Masques

I loved the magic here, and the dragon, and the mystery, and Aralorn is a great heroine! I continue to LOVE strong women in my books these days :) I look forward to Wolfsbane coming out later this month! Hopefully, I'll have time to read in in between all my tests and essays coming up. ( )

I did enjoy this, though you can tell that this is Patricia Briggs' first book. Her later ones are much more polished. Still, this was a very readable book and a definite need to read for Briggs' fans. ( )

"A decent first effort" ----- A review of the audio book.

I absolutely ADORE Patricia Briggs. I love her Mercy Thompson and Alpha & Omega series --- they are both automatic buys/pre-orders. (In fact... I have them in paperback, kindle, and audio formats.) I HIGHLY recommend those.

In anycase... Masques is a re-release of her first novel and even though it has been tweaked/cleaned up some, it still lacks something. The story line is okay - though a bit choppy at times - and the main characters are interesting, but neither is as fleshed out as much as I would like. One of the things I like best about Briggs is how invested I become in all her characters... even secondary ones. I think this is perhaps the area that I can see the greatest improvement in how she has grown as a writer. ( Seriously... this woman has had me in tears over the loss of minor characters and can make a piece of wood interesting. One of my favorite characters of hers is a walking stick.) Unfortunately, in THIS book... I did not find myself emotionally invested in many, if not most, of the characters. Thus, my rating is as follows:

Story --- 2.5 to 2.75 Narrator --- 4.5 Overall ---- 3

Having said all that, I have purchased & look forward to the sequel to this book.
And by ALL means... check out her other series. ( )

NIL

I actually read (or reread) this out of order. Aralorn, a mercenary, meets Wolf, a shapeshifter/mage, and they fight evil. It’s decent but not noteworthy; Briggs made a big leap with Hurog a couple of books later. ( )