The Mask Falling

Fiercely intelligent and articulate, Samantha Shannon has been blazing a trail for a new generation of feminist fantasy authors

* Grazia *
Samantha Shannon’s fantasy series has attracted a large readership and much-deserved praise ... Uniquely different and complex ... The narrative exerts the same vice-like grip as before, with danger, deception, hair’s-breadth escapes and new revelations coming thick and fast * Guardian *
This is an ebullient, gloriously complicated fantasy [...] the characters feel grippingly real. Shannon unravels her tangled tale in galloping prose, which will carry even the reluctant readers to the very satisfying end * Telegraph *
The fourth book in Shannon’s phenomenal The Bone Season series, The Mask Falling inhabits both gloomy Parisian catacombs and the opulent hallways of Versailles in an unputdownable continuation of the saga * Waterstones.com *

For lighter reading I am setting aside … the fourth volume of Samantha Shannon’s series, The Mask Falling. If the BBC are cautious about embarking on the new Pullman trilogy once we get to the end of the (brilliantly realised) original, then Shannon’s books – plucky heroine Paige, a repressive orthodoxy, a supernatural being, clairvoyants, low-life criminal gangs, exotic settings – would be a smart choice

* Scotsman *
Dark, embattled, highly wrought fantasy * Observer *
Fantasy writer Samantha Shannon delivers another large, complex supernatural thriller * SFX *
Shannon has continued to build on this imagined world with intricacy, and Paige’s voice comes through to deliver a suspenseful story * Washington Post *
Language as rich as a figgy pudding, the best terminology in the genre and gripping, edge-of-the-seat plotting to boot * Daily Mail *
A rapid-fire wonder of a book * Marie Claire *
Had me gripped as if in a vice, keeping me hostage among the 452 pages until the end, when I was left eager for the next book * Stylist *
Dynamic and direct ... There is an exciting breadth to Shannon's world * Evening Standard *
A dystopian thriller that delivers * Salon *
A massive, intricate story ... in [a] blisteringly paced plot * New York Magazine *
Truly extraordinary and thrilling -- Andy Serkis
Slick and vivid ... Gives the fantasy genre a refreshing lease of life. The Bone Season is enough to transport even hardened sceptics of the fantasy genre into its imaginative realm * Metro *
The world is so carefully constructed [...] weaved with lies and deceit and impossible to predict * Guardian *
Once again, Samantha Shannon has proven that she is one of the iconic, groundbreaking authors of her generation. -- Katherine Webber, bestselling author of Twin Cr