Theophilus Grey and the Traitor’s Mask
Catherine Jinks
Theo has survived and thrived as a servant of the Crown of England. Yet all that responsibility for his crew and his other commitments are overcrowding his head. When he can’t think clearly, that’s when things begin to fall,well, not apart, but it all becomes messy.
As always, it can be dangerous reading a sequel of a novel you loved. This one lived up to expectations though, and had me hanging on the edge of my seat for almost as long as the first! I guiltily picked it up the moment it arrived at my doorstep…
I recognised some of the streets in this one – Drury Lane! From the nursery rhyme, not because of any knowledge of London geography. Despite not really knowing where each thing was, I managed to get an image of where Theo and his crew ran. That’s something that’s really important in this novel, and just in case you struggle there is a handy map inside the front cover.
Theo is quite confused for the majority of this novel, and the audience is a little bit too. But it’s on purpose! I can’t talk about the plot too much or I’ll give away the lovely twists. Some of Theo’s friends are sometimes just too bright for their own good!
I’m going to go so far as to give it 5 stars for the right audience. I think this on has re-readability to teenagers in order to pick up the plots and hints that you might have missed on the first round of reading. For me, it’s a 4 stars, couldn’t put it down and really enjoyed it. I am sad that it is only a duology.
There are some interesting things going on in this novel. If you wait too long after reading something, you lose those things. It’s not that I’ve waited too long, its that I’ve read about 5 books in the mean time. Oops?
The twist in this novel is that you don’t know there is a twist. I’m really not sure how long Will’s situation has been the way it is, but you get the snap-shot of when things are really changing. Will is very skittish, but cute all the same. Julian is not cute. He’s just annoying and pushy and a great friend.
I feel like it is possible that this novel had too many themes crammed into it, but instead I felt like they all balanced themselves out. It read exactly like the protagonist was thinking and feeling. Ash struck me as so confused, and yet so cute. And don’t be put off by the ‘teacher crush’ thing. It’s not a big deal, its just used as a prop for forwarding Ash’s character development.
This novel started so slowly and got so confusing at times that I couldn’t work out what was going on. I struggled to get into it, and found myself easily distracted. Near the end, I was finally hit with a shock of ‘wow’, but it only lasted a couple of pages.
I admit I had difficulty remembering which character was which for the majority of the novel. Not the main characters, but the side ones (haha). The abbreviations of their names tripped me up.
Elspeth goes from a lonely loner to someone who dares to have friends. Funny how losing everything seems to do that to a person. She progresses rapidly from someone only concerned about saving herself to someone who can and will help others. It’s that transformation that brought me back to this novel over and over again.
I always wanted more. It wasn’t enough for me that Stephanie’s brother was dead. I wanted the gruesome details. And it wasn’t enough that her mother wept, or that there was something interesting going on in the deal with her grandparents, that we never found out about.
I didn’t feel a distinction between the perspectives of Lowell and Lycaea. This is a common complaint of mine. Also, for a couple of chapters I didn’t realise that Lowell was a boy. Honestly, I thought it could have gone either way. Lowell isn’t depicted as a fighter, and Lycaea certainly breaks any stereotypes of a passive woman. Kick-ass!
I’m pretty sure rescuing her mother from alcoholism in this method would be illegal… And I’m not sure how it would work. But in the context of the novel? Hell yeah! Bossing! Good work Kirra. For a stressed and ‘weak’ person such as Kirra, she has a real spine when she needs to. She just needs to be reminded that if you’re at the bottom, the only way is up.