strictly literary: mask of shadows by linsey miller

linsey miller's debut fantasy, mask of shadows, follows a thief named sal through the audition process to join the queen's left hand. the left hand being the queen's special council of justice or revenge seekers, or assassins if we're speaking plainly. the audition process is arduous, dangerous, murderous. the queen's court is full of intrigue. the lands she saved barely stitched together.

sal is a fascinating character, i don't think i've ever read anything quite like this before. sal isn't exactly a he or she or them. gender fluid, sal is not that, but also all that. and it was hard at first to understand. i'm a cis-gendered, hetero, pass-for-white person. how could you be nothing but all things at once? it's not a feeling i truly understand but sal manages to explain it in a way that makes sense. so while i struggled at first to categorize sal, much like the characters around sal do, i learned to accept that sal is sal. and once i was able to stop fixating on this, the story just flowed.

if you like red queen or the hunger games, you will like this too. there's world-building and betrayal, deaths that just happen and deaths that cut to the bone. there is love too, and friendship. there's the fact that nothing in this world is stable and sal is just another person who wants it to crumble. partly because there is no way that things remain as is. and all sal wants is to survive the fall. well, that and revenge.

**mask of shadows will publish on august 29, 2017. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/sourcebooks fire in exchange for my honest review.