I just finished reading A Conjuring of Assassins, book two of Cate Glass’ Chimera series and sequel to An Illusion of Thieves.

The Chimera are interesting books. They’re about magic spies in a world where magic is feared and hated, except that most of the aforementioned magic spies are perfectly ordinary people trying desperately to make things work instead of trained fantasy agents. Their plans rely a lot on impersonation, disguise and deception, figuring out the psychology of the various conspirators involved in the plots that they’re unraveling and then preying on their targets’ fears. There are a lot of hints as to the world outside of the perception of the main character’s life, but not much of it actually affects the plot. Instead, we get a deeply personal story about very specific characters, which works very well indeed.