The Ruling Mask

The Grey City #3

by Neil McGarry, Daniel Ravipinto (authors)

Duchess of the Shallows has chosen her path. Now she will learn the price.

In the moment of her greatest victory she finds herself the victim of a whisper campaign as subtle and wide-reaching as the Grey itself. But her search for a source is threatened by a time of troubles for Rodaas: a brewing religious war, a struggle for imperial succession, and behind it all, the endless machinations of He Who Devours.

Everything she has gained--friends, family, faith and fortune--is in jeopardy. Only one question remains: how far will Duchess go to protect what is hers?

528 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2016

About the author

Neil is a former technical writer, former stand-up comedian and current indie author and podcaster living in Philadelphia. While not working with Daniel Ravipinto on the third book in The Grey City, or on the Star Trek podcast, "Nipicking: The Next Generation", Neil reads about World War II, plays both Ultimate Frisbee and volleyball, follows politics and tries to perfect the peanut butter cookie.

Reviews

[Pauline Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best aspects of epic fantasy, for me, is the way each book in a series opens out the scope of the story a little more, allowing glimpses of previously unseen locations. This book does that, too, and even though almost all the action takes place within the confines of the city of Rodaas, there is much to discover about the place. But what this series does so gloriously well is to draw back the veil concealing the mysteries of the people of Rodaas - its odd history, its religions, its swirling rivalries on the streets and the background of Duchess herself. And in this book, for the first time, we begin to get a good close-up look at the rulers of the city.

This is a plot-heavy book, with multiple threads weaving back and forth, involving the many different political and economic factions of the city. Many fantasy cities feel like those fake wild west towns, where the saloon is nothing but a sheet of plywood propped up as a backdrop to the pretend shootout. Rodaas, by contrast, feels entirely functional and real. The different quarters, the tradespeople going about their business, the beggars and priestesses, the Red and the Greys, the lightboys and ganymedes, and all the multitude of administrators high and low, and every last one of them is operating according to his or her own agenda. To be honest, I found it hard to keep up with, but that’s not a criticism, it’s high praise. There are vanishingly few books that have so much depth.

But it’s the characters that shine, for me. Not just Duchess herself, but Lysander and Castor, Jana and her brother, the oddball scholar Cecilia, and a whole range of minor characters. Castor became a more significant player in this book. In the previous book, he seemed to be something of a plot device at times, disappearing when convenient, then reappearing just when Duchess needed him. I never minded (I’m a sucker for a warrior-type), but in this book a lot of the odd aspects to him finally start to come into focus, and that gave me goosebumps. Hearing snippets about Duchess’s brother, Justin, also gave me goosebumps. We’ve already seen what happened to her sister, so I hope we eventually catch up with the brother again.

Once again the climax of the story is a seemingly impossible task for Duchess to accomplish, but this is becoming a little predictable now, especially since Duchess’s specialness is ever more apparent, and the likelihood of failure is small. There were one or two elements in the book that seemed unnecessary (the Coast Road, and Aaron’s actions), put in just to wring out some extra emotion, but I’ve thought that before in this series and found there was a deeper significance, so I’m trusting the authors on this.

Overall, this is a deeply thoughtful and well-written series, up there with the best of them, which rewards careful reading. So why only four stars? It’s a personal issue - when a series is as multi-stranded and deep as this one, yet there long gaps between books, I find it impossible to remember all the details of what happened previously. Without either a summary of the story so far or a list of characters, even with careful exposition (which is the case here) I miss a great deal of the more subtle nuances. The failure is mine, not the book’s, but it still diminishes my enjoyment somewhat. For anyone whose memory or ability to pick up subtle clues is better than mine, I commend this book to you. It’s also the sort of series that would reward multiple readings. Four stars.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed both “Duchess of the Shallows” and “The Fall of Ventaris” so I was looking forward to the third book in this series. The series has established something of a formula in which Duchess needs to come up with a scheme to do some seemingly impossible task (in this case involving the heist of a sacred family heirloom of one of Rodaas’ most prominent families) while simultaneously trying to find out more about her heritage and the city’s secrets and carrying out half a dozen other smaller schemes just for good measure. I think it’s a formula that works well and each book has been steadily increasing the stakes which stops the series feeling repetitive. I think it’s been doing a good job of gradually revealing the background world-building and we are starting to finally get a few answers about the mysterious figure Duchess only knows as “P” whose manipulations seem to be behind many of the events that are occurring. There’s also increasing depth to the world-building, with this book adding a focus on the battles for supremacy between the city’s different religious cults. If I had one criticism for the plotting it would be that occasionally Duchess’ elaborate schemes seem to work better than they have any right to, but this is a fairly small flaw. There is some acknowledgment that even Duchess can’t make everything always work out with a subplot in which one member of her gang does something which leads to a major moral dilemma in which she has to balance her own interests against the well-being of someone working for her.

The characterisation has always been good in the series and although the first book largely focused on Duchess and Lysander over time an interesting ensemble cast has built up, all of whom have their own motivations and agendas ranging from just wanting to build a life in a hostile city to more complex struggles for political advantage. It’s interesting to try to work out what all the different characters want, with many of them remaining fairly enigmatic so it’s difficult to really know how much a character like Minette is really a genuine ally to Duchess, although there are occasional exceptions where some characters seem a bit too willing to explain their motivations to someone they barely know.

Overall, I’d probably say this was a bit better than the first book and maybe not quite as good as “The Fall of Ventaris”. It is an entertaining book to read and I’m definitely interested in reading more of this story.

[S.B. (Beauty in Ruins) · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you're lucky, the second book in a series manages to top the first. When you're really lucky, the third book manages to top that. When you're really, really lucky . . . well, I don't want to put too much pressure on Neil and Daniel, but I like their chances. Although this is just as complex and deeply layered as the first two books, with the same strength of characterization, the interconnectedness is what puts it over the top. This is that keystone book where all the plotlines and mysteries start to come together, but somehow it never gets weighted down and actually has the best pacing of the series so far.

Duchess is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters in fantasy, a remarkable young woman who has finally stepped into her destiny with the Grey. With the city at war with itself, torn apart by political threats and religious fervor, the stakes are higher than they've ever been before. Fortunately, with this being the longest book in the series, there is plenty of time to explore all the ramifications of Duchess's plots (and those against her), giving characters like Jana and Lysander ample space to develop and play their own role in Rodaas. It's a busy, complex story, but one that gets its hooks into you early and never lets go.


Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins

[Stuart Langridge]

Third in the series, and it's clear that these are going to be Duchess getting tangled up in a bunch of multi-layered schemes, threaded through with hints as to the Big Underlying Plot. Sorta Dresden-ish that way, which is a compliment. Duchess is no milquetoast, either; half the schemes just arrive on her doorstep like Philip Marlowe's, sure, but the other half are all her doing. She's pretty well-heeled now, too, after a couple of decent scores, and importantly they aren't smash-and-grabs where one lives on the proceeds; she's running two businesses. (OK, one's a crooked dice game, but she is a criminal.) Making enemies, too, but business enemies; the mixture of cut-throat politics on both social and corporate scenes is something of a refreshing change for this sort of book, where the thief protagonist who does well normally manages it by stealing a really big diamond or something rather than by running a dressmakers' which is being noticed by the fashionable. Everyone's presentation is a bit unrealistic, though; people who get embroiled in the schemes (or embroil Duchess in theirs) are either commendably open about their motives (the three sisters, here) or intransigently enigmatic and impenetrable (the first Keeper, the other keeper chap, Minette), and actual real people are generally somewhere in between. So you don't tend to know what's going on, but equally there's no Columbo, Eugenides, Vetinari big reveal at the end. Also, there aren't really endings; the book stops because it's the length of a book, not because it's a particular story breakpoint; these stories could be one huge book, or fifteen smaller books, and there wouldn't really be a problem. Not that I mind, I hasten to add, but I'm now up to date as of this one (thank you Daniel Ravipinto for putting it on Smashwords after I whined on Twitter about having to buy the Kindle one), and it only came out three months ago, and the previous one was in 2013 which suggests that I'll be waiting some considerable time for book four. The Big Underlying Plot gets a bit of a boost in this, though; quite a lot is discovered (or at least speculated about). I shall read the rest, when they arrive.

[Jessica Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A better continuation than most

I tend to be skeptical as each new installment of a story comes out, but this series is engaging, surprising and fun but also consistent in its narrative and characters in a way many similar series are not.

[Neil McGarry]

"The most knotty, absorbing, and satisfying yet." - Kirkus Reviews