A face without a face – an unmasking that leaves the mask.

Once every few hundred years the sun god, the Akhen, takes on human form and descends to earth. Each Unmasking of the Face of the Akhen ends one era and begins another; the last one created the Faustian Empire. Where and when will the Face next appear, and who will he – or she – be?

Dayraven, son of a great hero, returns to Faustia after years as a hostage of their rivals, the Magians. Those years have changed him, but Faustia has changed as well; the emperor Calvo now seems eccentric and is controlled by one of Dayraven’s old enemies. Following the brutal murder of his old teacher, Dayraven is drawn, together with a female warrior named Sunniva, into the search for an ancient secret that would change the fate of empires.

The Hidden Face is an epic fantasy novel drenched in the atmosphere of the early Middle Ages and in Kabbalistic riddles and is the first book in the Fifth Unmasking series.

Firstly a big thank you to S.C. Flynn for sending an e-arc copy of The Hidden Face for review.

I first heard about The Hidden Face months ago and upon reading the synopsis I was very intrigued by the premise. Fast forward a couple of months later when S.C. Flynn offered me a review copy, which I was excited to receive and very quickly said yes.

What I have come to notice over the past number of years reading Sci-fi and Fantasy books is that they generally tend to focus on one particular area (e.g. story or characterisation) more than others. With The Hidden Face I didn’t come across this as I felt the book certainly had a nice balance between story, characterisation and world building.

Over the past number of months I have read many books that have had very grim characters or the book as a whole was quite dark but upon reading The Hidden Face I was glad to see this was not the case and this in part made it easy to read. The other part that made it easy to read is the fact the book felt like it had a very natural pace to the story. However this was somewhat let down by some portions being a bit slower and over extended in places, but I only came across a couple of instances of this.

Once aspect of the book I enjoyed the most was S.C. Flynn’s use of puzzles to help connect the different elements of the story as well as a method of story progression. I don’t very often come across puzzles in fantasy books but when I do they usually take a back seat to everything else that is going on and they usually aren’t that complex. However these puzzles are in a league of their own as them seem to use a mixture of encryption, anagrams and hieroglyphics.

The one aspect that I feel though that certainly had a major positive and negative is the characters. On the one hand I really like how diverse the cast of characters that The Hidden Face has because they are unique in their own way. At certain points this might not seem the case because you think they are just a loyal follower but then it is clearly shown a character acts out of their own intentions. For me brought an air of mystery to some of the characters because even by the end of this book we still don’t know what side they are on or what they are truly after.

For me though the diverse set of characters come at a price because I found it difficult to empathise or be emotionally attached with any characters in particular and I think this somewhat weakens the beauty of this book. Certain characters do draw out certain emotions such as laughter or happiness but I found this usually stemmed something they said or done rather than how they themselves felt.

Upon reading this book I can say for certain that it takes a unique perspective that I have never read in an epic fantasy book before with the puzzles. The Hidden Face is certainly not perfect but I find it very difficult these days to find a book that doesn’t have some small issues. However this doesn’t detract from the fact that I still really enjoyed reading The Hidden Face as it was fun, well paced and very interesting fantasy book and recommend you read it. If perhaps you aren’t a fan of fantasy books but do enjoy a good mystery then I would still recommend you read this as I believe it is something you will enjoy due to the overall mystery behind the story and the puzzles within it.