REVIEW: The Silver Mask by Cassandra Clare and Holly Black

The Silver Mask:

The book begins with Call being locked away in magical prison. He has not seen a single visitor over the past six months and people think that he is truly evil because he is the enemy of death reborn.

After a bunch of interrogations by the master’s his father finally comes to see him and admits that they only just let him see Call and that the magisterium is only afraid of him and they don’t believe that Call really killed Aaron.

The next day he gets another visitor in the form of Jasper. Jasper says that he has broken up with Celia and that he needs somebody to talk to who can’t run away from him. Jasper doesn’t get much chance to speak to him though because the prison is on fire. Tamara and Anastasia have worked out a plan for him to escape and that involved a bit of fire with the help of Ravan, Tamara’s sister and the fire elemental.

They stop at Anastasia’s house where they meet up with Master Joseph and Alex, the boy who killed his and Tamara’s best friend, Aaron. This is much to his and Tamara’s dismay and they are forced to travel to the former enemy of death’s strong hold. And did I forget to mention, because Jasper was visiting Call when this all happened that he is there too. Once at the stronghold, master Joseph tells him that they can’t escape and that his job is to bring back Aaron from the dead. Callum is mortified but does not reject the idea fully and agrees.

Call finds the journal of Jericho Madden whilst there. He finds out that Constantine had been slowly chipping away at his brother’s soul to experiment with and that was the only reason why that Jericho was special to his brother. Call finally gets a thought; maybe he could give Aaron a piece of his soul to reawaken him. After actually doing the thing he theorised, he brings Aaron back from the dead. Tamara is not pleased and finally realises that he is truly the enemy of death. Tamara and Jasper with the help of Ravan runaway without him.

Callum realises that all his and Tamara’s fears are true. Aaron is not truly himself and obeys commands from Call like the chaos ridden do. Fortunately or unfortunately, the mages arrive to the strong hold. The assembly wants to meet with Call and he goes to speak with them. He warns them about what Master Joseph wanted him to do and that he is dead because Aaron killed him. He claims that Alex is the one in charge of the army now and is calling himself the new enemy of death. The assembly want Callum to destroy the army himself. He feels betrayed by this and so heads back to Alex. Callum agrees to head the chaos ridden that are under his control but forces them to dance. Alex is pissed and points the Alkahest at him. Havoc jumps in front of Call saving Call from the deadly weapon. Angry at what Alex has done, he channels his chaos magic and traps Alex in the void. Aaron gives Call the piece of his soul back to stop him from dying.

Havoc is alive but is no longer chaos-ridden. We find out that Aaron is now actually inside Call’s mind and is really back this time.

Meanwhile, whilst in the void, Alex becomes a devoured chaos and wears the silver mask of the enemy of death.

Call truly has a hard time in this book deciphering what is actually good and bad. As well as in the previous books, he has an evil overlord column of what evil overlords will do. If he thinks something is evil, he puts a point in that column. He tries his best to understand the nature of himself but sometimes it is too much for him to understand. After all, he is only a kid and as such he has not truly gone into puberty yet to understand what his true nature would be. In humans, our conscience is developed more within this time and yet Callum has not had this time to grow into the person he should and wants to be. He tries to do the right thing but sometimes that comes out wrong. He has the best of intentions but that does not always matter.

As always, Holly and Cassandra continue to shine and bring their own uniqueness to the story whilst also combining the best bits of each of their work and as such this series is exciting.

4 out of 5 stars.