Stravaganza: City of Masks

Bellezza, a city in Talia, set on water where transport is by mandola and which is ruled by a Duchessa has many parallels with Venice. Cleverly employed by Hoffman these are only some of the dislocations of the familiar in the first volume of a trilogy, the title of which underlines the unsettling or bizarre within the established and expected.

A challenge to the established comes in the opening pages when we meet Arianna who has plans to become a mandolier, a career open only to males. But her plans to disguise herself for the competition to select mandoliers are disrupted when she encounters teenage Lucien, who is a stravagante. This ability allows him to be transported between England in modern times and sixteenth-century Bellezza by means of a talisman, a notebook. Lucien is seriously ill with cancer, but somehow his newly discovered gift of travel in time and space renews his strength as he engages more and more with events in Bellezza. The book revolves around a plot to seize power in Bellezza, and there is much opportunity for masks and disguises and mistaken identity underlining the deceptions on which Bellezza and the Duchessa are predicated.

As well as the attractively drawn young protagonists, there is a group of fascinating adult characters, mainly the Duchessa and her confidante Rodolfo, and the interesting Doctor William Dethridge, another stravagante who has travelled from Elizabethan England but is now stranded in Bellezza.

Hoffman has created a world which is rich, colourful and dangerous; I look forward to the subsequent volumes in what is to be a trilogy.