num_pages: 345
description: Lucien is seriously ill but his life is transformed when an old Italian notebook gives him the power to become a stravagante, a time traveller with access to 16th century Italy. He wakes up in Bellezza (Venice) during carnival time and meets Arianna, a girl his own age who is disguised as a boy in the hope of being selected as one of the Duchessa's mandoliers. Arianna gives Lucien her boy's clothing and he is selected as a mandolier himself, becoming a friend of fellow-stravagante Rodolfo, the Duchessa's lover, and saving the Duchessa's life when she is threatened by an assassin hired by the powerful di Chimici family. For state occasions the Duchessa uses her maid Giuliana as a body-double but Guiliana commits the fatal mistake of revealing the secret to her fiance Enrico and a sequence of devastating consequences unravels. Meanwhile Lucien has met the original stravagante, the Elizabethan alchemist William Dethridge, and he begins to understand that he may be called to follow in his footsteps.
language: English
title: City of Masks
titlecomplete: City of Masks (Stravaganza, #1)
characters: David Mulholland, Giuliana, Alfredo, Rodolfo Rossi, Leonora, Francesca di Chimici, Guido Parola, Rinaldo di Chimici, Enrico Poggi, Vicky Mulholland, Lucien Mulholland, William Dethridge, Paola, Arianna Rossi, Silvia Bellini
genres: Historical Fiction, Historical, Childrens, Young Adult, Magic, Time Travel, Fantasy, Romance, Adventure, Fiction
ratings_count: 16196
places: Bellezza, Venice
series: Stravaganza
publisher: Bloomsbury