Stravaganza 1. Stadt der Masken.

Lucien Mulholland is sixteen and dying of cancer when his father gives him an old marbled notebook. Falling asleep while holding it, Lucien wakes in Talia, a parallel world resembling Renaissance Italy, in the city of Bellezza — a shimmering double of Venice where unmarried women over sixteen wear masks by ducal decree.

Lucien discovers he has become a Stravagante, one of a secret order able to travel between worlds using enchanted objects. Guided by the scientist Rodolfo and drawn to Arianna, a girl from the lagoon islands, Lucien is pulled into the intrigues of the ruling Duchessa and the ambitions of the rival city of Remora, even as his failing body waits for him back in London.

The first book in Mary Hoffman's Stravaganza sequence, City of Masks blends historical fantasy with a portal-fantasy premise, following Lucien across two worlds as his stays in Talia grow longer and the stakes in both grow higher.