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A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge
Beneath a labyrinth of caverns where expressions are taught like lessons and truth is the most dangerous currency, a curious girl stumbles onto secrets that could upend her entire city. Strange foods, living cheeses, and masked courtiers collide in a tale of wit and wonder. A Face Like Glass is an enchanting, offbeat fantasy that invites you to question every smile.
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In A Face Like Glass, did you enjoy ...
... a naive outsider threading treacherous court etiquette, factions, and assassination plots?
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
If what hooked you in A Face Like Glass was Neverfell stumbling into the Court of Caverna—dodging the Grand Steward’s day/night machinations, reading weaponized “Faces,” and navigating cheesemakers, vintners, and perfumers with agendas—you’ll love following Maia as he’s thrust into an imperial court bristling with protocol and conspiracies. Like Neverfell, he has to learn the rules fast, survive assassination attempts, and find a moral compass in a place where everyone’s smile might be a mask.
... sleuthing through a secret magical underworld governed by eccentric guilds?
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
Neverfell’s hunt for the truth about her past—and her entanglement with the Kleptomancer’s schemes—gives A Face Like Glass a lively investigative pulse beneath the pageantry of Caverna. In The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, Susan and the mercurial Merlin chase clues about Susan’s missing father through a hidden magical bureaucracy as odd and tightly run as Caverna’s crafts. Expect brisk chases, clever reveals, and that same thrill of pulling on a thread and unraveling an entire secret world.
... an eerie, enclosed labyrinth where memory and identity blur?
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Caverna’s cavernous halls, mind-bending wines that erase or edit memory, and the city’s strange logic echo in Piranesi’s vast House of endless statues and tides. If Neverfell’s unfiltered expressions and the city’s reality-warping crafts fascinated you—especially the way secrets rewrite who she is—this dreamlike journey through a living labyrinth will scratch that same itch for the uncanny and the profound.
... lavish, sensory craft-magic where artisanship itself feels enchanted?
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
If you adored Caverna’s artisanal marvels—the cheeses that alter perception, perfumes that bend memory, and wines with precise, perilous effects—The Night Circus offers another feast of meticulous, sense-drenched creation. Like Master Grandible’s cheese caves and the perfumers’ guarded formulas, the circus’s exhibitions are intricate, secretive, and steeped in rivalry, inviting you to wander a world built from craftsmanship and wonder.
... a gifted girl with a dangerous secret untangling her past amid courtly danger?
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Neverfell’s journey—from masked apprentice in Master Grandible’s tunnels to someone who must decide who she really is in a city that choreographs emotion—pairs beautifully with Seraphina. Seraphina hides a truth that could destroy her while working inside a politically fraught court; as with Neverfell, her self-knowledge grows in step with unmasking conspiracies and choosing which parts of herself to reveal—and which to guard.
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