It is a beautiful mask, but all masks fall. In the end.
"If you and I are to fight the gods, we must become mythic ourselves. With this [mask], whenever you desire, you can conceal Paige Mahoney ... and inhabit Black Moth. You can write her story. You can sing it to the streets of Paris. And I promise you, this citadel will call eternally for more."
— Le Vieux Orphelin
The Mask Falling (2021) is the fourth installment in Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season series. Set in a Dystopian, Alternate History Europe, the story follows a young clairvoyant woman named Paige Mahoney. Since 1859, when the phenomenon of clairvoyance first became public knowledge, England has operated under an oppressive and strongly anti-voyant government called Scion. Paige belongs to a class of criminal voyants who use their contact with spirits and the spirit world (called the æther) to make a living while avoiding the authorities. She is a rare kind of voyant known as a dreamwalker, capable of separating her spirit from her physical body and entering the æther in spirit form.
Against all odds, Paige has escaped the Westminster Archon, whisked out from under her enemies' noses by the mysterious Domino Programme. But she won't have long to recover from her ordeal. Scion has set its sights on the Iberian Peninsula, and trouble is brewing between the human governments of England and France. Presumed dead by most public authorities, smuggled into a Paris safe house to recuperate, her first assignment as one of their number will be to infiltrate the household of Benoit Ménard, Grand Inquisitor of France, and learn all she can by possessing his wife.
Her only companion in this endeavour is to be Arcturus, who will act as her much-needed nurse and bodyguard in the days to come. Together, they set out to destroy Sheol II and recruit the Paris syndicate to the Mime Order's cause, unaware of what, precisely, is going on beneath the mask of Scion France ...
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This book contains examples of:
- Above the Influence: When a drunken Paige tries to make a move on him, Arcturus gently refuses, chiding her for trying to mask her fear over her first assignment in such a way. Then, given that she's on the point of falling asleep, he picks her up and puts her to bed. She can barely look him in the eye the following morning.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Paige sneaks into one of these during her escape from Inquisitorial custody in order to spy on Benoit Ménard's meeting with the Rag and Bone Man. After they both leave the office, she forces her way into the office and steal the grey market ledger left unattended inside.
- Angst Nuke: About to fall once again into Nashira's hands in Sainte-Chapelle, convinced that Arcturus has betrayed her, Paige unleashes such a terrible wave of pressure through the æther that the two Rephaim restraining her let go and fall to their knees; even Nashira is forced to take a step back. This buys her just enough time to escape from the Palais de la Cité and disappear once more into the streets.
- Bare-Handed Blade Block: Arcturus tells Paige the story of how the Mothallath lost the war. Near the end, Terebell challenged Nashira to a Duel to the Death, and would have been destroyed if Arcturus hadn't gotten between them and held Nashira's blade off with his bare hands. Right then and there, he swore to pledge himself and his family to the Sargas if only Nashira spared Terebell's life. He still bears the scars from that sword on his hands and fingers.
- Becoming the Mask: Le Vieux Orphelin tells Paige that his power comes from his mythos, which in turn comes from the mask surgically attached to his face. By his reasoning, doing so allows a leader to "transcend the limits of one body, one face.""While Le Latronpuche and La Reine des Thunes showed their faces to their subjects, I became my mask, my costume, and it became me. I made them whisper. I made them wonder. And when you make people do that, they start to tell their own stories."
- This is how Paige later tries to cope with the shock of Arcturus's apparent betrayal: by abandoning the baggage that comes with her own self-identity and inhabiting Black Moth, who exists solely for the revolution and therefore ought to be emotionally untouchable.
- Captured on Purpose: Paige, again, this time with less terrible consequences. When David catches her puppeteering Luce Ménard around the Hôtel Garuche, he persuades her that letting herself get caught and taken inside the building is the only way she'll ever find out what's really going on with the Grand Inquisitor. Paige decides the risk is worth the potential reward.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Le Vieux Orphelin and Benoit Ménard have some kind of belligerent personal history from when they crossed paths many years before in Lyon. They both refer to it to Paige's face, independently of one another, but neither are willing to go into specifics.
- Declaration of Protection: On the rooftop of the safe house, Arcturus makes a solemn vow in the name of the æther, the gravest possible kind in Rephaite culture: to never keep from her what she should know, and to never conspire against her, betray her or forsake her to her enemies. He recites it first in English, so that she can understand, and then in Gloss, implying that a vow made in the language of spirits is more binding than one made in any fell tongue.
- Deer in the Headlights: In Sainte-Chapelle, Arcturus (apparently under Sargas control), raises a hand to strike Paige — something he has never done before, even in the colony — and it's so far out of character for him, and so antithetical to everything their relationship has ever stood for, that all she can do is stand there frozen in shock.
- Dramatic Unmask: Paige, leading a party of perdues down into the underground tunnels, discovers the Rag and Bone Man lying in a pool of his own entrails. When they remove the face covering, they discover Alfred the psycho-scout, who claimed to have departed London midway through The Mime Order.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Late one night at the safe house, Paige enters Arcturus's room and finds him reading shirtless in bed. Only when he prompts her does she realize that she's staring, partly flustered by his appearance and partly fascinated by his lack of a navel.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Near the end of the book, Arcturus is arrested at the safe house on Rue Gît-le-Coeur and taken to the Palais de la Cité. When Paige sneaks in to rescue him, she finds him in Sainte-Chapelle, unchained, dressed like a blood-consort and coldly unwelcoming, apparently having rejoined the Sargas after a long stint spying on the clairvoyant underworld through his relationship with her. Paige is furious and grief-stricken to learn that the person she has come to rely on most has so thoroughly played her for a fool ... until she encounters Cade at the Masquerade Ball and several pieces click into place.
- Expecting Someone Taller: Kornephoros tells Paige that he "would have thought [Arcturus] would be drawn to someone taller." She snaps back that she's "taller than average." Clearly, this is not something she would have expected to hear from a Rephaite prisoner.
- Face–Heel Turn: What Arcturus appears to have done when Paige tries to come to his rescue in Sainte-Chapelle. He tells her that his loyalty to the Ranthen is a lie and that everything between them has all been part of an elaborate seduction. She later deduces that he was being puppeteered by an enemy dreamwalker.
- First-Name Basis: Arcturus invites Paige outright to call him by his chosen English name, as she has continued to call him Warden out of habit ever since the penal colony. From then on, the narration refers to him as such.
- Idealist vs. Pragmatist: Paige and Léandre, le Prince Creux. To Paige, leaving anyone behind, no matter what the stakes are, is unconscionable, and she's furious with him for abandoning a number of voyant prisoners to the mercy of the Emim in the woods surrounding Versailles. Léandre, however, has a more realistic idea of how many people the underground passage can take without collapsing, and sees it as a necessary sacrifice.
- Impersonation Gambit: The essence of Paige's first assignment with the Domino Programme. As a dreamwalker, she can pull this off far better than most characters, but Scion is more than aware of her abilities. While she recovers in the safe house, she studies Luce Ménard's accent, mannerisms and personal history, along with her schedule and her relationships with the Hôtel Garuche's staff, all so she can impersonate her just long enough to discover the information Domino needs without raising any alarms. It would have worked, too, if it weren't for Benoit Ménard correctly guessing from his wife's "headache" that something unnatural was afoot.
- Joke and Receive: When Paige remarks that they don't have the money to bribe anyone from the Paris syndicate, Arcturus is unconcerned.Arcturus: Do we not?Paige: You've got a big pile of money lying around somewhere, have you?Arcturus: [leaves and returns with a huge wad of banknotes]Paige: You ... do indeed have a big pile of money lying around somewhere.
- Masquerade Ball: Naturally. Hosted by Ménard at the very end of the book, it sets the scene for a Black-Tie Infiltration by Paige and her new allies in the Parisian syndicate, giving her the opportunity to find and speak to him in person.
- Oh, Crap!: When Paige, on the point of following the rest of her allies back through the Passage des Voleurs, realizes that Léandre has left behind a significant portion of Sheol II prisoners, she tries to double back for them. Léandre stops her, and they get into a brawl that destabilizes the already fragile tunnel and floods it with water from a nearby underground lake. They share one horrified look before making a desperate run for higher ground together.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: By the time The Mask Falling begins, Paige's fame has spread so wide that her name and face can gain her immediate access to all kinds of higher-ups and inner circles. However, her arrest in The Song Rising was broadcast live throughout Scion, and no one outside the Mime Order knows that she was shot with a rubber bullet, not a real one. She must therefore convince les grands ducs, and then les perdues, of her identity before opening a dialogue with them.
- Second-Act Breakup: Paige and Arcturus, from the grander perspective of the series. Unlike her decision to end their relationship in The Song Rising, which left them on amicable terms, his capture in The Mask Falling not only renders him to Nashira but convinces Paige that he is loyal to the Sargas and must be left behind. By the time she realizes otherwise, it's too late to find him again.
- So Proud of You: Jaxon gives Paige a villainous one when she corners him with a pistol in the Palace of Versailles."I should be wounded by your threats, but no. No, not wounded. I am proud of you, my Pale Dreamer."
- Soundtrack Dissonance: In Versailles, Arcturus gets locked into a deadly sword fight with several enemy Rephaim while somewhere in the background, Jaxon plays the infernal gallop from Orpheus in the Underworld. This hectic piece of music, most popularly associated with the can-can, would instantly strike most readers as incongruous with the grim, potentially fatal circumstances in which our heroes find themselves.
- Surprise Party: Arcturus arranges an understated one for Paige's twentieth birthday, preparing a rooftop picnic under the stars and gifting her with a handcrafted music box. She's extraordinarily touched by the gesture.
- Virtue Is Weakness: Invoked by Jaxon when Paige and Arcturus confront him in Versailles, both on principle and to taunt her for being too weak to kill him."Look at what she has become under your ... tutelage. So righteous. So much more liable to die in some pointlessly heroic manner [...] What could possibly make you think you have it in you, Underqueen? You, who are so wedded to your newfound ideals?"
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: When she tracks him down in the Palace of Versailles, on orders from Domino to assassinate him, Paige pulls a gun on Jaxon at point-blank range and tries her best to convince him — and herself — that she means it. He is not in the least intimidated, knowing that it is not in her nature to kill someone in cold blood, much less someone still so important to her. He smugly tells her as much, and she eventually comes to the same conclusion. However, instead of putting the gun away, she hands it to Arcturus to give him his own chance at revenge.
