Changes

The pacing is where ''Masquerade'' does struggle a little. The plot is ambitious and broad in scope, with multiple strands tackling various topics, but there simply isn't room or time to execute them all to the same depth and quality of the character arcs. This leads to the story stuttering in the middle third due to a lot of rushed exposition. Furthermore, after spending the first two books thrilled by the painstaking world-building and the aura of mystique surrounding the history and mythology of the Archipelago, the answers and revelations in ''Masquerade'' are a little disappointing. Much remains frustratingly unexplained by the end of the book and the answers that we do receive are either too obvious, or feel almost too out of left field. The series has always given the sense that it was building up to something a lot more tangible than what we actually end up getting. There is almost a sense of the author wanting to leave a door open for herself to revisit this world, but it comes at the cost of making the plot less satisfying this time around. The socio-political aspect of the story works better. Important issues are brought up, such as social inequality and the role of violence in revolutions, and it's interesting to see them explored via the interplay between the characters, with their various backgrounds and perspectives; though the various strands are perhaps tied up a little too easily in the end. While 400 pages was more than enough for the first two books to tell their relatively self-contained stories, this one could have done with another 100 pages or so to give the story more room to grow.

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