Review: The Dark Mirror

The Dark Mirror by Samantha Shannon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four years ago, The Mask Falling was the last book I was reading before I left California, which seemed fitting to tie in to Paige having finally left Britain in that book after so many years. But with this book, we're taken even further afield to see how the last great bastion of resistance to Scion in Europe is doing. But first, a little trip into Eastern Europe to meet some pan-Slavic Domino agents before we finally get down to the promised main setting of this book: Italy.

Of course, we the readers have also been waiting four years to resolve the dreadful cliffhanger of the previous book, and befitting Shannon's style, it's still a slow burn resolution. (Lowkey I suspect Rebecca Yarros has been watching and waiting for this book too, just so she can see how to imitate it with her next novel since Onyx Storm felt like it somehow managed to imitate both the ending of The Mask Falling and this book at once.)

I won't say much about the plot of this book, because readers deserve to go into it as blind as possible. I will say, however, to expect a deep dive into Italian culture: architecture, history, politics, and even languages. Shannon has indicated she's not much of a linguist herself (as in her acknowledgments on the previous book where she used extensive French), but she's got the right experts to guide her, especially with the many dialects of Italian from standard Tuscan to Venetian and Neapolitan.

Though the ending isn't quite as sudden and shocking as the previous book, it's still a pretty solid cliffhanger all the same, and it also feels extra relevant and oddly prescient in today's political climate, given the country to which Shannon promises to take readers next. I have a feeling, however, that the next book will probably be the longest wait yet, because it's going to take some complex threading to bring the plot under control.

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