I really enjoyed The Invisible Library, the first book of this series, but for some reason, I put off reading The Masked City until now. Of course, I’m asking myself “why” because this was a really fun read.

The Masked City takes place sometime after The Invisible Library. Irene is now Librarian-in-Residence of an alternate London, with her dragon apprentice Kai helping her obtain rare books as and when they pop up. However, when Kai gets kidnapped, Irene must travel to a high-chaos version of Venice to save him – if not for friendship with Kai, then to prevent a war between the Dragons and the Fae, a war that would be catastrophic to mankind.

This book delves into this omniverse and its multiple worlds. I enjoyed reading about the Fae and Dragons, natural enemies who crave chaos and order respectively. The fae were pretty prominent in The Invisible Library, but we didn’t get to learn much about dragons, apart from the fact that Kai was one. Here, we got to learn more about their natures and the way they interact with one another – as well as how all this affects the Library. I really enjoyed this aspect because I find the world fascinating, but if you prefer your world-building to be minimal, you may not like the amount of detail the book goes into.

I also thought the high-chaos Venice was pretty interesting. It’s a world where the Fae are in control and humans are merely backdrop characters, so Irene has to deal with the Fae if she’s to rescue Kai. Because there are so many of them, the book has more room to explore how there can be a range of Fae, even if they all have the same chaotic nature. I’m hoping that one of the future books will be in a high-order world because it would be fascinating to see more of the dragons; so far, we’ve seen Kai and his uncle and it’s already pretty interesting.

The only thing I wasn’t too happy about was how little Kai appeared in the book. He was a character I really enjoyed reading about in the first book and I felt that he and Irene made a good team, so it was a little disappointing that he was gone for most of the book. I know he can’t help it because he was kidnapped, but I was still hoping to see a bit more of him.

If you enjoyed The Invisible Library, I think you’ll enjoy this. It’s not a book that I would recommend reading if you haven’t read the first one, but I would recommend fans of omniverses and magical creatures to start the series.