Quick Take
- Narration: Saskia Maarleveld captures both Enne’s fish-out-of-water stiffness and her gradual adaptation to the City of Sin with real range.
- Themes: Identity performance versus authentic selfhood, the cost of surviving in corrupt systems, the tension between inheritance and chosen path
- Mood: Glittery and dangerous, with an undercurrent of genuine menace beneath the casino glamour
- Verdict: Ace of Shades is a confident series opener that earns its dual-protagonist structure, and Foody’s New Reynes is a setting distinctive enough to carry multiple books.
I had not read anything by Amanda Foody before picking up Ace of Shades, and I came to it with some skepticism. The YA fantasy genre’s relationship with the word “corruption” is complicated, cities described as places where no one survives uncorrupted are sometimes genuinely morally complex and sometimes just atmospherically dark without the substance to match. New Reynes, it turns out, earns its reputation. I finished the book on a Friday evening, genuinely sorry it was over, and immediately looked up when King of Fools came out. That’s not nothing.
The setup is familiar in outline: sheltered girl from a finishing school follows a trail of clues about her missing mother into a dangerous city and teams up with a morally compromised local who needs something she has. Enne Salta’s search for her mother leads her to Levi Glaisyer, a street lord one payment away from unraveling a scheme he can’t afford to have unravel. The deal they strike is pragmatic on both sides. What Foody does that distinguishes the book from its genre neighbors is refuse to make either character a simple genre type. Enne is not a fish-out-of-water who gradually abandons her values to become cool. Levi is not redeemed by his association with her innocence. Both of them are changed by the events of the novel, and neither change is comfortable or complete.
What New Reynes Gets Right
The city is the book’s most impressive achievement. New Reynes has a functional economy of power: Casino Families at the top, street gangs in the middle layers, a Mafia donna named Vianca Augustine who serves as the book’s primary antagonist with genuine menace. The magic system, built around bloodlines and talents passed through family lines, is integrated into this power structure rather than floating free of it. What your blood gives you determines what games you can play and where you rank in the city’s hierarchies. Foody has thought carefully about how her magical system would shape a society, and that care pays off in the worldbuilding.
The glamour of the casinos and cabarets is rendered with enough specific detail that it feels seductive rather than merely described. One reviewer singles out how the book portrays Enne’s femininity, her attachment to propriety, to appearance, to the ladylike standards she was raised with, not as a weakness to be overcome but as part of who she is that gets integrated into how she survives New Reynes. That’s a genuine distinction from a genre that often treats traditional femininity as an obstacle its heroines need to discard. Enne doesn’t become Levi-adjacent to prove herself. She becomes something New Reynes-specific.
The Dual Protagonist Question
Alternating between Enne and Levi as point-of-view characters is a structural risk in any novel, but Foody manages it by keeping their situations genuinely distinct rather than just offering the same city from two angles. Levi’s sections carry a different kind of urgency, the investment scam unraveling around him, the execution game he’s been trapped in by Vianca, and his awareness of the city’s rules contrasts productively with Enne’s outsider perspective. Neither POV is weaker than the other, and the book doesn’t privilege one over the other in its final sections.
The pacing across twelve hours is generally well-handled. Foody builds toward the book’s climax through escalating complications rather than manufactured cliffhangers, and when the action sequences arrive in the final act they feel earned rather than inserted. The romantic dimension between Enne and Levi develops slowly enough that readers who primarily care about plot won’t feel pulled out of the story, while readers who came for the relationship dimension won’t feel cheated.
Saskia Maarleveld and the Voice of New Reynes
Maarleveld’s narration is one of the audiobook’s genuine assets. She manages the tonal range the book requires, Enne’s precise, guarded speech patterns early in the novel versus her gradual code-switching as she acclimates to the city, Levi’s more streetwise cadence, the variety of supporting characters across New Reynes’s criminal hierarchy. The twelve-hour runtime doesn’t feel padded; Maarleveld keeps the energy consistent even in the quieter worldbuilding passages that a less engaged narrator might let sag.
Ace of Shades was published in 2018 and has already accumulated a devoted readership, but it holds up well on audio specifically. The city’s nightlife atmosphere, the casinos, the cabarets, the sense of moral hazard lurking in every transaction, benefits from being delivered in audio form. New Reynes is a place that works better heard than read silently.
Series Entry Point or Standalone Concern
Ace of Shades functions as the first book in The Shadow Game trilogy, and it is designed as a series opener: the central mystery about Enne’s mother is partially resolved while larger questions about both protagonists’ identities and futures are deliberately left open. This is not a book that ties itself off neatly. If that frustrates you in YA series, be aware that you’re walking into a trilogy. If you’re comfortable with the investment, Foody’s New Reynes is the kind of setting worth following across multiple volumes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Ace of Shades appropriate for readers at the younger end of the YA age range?
The book contains violence and some morally dark content appropriate to its City of Sin setting, but it’s within the standard range for YA fantasy. There’s no explicit sexual content. Most readers 14 and up would handle it comfortably.
Does Ace of Shades work as a stand-alone or does it end on a cliffhanger?
The immediate plot threads are resolved, but the novel ends with significant questions about both Enne and Levi’s identities and futures deliberately open. It functions as a series opener designed to bring you back for King of Fools.
How does the magic system work and how central is it to the plot?
Magic in New Reynes is tied to bloodlines, inherited talents that determine social position and which games of power you can access. The system is well-integrated into the city’s criminal hierarchy rather than being decorative.
Is Saskia Maarleveld’s narration effective for both the Enne and Levi POV chapters?
Yes. Maarleveld differentiates the two protagonists effectively, tracking Enne’s gradual adaptation to the city’s idioms and maintaining Levi’s more streetwise register throughout. The dual-POV structure works better in audio than it sometimes does on the page.
