The Masked Empire

[alaterdate]

The Masked Empire by Patrick Weekes is the fourth Dragon Age novel and the first by Weekes. The events in this book take place right before Inquisition begins and during the same time as the previous book Asunder. It has strong characters, but a weak plot. I think it really suffers in pacing. Unlike the other books that had benchmarks for progress this one really wandered.

The plot follows the Empress of Orlais Celene Valmont in her political struggle against her cousin Grand Duke Gaspard de Chalons who wants to usurp her. There's also Celene's elven servant, paramour, and spy Briala and Celene's Champion Michel de Chevin. Basically Gaspard and Celene take digs at each other until they eventually erupt into having a full blown civil war. Celene is on the defensive and with the help of Briala, Michel, and Briala's Dalish mentor Felassan they escape from Gaspard's grip and do other stuff on their journey. They open an ancient elvhen pathway and unleash a powerful demon all while dealing with personal issues that drive them apart.

I knew a bit about the characters from discussions with other people and of course how little you learn about them in the game, but I was not prepared to dislike them as much as I did. And not even in the passionate way where an evil character gets under your skin, but more as in they were just annoying. Other characters in the book constantly lauded Celine for being so clever and "good at the Game", but she never really did anything. Then at the end oh she can fight a little bit, okay.....
Briala was just as annoying with her weird ass savior complex. Thinking that just because she asks Celene to let elves go to Orlesian college that all elven people's problems are solved. NEWS FLASH, BRIALA: just because a door is open doesn't mean the threshold can be passed so easily. And there's other countries besides Orlais, stop acting like your god's gift to elves jfc.
Michel was a bitch too. I didn't really care about him, and he wasn't interesting at all.

Now, Felassan was amazing! Such a cool character. The powerful mentor type and funny to boot. I wish Briala hadn't been so annoying and ultimately useless because Felassan really put his trust into her. I can see why he did because Briala was actually intelligent and skillful, yet she kept making the stupidest decisions. Did he really think she would free the elves with how much she groveled to the politics and comforts of Orlais? Oh, well.
I also.......... really liked Gaspard. I think he was the most well written. But I was constantly confused about WHY the other characters insisted that he was "bad at the Game" when he kept making smooth plays. Celene fell right into his tricks and even when she tried to counter them he just make them stick in deeper. And he did all this himself, he didn't have a competent spy he could completely rely to do everything. Celene literally did nothing and would have been nothing without Briala. I honestly really liked Gaspard. Yeah, he's a shitbag, but he's a cool shitbag.

There were also some background characters that were interesting like the demon, er, "Choice Spirit" Imshael, Mihris, and Lienne de Montsimmard. I really liked Lienne despite her only being in a small portion of the book. I think Gaspard's sister Dutchess Florianne should have been in this book.

Of course, as has been well noted, the game hardly takes into account any of what occurred in this book. Imshael doesn't even offer a good deal for heaven's sake! And there's absolutely no mention of the massacre at Halamshiral Celene inflicted on the elves. I feel like this book was written before the developer & writers decided they wanted to scrub some of the grunge and grey morality off the Dragon Age franchise.

Still, I liked this book way more than Asunder, and more than The Stolen Throne, but less than The Calling.