5 questions we still have after reading The Mask Falling

Samantha Shannon’s The Mask Falling is the latest installment in her sprawling Bone Season series, a dense, immersive fantasy about a dystopian future version of London where spirits, clairvoyants, and a mysterious otherworldly race known as the Rephaim exist alongside a pseudo-authoritarian government that seeks to outlaw “unnaturals” at all costs.

This is the fourth in a planned seven-book series and very much feels like it, not just sending our characters to a new location and expanding the series’ world accordingly but dropping several significant revelations that likely mean big changes for the world of this series going forward.

The novel ends on a fairly significant cliffhanger, but that’s hardly the only thing about this story we still need an answer to.

Here are five of our most burning questions after reading The Mask Falling. 

The Mask Falling: Is Arcturus alive?

This seems like the most pressing question after the events of The Mask Falling – and also the easiest to answer. Of course, he is!

Sure, it certainly appears as though he might have been killed in a retaliatory airstrike against Scion, but there’s absolutely no way that our favorite Rephaim is dead. Shannon has always said her Bone Season series would be comprised of seven books; we’re certainly not meant to spend three entire books without Warden.

Plus, we’ve seen how hard it is to kill these creatures. Now, could Arcturus be badly hurt? Of course. Could have been damaged in some way that even his healing abilities can’t fix? It’s possible. But gone forever? No way. After all, we’re not even sure he was in that building when the bombs hit, and there’s every chance Cade or Nashira already moved him to a different location. Paige will see him again – that’s the only thing about Book 5 that I am sure of.

The Mask Falling: Who has kidnapped Paige and for what purpose?

In the closing moments of The Mask Falling, Paige is drugged by white aster in the middle of a battle, knocked out and dragged off by Cordier, a secret agent she’d assumed was on her side. The French woman’s final lines certainly seem ominous, as does the disappearance of the French accent she’d previously maintained in Paige’s presence.

Now, there’s a simple and a more sinister way to interpret these events. The more straightforward answer is simply that Cordier’s trying to keep Paige from hurting herself any further or throwing herself into the wreckage of a building to look for Arcturus. Perhaps French identity was simply another part of her ruse as an agent for the Domino Program and everything we thought we learned about her was a lie. She might truly be working against Scion, and have Paige’s best interests at heart.

Of course…she might not.

At this point, would anyone be surprised if Cordier turns out to be another plant – someone sent to monitor Paige on behalf of Scion or Nashira or even Terebell and the other Rephaim who are theoretically on her side. She might be working with Jaxon in some way.

If the Bone Season series has taught us anything, it’s that anything is possible.

Mask Falling: What is Cade’s ultimate plan – and what does it mean that he’s a dreamwalker like Paige?

It’s likely that we could restrict this list to only questions about Cade and still fill it. This character is a bigger mystery than ever – and it’s not like he was easy to read back when he was just a Red Jacket with secrets back in Sheol I.

But the revelation that he is himself a dreamwalker is the sort of shock that rewrites everything we know about the series. We’ve been told repeatedly about how powerful, how special, how singular Paige is — only, now she’s not so much anymore. She may no longer even be the most powerful voyant in Scion if Cade is strong enough to possess Rephaim for extended periods.

But what does he want? Who is he working for? Is he helping Nashira? Or out for his own ends? His affair with Luce certainly indicates that

The Mask Falling: What is Jaxon’s endgame?

After what must be the third or fourth double-cross between Paige and Jaxon in this series, it feels impossible to know what they are to one another anymore, or what Jaxon is planning. What is his ultimate goal here? Is it to bring Page back to his side permanently? To take over Scion himself? To overthrow the Rephaim in the name of…what? The formal creation of a more powerful criminal underworld

At the moment, he certainly seems loyal enough to Nashira and Scion – but that’s as much because it benefits him to be so as it is because their ultimate aims are the same. And while Paige’s decision not to kill him was likely the right one for her as a character, it’s almost certainly one she’ll have reason to regret at some point very soon.

The Mask Falling: What has been happening with Eliza, Nick, and the rest of the Mime Order?

We all knew that with Paige and Arcturus sent to Paris that we’d probably see little of Eliza, Nick, and the rest of the Mime Order. Though we know that the group eventually made it out of the below-ground canals they’d been forced to hide in through much of The Song Rising, we don’t know how the group is faring in London in the wake of Senshield’s destruction.

Personally, given everything that’s happened, I was looking forward to seeing Eliza come into her own as a leader. She’s the main Mime Order member we know least about, and she’s probably the person who gave up the most in walking away from Jaxon. Is she doing okay? How has the rest of the Order taken to her as leader? And what of Nick, heading back to his homeland for the first time since his sister’s death to lead the resistance against Scion?

The Mask Falling is available in print, digital, and audiobook formats now.