City of Masks review

[alobear]

I know people who refuse to read books meant for children, purely because they are meant for children. I'm not one of them, and I often get given kids' books to read, so I know just how good they can be.

However, City of Masks by Mary Hoffman left me confused as to its intended audience. The plot didn't really start until about 150 pages in, and I was on the verge of giving up by that point. Up until then, it was all scene-setting and essentially sight-seeing on the part of the hero – and if it failed to retain my interest, I can't imagine many kids finding it all that fascinating, either.

The exciting incident of around page 150 was very brief, and there was only one other short burst of excitement towards the end, so any kids who are after action adventure aren't going to be satisfied by this book. The fact that the hero is a fifteen-year-old boy made me think it was going to be high risk, swashbuckling stuff, but it's actually more about politics and societal structure than anything else.

The other main strand of storyline concerns a girl the hero meets and befriends early on. There is a mystery surrounding her background that is clearly telegraphed at her introduction – it's quite possible that a lot of kids wouldn't notice the clues as easily as I did, but the revelation of the mystery is such a cliché that I don't think any of them would be particularly surprised by it, either. It made me wonder, though, whether the staple cliches of fantasy stories are as old and tired to kids as they are to adults – do kids absorb them through osmosis, or is the fact that they endure and crop up so often a testament to the fact that there is always a new generation of readers and movie-goers who aren't familiar with them?

Once the plot got going, it didn't have all that much time to develop properly, having only the second half of the book to work with. It just seemed as if everything got sorted out a little too quickly, easily and neatly for me. The only thing that doesn't get wrapped up in a shiny bow is the treatment of the hero's poor parents, whom I thought deserved a lot better than what happened to them. Maybe, though, young readers don't empathise too much with the adults in stories, and so they wouldn't find that aspect of the book so upsetting.

Hoffman's books are apparently very popular, so I must be missing something (after all, I was left entirely unmoved by Lemony Snicket, so perhaps I'm just not “down with the kids of today”...), but I just don't see the appeal of City of Masks to either adults or kids. The themes are fairly adult, but the treatment of them is very shallow, so it doesn't seem to fit into either category.

There are two more books in the series, but they follow the annoying Samaria trend of being about completely different characters. Although I wasn't overly involved by the story in City of Masks, I'd rather have a more in depth exploration of what happens next to the characters I know, than having to start again with new ones, which would suggest the other books will follow a similar pattern of lengthy set-up and rushed conclusion.