City of Masks by Mary Hoffman

TL;DR time / space travel to renaissance Italy

(finished 3/11/15)

I'm gonna admit, I'm biased towards this series. I've loved it ever since City of Masks helped me calm down and fall asleep after my side of the house was hit by a car a few years ago. (That's kind of a long story.) Anyway, the car did relatively little damage to the house, but it hit the foundation right under my bed, so I didn't sleep in my room until someone came and said it was definitely safe. City of Masks kept me occupied while I tried to fall asleep in our living room. 

City of Masks reads very much as a middle grade novel, but if you're fine with Harry Potter, then I think you should be fine. The biggest issues I've ever had is spelling and the differences in quotation marks than I'm used to because Mary Hoffman lives in the UK and it was kept the same in all the copies I've read.

The premise of the story is really cool. It's pretty magic-y -- again, like Harry Potter -- but a lot of it is also science and is explained to an extent. I don't know if these explanations necessarily make sense logically in the real world, but for me it was enough. (Also, you're not going to get 110% accurate science from people living in the renaissance era. Rodolfo and Dethridge are good scientists, but they're definitely not all the way up-to-date with the 21st century.)

I also think Arianna is a really strong role model. She's not afraid to try and get what she wants, even if she has to sneak and break a few rules in the process. She steps up to challenges and has human reactions to things. That said, I think her character is a little limited within City of Masks, but I think that's mainly because the book reads like a standalone. I don't know whether or not Mary Hoffman knew she was going to write the Stravaganza world as a series or not when City of Masks was published.

(Honestly, I'd love to see Arianna as the focus character for City of Masks. I love Lucien and all, but Arianna's more strong-willed and fiery. She's also kind of the root of most of the problems if you really think about it. In a vague "half the stuff connects back to her if you step back and look at it" kind of way.)

Also, it's time-space travel. This was really the first book I've read that's done that, and I can't remember any off the top of my head that I've read since that do the same. Talia is incredibly interesting, partially because it's half-based on real-life Italy. I guess it's more of like alternative fiction. I don't have a very good knowledge of Italy, and the whole Stravaganza series does really well with setting everything up and explaining the differences between Talia and Italy.

And there's like no romance subplot! I mean, there are with two of the adult couples, but Lucien and Arianna don't have any sort of romance, and I love that. Spoiler: they do end up together in later books, but they're such a good couple and it builds up realistically and OTP 5ever basically. The lack of romance could also be because it's middle grade-ish, but hey, I'm not gonna complain.

As a side note, I've never been able to find these books brand new. Only at thrift stores. It's like that theory that all the Goosebumps books showed up in school libraries one day already beat-up.

I think the narration would really be the biggest turn-off for anyone. It does come off as kind of simple at times, and because it's third person, there are a few times where there are three different perspectives on a page. I think it's helpful for setting up events going on at the same time, but I do realize that a lot of people have been frustrated by the short passages. The short ones almost always foreshadow some key detail, but a lot of them do seem pointless at first and I'll admit I didn't notice most of them until I'd re-read the book at least once. A lot of the complaints I'm seeing on goodreads is also that the plot is too simple or predictable, and I can't really say anything about that because it's been so long since I've read it the first time. But again, City of Masks reads as middle grade, so I think it could be of going a little too far with avoiding tons of subplots or implications that younger kids wouldn't necessarily understand.

There are six books in the series, and each of them focuses on a new character and a new city while tying back to the characters and the plot of the previous books. It does get a little excessive by the most recent book, but honestly I love all of the characters across the whole series and it's awesome to see them build friendships as they go along.

TL;DR this is like my favorite underrated book, though if you don't like middle grade books, I really don't think you'll like it.