 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

A polymath princess and her faithful musketeer must unravel the plot of a thousand-year-old madman in order to save an a foreign kingdom from a disastrous civil war.

Caelum is an uninhabitable gas giant like Jupiter. High above it are the Risen Kingdoms, occupying flying continents called cratons. Remnants of a shattered world, these vast disks of soaring stone may be a thousand miles across. Suspended by magic, they float in the upper layers of Caelum’s clouds.

Born with a deformed hand and utter lack of the family’s blood magic, Isabelle is despised by her cruel father. She is happy to be neglected so she can secretly pursue her illicit passion for math and science. Then, a surprising offer of an arranged royal marriage blows her life wide open and launches her and Jeane-Claude on an adventure that will take them from the Isle des Zephyrs in l’Empire Céleste to the very different Kingdom of Aragoth, where magic deals not with blood, but with mirrors.

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GAH! I loved the synopsis for An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, so despite my busy schedule I made time to read this and I’m glad I did because it was literally SO much better than I could have expected or hoped. This book has elements similar to those found in David D. Levine’s Arabella of Mars – I’m quickly coming to find that I have a fondness for steampunk empires similar to those found in Europe in the 1700-1800’s. An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors pulls elements from France and Spain (for once there are no Brits!), both of which have always had this elegant, gilded image in my mind.

Princess Isabelle des Zephyrs is a lacks the magical gifts that mark the nobility and with a malformed hand to boot, she has never had the warmest welcome amongst her family, peers, or even the commoners. Largely left to her own devices, Isabelle pursued her passions of science and mathematics, using the pseudonym Lord Martin DuJournal to publish her groundbreaking works. With no one but her faithful protector Jeane-Claude (a King’s Own Musketeer) and her bloodhollow servant Marie, Isabelle seems to be destined for a lonely life, despite her scholarly pursuits and social status. Until, that is, the Aragothic Empire extends an offer of marriage to one of the principe’s – an unheard of offer, as mixing of the magical lineages of Glasswalker and Sanguinare is practically considered heresy.

What follows this unexpected offer of marriage is several hundred pages of intrigue, assassination attempts, courtly politics, and a level of adventure that I had not at all anticipated. To say I was pleased with the pacing and world building would be an understatement. IT was chock full of history and lore, and the religious aspect was interesting, but I was nevertheless thankful that the author declined to go into a wearying information vomit of how the religious system was structured. I would have liked more discussion of the saints, as they were central to the plot, despite having been dead for, oh, a multitude of centuries or so. There was also a bit of a hurried romantic element near the end that was reasonable enough, but still made me go “hmmm”.

All in all, my few minor quibbles with An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors are far outweighed by my delight at the entire story – from lovable (and detestable) characters, majestic kingdoms, to the very description of the sky continents themselves. This was a really fantastic debut and I’ll be impatiently awaiting news of the sequel as I simply cannot wait to see where things lead to next! I highly recommend this book and think fans of David D. Levine’s Arabella of Mars series or even Jim Butcher’s Cinder Spires series would particularly enjoy this.