Derossi Vargo has always known. He has sacrificed more than anyone imagines to carve himself a position of power among the nobility, hiding a will of steel behind a velvet smile. He’ll be damned if he lets anyone threaten what he’s built.
Grey Serrado knows all too well. Bent under the yoke of too many burdens, he fights to protect the city’s most vulnerable. Sooner or later, that fight will demand more than he can give.
And Ren, daughter of no clan, knows best of all. Caught in a knot of lies, torn between her heritage and her aristocratic masquerade, she relies on her gift for reading pattern to survive. And it shows her the web of corruption that traps her city.
But all three have yet to discover just how far that web stretches. And in the end, it will take more than knives to cut themselves free…
I kinda wish it didn’t feel like such a novelty for me to read & review two books in a trilogy so close together, but well… here we are. It’s something I’m gonna work on for 2022, for sure. While the words “book buying ban” will never pass my lips, I’m feeling more motivated than ever to finish a bunch of trilogies/series this year!
Anyway! It was only in late September that I posted my review for THE MASK OF MIRRORS, a book that thoroughly blew my mind. I started THE LIAR’S KNOT just three days after receiving my copy from Orbit…I just couldn’t wait to get back to this world & these amazing characters, so I jumped right in!
Somewhere along the way reading the first two books in M. A. Carrick’s ROOK & ROSE trilogy, these books turned into serious comfort reads for me. Which is a thing that’s hard to qualify. At least, it is for me. It’s just this feeling, like…I know when I know. When I read THE MASK OF MIRRORS, there were a handful of chapters where I listened to the audiobook (looking back, I never mentioned this in my review, which is weird), and I think somehow that had a huge impact on how I was feeling about the book (Nikki Massoud is an INCREDIBLE narrator!)
At any rate, there was just this intensely comforting & exciting vibe for me, starting THE LIAR’S KNOT. And fucking hell, this is another complete masterpiece. Like, ROOK & ROSE is easily shaping up to be one of my all-time favorite trilogies, and the best word to describe how I’m feeling about these books is just…obsessed.
Keeping track of the characters in these books can occasionally feel a bit daunting. And more to the point, you’ve got multiple characters with different/secret identities (some with as many as three), and you’ll find yourself reading a scene between two characters, say Ren and Grey, asking yourself questions like “Wait, he knows that she’s ______, and she knows that he’s _______, but does he ALSO know that she’s ______? And does she know that he knows? Or no?”
But it’s extremely fun, and adds so much tension and intrigue to so many scenes! With particular regard to Ren, we start to get a sense that the walls between these different personalities are crumbling, and that keeping up the various cons and charades is getting to be too much. She’s exhausted and losing sight of who she really is, day by day. There’s some really touching scenes with Ren, Tess, and Sedge that deal with this issue. Oof.
Vargo continues to be one of the most fascinating characters in the story. He’s not even one of those characters that you “love to hate,” he’s just so hard to figure out. You really have to keep an open mind where Vargo is concerned, because just when you think you have him totally figured out, he goes and changes the game completely. Such a well-written and interesting character!
And I mean, fucking hell. All these characters are well-written and interesting. I think any time you are reading a multi POV fantasy novel, and wishing some of the minor characters could get their own POV chapter, or even their own novella or something…that’s the good stuff. And that’s an area where ROOK & ROSE fucking slays.
•Tess has a much bigger role in this one, and she is just awesome. We really see her ferocity & fearlessness on display here, as well as her unwavering loyalty to Ren. And Tess’s relationship with Pavlin is just sweet & lovely & complex.
•The duelist Oksana Ryvček has an expanded role in this one, and she is just so much fun whenever she’s on the page.
•Arkady Bones is without a doubt my favorite minor character in these books, and I am not above BEGGING for an Arkady Bones short story/novella/novel/trilogy/series/TV show, because she is fucking fantastic. This young badass crime boss is an absolute scene stealer!
•Not enough people mention that there’s a Very Good Dog named Meatball in these books, and that has to stop. So yes, I consider Meatball to be a very important secondary character. There’s another cool animal in this book, but here we will stay focused on Meatball, who is a Very Good Boy.
The masked vigilante/superhero vibe is off the charts here, with the Rook and the Black Rose both lurking in the shadows. We learn quite a bit more about the Rook in this one, which really adds so much depth and history to the character. I am honestly still geeking out so hard every time the Rook shows up, and now there’s ANOTHER badass masked vigilante in this trilogy, I CANNOT TAKE MUCH MORE COOLNESS
THE LIAR’S KNOT is just lush, thrilling, heartfelt fantasy. There’s some slow burn romance in this one that I ADORED. The city of Nadežra is such a stunning creation, teeming with secrets and dark magic. There’s a grimy underbelly to this place & it is somehow both dangerous and charming… the authors (Alyc Helms and Marie Brennan) do such work with world-building and bringing the reader to Nadežra in such an immersive way.
And I fucking love it there.
Massive thanks to Orbit for sending a copy my way!! THE LIAR’S KNOT releases today!!
Grimdark Dad 