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simonlorden 's review for:

Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller
4.0

I read this book in one day and I started out really loving it, then by the end I was kind of disappointed. 3.5 stars.

Pros:
* Genderfluid protagonist with changing pronouns.
* I liked the relationship between the members of the Left Hand, how they are assassins and yet still friends/family to each other.
* I liked the worldbuilding and the plot.
* There were a couple of really funny lines.

Cons:
* There were three characters other than Sal that I really liked, and two of them died. So that sucked. I was kinda expecting the first, but I'm grumpy about the second.
* The romance felt kind of unnecessary? Maybe that's not the right word, but I wasn't really feeling it and I wanted to get back to the assassion/Left Hand plot.
* It would have been nice to see other nonbinary characters, or at least mention them, because the way Sal was talking about their own gender, it kinda sounded like they were the only one in the world who is like that. Fingers crossed for others to appear in the sequel.

But most of all:
* I really, really dislike the solution that it's Sal's clothes that signal their current pronouns to people. That just raises so many questions. How do you even dress neutral? Why is a dress inherently female? etc.