The Masked City

When Librarian-spy Irene's dragon assistant Kai is kidnapped by fae operatives in an alternative London, she discovers that his abductors intend to use his royal lineage to trigger a war between dragons and the Fae, threatening to destabilize the balance between order and chaos across multiple worlds. The mission to recover him takes Irene to a dark alternate Venice in perpetual Carnival, where she must blackmail, fight, and negotiate against enemies who operate without constraints. Genevieve Cogman's second Invisible Library novel raises the stakes dramatically.

Kristin Atherton narrates the series' second entry with a confident urgency that matches the escalating danger, her voice finding new registers for Irene now that the character's controlled competence is under genuine pressure. The Venice setting adds atmospheric richness to Atherton's performance, and her rendering of the Fae's uncanny wrongness stands out as particularly effective. Listeners who start here will want to return to the first book and continue through the series.