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[0] checkbox [#] position [cover] cover [title] title The Mask Maker [author] author Rook, Spencer * [isbn] isbn [isbn13] isbn13 9781620041895 [asin] asin [num pages] num pages 36 pp [avg rating] avg rating 3.27 [num ratings] num ratings 30 [date pub] date pub Mar 12, 2013 [date pub (ed.)] date pub edition Mar 13, 2013 [rating] Cole's rating 3 of 5 stars [my rating] my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves [notes] notes Notes are private! [recommender] recommender none [comments] comments 0 [votes] votes 0 [read count] # times read 1 [date started] date started Mar 13, 2013 [date read] date read Mar 13, 2013 [date added] date added Mar 12, 2013 [date purchased] date purchased [owned] owned [purchase location] purchase location [condition] condition [format] format ebook [29] actions view (with text) [review] 
review Review posted at The Armchair Reader. Luk is in his last year of magical learning at the Parth School and readying himself for the Festival of Parth, a Review posted at The Armchair Reader. Luk is in his last year of magical learning at the Parth School and readying himself for the Festival of Parth, a celebration of the graduation of the senior students by performing a test of magic that will occur before the townspeople. Luk's fellow classmates are a small group and he's known them for years now, progressing academically and socially. The other boys rally around Pat, an outspoken bully who likes to circulate cruel gossip. A favorite subject is the mask maker, a reclusive young man who lives on the outskirts of their village society. Luk is sent to the mask maker's shop to find out the progress of the masks for the festival. Once there, he has a strange encounter. Luk is completely enamored of the shop and the beautiful artwork on display, but the mask maker is at once compelling and unfriendly, not coming out to speak to him face to face. Their unfortunate first meeting, however, leads to a second and third, and the two soon become friends. The main difficulty I had with this story was that the length was too short and therefore suffered from some of the same problems that I often have with short stories in which I make this same complaint. We only get the bare bones of the story and the characters. Luk and the mask maker are both barely outlined archetypes (the golden-hearted popular and talented boy and the down-trodden and misunderstood outcast). The setting and world of the story are also not very well described, though that is less important and what we do get we pick up through the story, which is always nice. The biggest problem for me, however, was that more time seemed to be paid to setting up the story than in showing us the connection between the two boys. Their first meeting is well shown, and a really good scene, showing the characters best through the writing in the whole story. It ends there, however. The rest of their interaction comes through a rather quick summary to bring us swiftly to the end, and that telling passed over the most interesting part -- their connection and, more importantly, why they connected. A big part of that is the mask maker and his history. We get some of this as the young man talks about his father, another one of the best scenes in the story. In fact, I would say that the mask maker is the most fully fleshed character here, for sure, but all we really understand of our narrator, Luk, is in the reflection of and reaction to him, which isn't much. I was also a little bit confused in that the characters here are definitely in the young adult range. I would guess… 17? I believe that at one point the mask maker admits how young he is, which comes from his statement that he started running the mask store on his own at age 14, but I don't remember him stating an exact age at the present time in the story. Still, the fact that one of them is in school and that this is a really sweet tale with no sex (just one small kiss) made me think of this as young adult. In the end there just wasn't enough detail for me to really care that much about the story. So, while I found it cute, I wasn't emotionally invested in their HEA. I won't implore you as to whether you should or shouldn't buy this story. It's only $1.99, but depending on how you feel about the story will define how you feel about the price. And since I didn't have to buy it because it was given to me for review, that didn't come into play for me at all. How I feel about this story is representative of how I've felt about all the other stories I've read by Spencer Rook. So, I would suggest you decide to buy this or not depending on how you feel about the author. ...more
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