The Silver Mask (Magisterium Series, book 4)
By Holly Black and Cassandra Clare
Blurb:
A generation ago, Constantine Madden came close to achieving what no magician had ever achieved: the ability to bring back the dead. He didn't succeed . . . but he did find a way to keep himself alive, inside a young child named Callum Hunt. Now Call is one of the most feared and reviled students in the history of the Magisterium, thought to be responsible for a devastating death and an ever-present threat of war. As a result, Call has been imprisoned and interrogated. Everyone wants to know what Constantine was up to-and how he lives on. But Call has no idea. It is only when he's broken out of prison that the full potential of Constantine's plan is suddenly in his hands . . . and he must decide what to do with his power. In this spellbinding fourth book of Magisterium, bestselling authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare take us beyond the realm of the living and into the dangers of the dead.
Review:
I think obviously the first thing to discuss about this book is the fact it is written by two big authors in the YA community. Personally, I haven't read any of Holly Black's books but I am aware that she wrote the The Spiderwick Chronicles. Even though I haven't read Holly's materials, I am a big fan of Cassandra Clare work such as The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices and discovered this book through her. I may be unfamiliar with Black's writing style, Clare's however comes very naturally to me. With saying that it makes me believe I could tell where Clare had her influence. I don't feel like she had a big part in the writing of this book which is very disappointing, however I don't think it helps that I picked up the book expecting it to be in the Shadowhunter world that Clare had created in her own series.
Although I did enjoy the series and will be finishing it when the final book comes out in September, I don't think I will explore more work by Holly Black. Her writing style isn't my cup of tea, as it's a lot more child like. Even though the book was written in the third person, it sometimes felt like the main character Cal was writing due to the choice of words. I understand Cal is young starting at 11, but the words don't need to reflect that when writing in a third person. Even though I enjoyed the characters, I felt their development was poor. They came across as remaining young 11 year olds even in The Silver Mask, they're 14 but still thinking and talking like 11 year olds especially when it came to relationships. Despite saying that overall their dialect and conversations were good and felt quite genuine (just didn't always match their age), it felt like they were real friends talking at times and I appreciated that.
*SPOILERS*
Some other good points of the series is the plot twists such as Cal being the Enemy of Death reborn. This created an interesting good vs evil take to the book and makes the reader question their own morals. I also thought the series had a lot of courage to kill off Aaron (one of the lead roles), he does come back to life (sort of) but it really changed the tone of the book and due to the darkness I enjoyed it more.
Overall, I think its a good short series to read, kind of like a filler series before you jump into a long book. Compared to Cassandra Clare previous work, I didn't find it as enjoyable and felt it lacking but that might be because this book is Holly's. I'm unsure how the final book will go but I look forward to reading it.
Rating: 2.5 runes out of 5 
Check out review of Book 5: The Golden Tower
written by Lauren
No comments:
Post a Comment