Geata Póeg na Déanainn

All the walls of dreaming, they were torn wide open January 31, 2021

The first question a lot of people will be asking about The Mask Falling, the fourth novel in Samantha Shannon’s dystopian fantasy Bone Season series, is was it worth the wait? As a fan of Isobelle Carmody, who took more than thirty years to complete her own series of dystpian science fiction (and who had a gap of ten years in between some books in the series!), I have to laugh a bit at anyone who feels that a gap of less than four years (with an epic doorstopper, and multiple novellas, published during this time) is an interminable wait! But yes, it was worth the wait. The Mask Falling is an accomplished, twisty, emotionaly wrenching story that plays to Shannon’s considerable strengths as an author.

I’d been wanting two things from The Bone Season books for a while now: a look at the wider world beyond the islands of Britain and Ireland, and a deeper exploration of Paige and Arcturus’s* relationship. With the pair dropped into Scion Paris as fugitives on an undercover mission, I got both things in The Mask Falling. The book sees Paige trying to navigate treacherous waters, pulled in different directions by the criminal clairvoyant syndicate in Paris, the demands of her own syndicate back in London, the mysterious Domino resistance network, and other groups with agendas of their own. The book takes place against a backdrop of increasing crackdowns and violence against voyants, an aggressive militaristic expansion of Scion’s borders, and various dystopian horrors spreading into formerly safe places.

Each book in the series so far has tackled a slightly different genre — The Bone Season was a prison break, The Mime Order was a murder mystery, and The Song Rising was a heist. The Mask Falling is a spy novel, and, perhaps as a nod to its French setting, is influenced in part by real-world accounts of World War II-era spies operating in Vichy France. Many such spies were women, a pattern reflected in Shannon’s novel. She did a grat job of depicting the rather callous treatment of such operatives by their handlers and wider network — the scale of the threat they face means that all operatives (even those as supernaturally gifted as Paige) are by necessity somewhat disposable, and the handlers cannot afford to accommodate operatives’ physical illness or deep, unresolved psychological trauma.

The book’s depiction of trauma recovery was extraordinary, and one of its strongest features. Shannon does a great job of depicting Paige’s intersecting traumas — not just those caused by her recent experiences of torture in The Song Rising, but also the wounds in her childhood caused by the invasion of her country by a totalitarian regime, the violent reprisals against its resistance movement, and her long exile at the heart of a hostile enemy country. It’s not just that she has a fear of water and a ruptured relationship with Arcturus due to her more recent expeirences — she reacts badly to Scion invasions of free countries due to her childhood in Ireland, and oscillates widly between instant, all-in trust of people, and guarded, cautious distancing from potential allies due to a lifetime of exile, exploitation and betrayal. In particular, because her few experiences of community and (a veneer of) protection came in situations where she was viewed as an asset, a weapon to be wielded, she struggles to trust that anyone could value her for herself, rather than for her powers, role in the syndicate, or political symbolism.

This combination of traumas means she responds badly to danger and crises — tending to either leap into situations all dreamwalking guns blazing without cautiously considering the consequences, or otherwise be easily manipulated by enemies who know exactly how to push her buttons. There were several such moments in The Mask Falling, and they broke my heart. As a fellow survivor of (very different forms of) trauma, I applaud the care, compassion, and empathy with which Samantha Shannon has written Paige’s story in this book.

The Mask Falling is a perfect midpoint to this brilliant dystopian series. It broadens and deepens our understanding of this richly imagined world, and every new corner explored feels lived-in and redolent with history. Old characters return after several books’ absence, and we have a clearer view of their roles and motivations. We meet new characters who draw Paige’s story forward. She and Arcturus finally have the time to think about their relationship — shared traumas, deceptions, power imbalances and all. And the book ends on a cliffhanger that had me both cursing Shannon’s diabolical genius, and applauding her skill at drawing so many different threads together into such a intriguing tapestry. I cannot wait for the next book!

*Arcturus is the name of the character Paige — and the narrative — has previously referred to as ‘Warden’. But as he points out early on in The Mask Falling, Warden is a title, and he and Paige share an intimacy that makes her use of his name, rather than his title, far more appropriate. As Paige switches to referring to him as Arcturus in this book, I do the same in this review, and in any future discussion of the series.