The Bone Season

In an alternate Britain, clairvoyants are classified as 'unnaturals' and are therefore in constant danger of arrest; those who commit mime-crime, like Paige Mahoney, are committing treason by the simple act of breathing. When a journey on the Tube goes disastrously wrong, she is arrested and taken to a prison camp in Oxford, where those in charge want her to use her abilities for their own benefit.

I agree with another reviewer that the author throws the reader in at the deep end in terms of unfamiliar vocabulary and, by extension, the worldbuilding; I had to look up a few terms in the glossary after the first chapter and then re-read it, which was very worthwhile because after that I was fully immersed in the world Samantha Shannon show more creates. Despite some reservations, for example some well-worn YA tropes where I caught myself rolling my eyes, I found the story surprisingly gripping, and I finished the book in what counts for me as record time. I definitely want to find out how the story continues after that cliffhanger ending.

** I was reading the 10th Anniversary Edition. show less

A perfect, exhilarating blend of fantasy, dystopia and science fiction, The Bone Season is one of the must-read books of 2013. There's no other way to say it - this is as close to a perfect book as I've ever read.

The voice of the narrative is the first thing that really impressed me - I knew I'd love this book from Paige's very first words. Her voice is the perfect mixture of sarcasm and fear, loneliness and defiance. The author does an amazing job of fully immersing us in her thoughts, feelings and memories. Few reading experiences are ever as vivid as this, and I think it's even harder for an author to pull it off in first person because of the narrowing, blinkering effect this gaze is susceptible to.

I love that Paige never tries to show more be super-awesome-strong woman with absolutely no faults or fears or vulnerabilities. She has lots of those, and they come to light throughout the novel, but what makes her special, what made me absolutely love her as a protagonist, is that she has so much growth throughout the book. She learns to live with past mistakes, learns to protect herself and those around her, slowly starts to trust the strangers around her. It's not like everything goes to plan, and it's not like she never has any difficulty with these things - in fact, her struggles and tribulations make her a refreshingly complex heroine, one I really connected to on more levels than the superficial (her clumsiness or unhappiness with her hair etc).

Surrounding her are colourful, delightful characters such as Jaxon the mime-lord (a volatile crime-boss if there ever was one), the kind and thoughtful Lissa, and of course, the mysterious Warden. I loved them all, they're painted really well and I feel that I got to know them very well throughout the book. There are still hidden depths to many of the people surrounding Paige, but that's only to be expected because the book is part of a series.

The world-building in The Bone Season absolutely blew me away. It's nuanced and well-researched and delivered beautifully. The oppressive society of Scion, its rules and regulations, the downtrodden clairvoyants, the mysterious city of Oxford, are all brought to life vividly by the author, and I was engrossed in the details every time I cracked the book open. Shannon has spent a lot of time orienting readers into her world, which some may find wearying because of the new clairvoyant-related terms and the alternate history, but I quite liked the way the way Paige introduced us to Scion in 2059 England.

The narrative is also impeccably plotted - I noted no obvious holes or inconsistencies, and the author always managed to surprise me. Every time I got a little too comfortable with the story, or thought I'd figured a character or plot-element out, the author was quick to remind me how little I knew, and how ill-equipped I was to foresee anything! I loved the spontaneity and sheer unpredictability of it all.

I'm frequently frustrated while reading if a protagonist can't see connections between people and events that seem obvious to me, and a lot of this is because the author goes to great lengths to point threads out to readers, but has the protagonist flail in the dark. Shannon steers well clear of this device, and doesn't assume her readers are unobservant - in fact, she goes to great lengths to hide those same threads from readers (essential because the book is on first-person), resulting in readers being as shocked, confused or mind-blown as the protagonist. I've seriously missed reading books written at this calibre, and loved every moment of not knowing.

I love, love, love this book, and the best part is that The Bone Season is the first instalment in a seven part epic - you read that right, there are six more amazing, incredible books to be published! This is an absolutely solid beginning to what is undoubtedly going to be a highly acclaimed series.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review.
You can read more of my reviews at Speculating on SpecFic. show less

Full review on Reader's Dialogue: http://readersdialogue.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-bone-season.html

What an absolutely gripping book. Paige is a great heroine. She's courageous - sometimes to a fault - and she's smart, and loyal - mostly. She fights hard to free the clairvoyants, and she winds up leading the revolution. I found it a little odd that she fights so hard to get out of Oxford and back to the citadel when she's confronted with so many new horrifying revelations about what's really going on, when she knows that there's so much more that she doesn't understand, that the Rephaim have plans that reach down back centuries and forward to the end of the world, but she doesn't really try to figure out what the Rephaim are really all show more about. But at the same time, I love that. Because instead of the typical heroine, who is full of self-sacrifice in order to save humanity, Paige just desperately wants the chance to live as normal a life as possible, to get back to the world she knows, even if she now knows it's nothing like what she thought it was. By the end of the book, though, she's turned around and though she doesn't uncover anything really revealing in this book, I'm sure she's going to start uncovering things in the next book. (And if not, there are six more books for her to do that!) Even though the mysteries stay hidden, this book is far from slow-paced. Things happen one after the next, people and Rephaim seem one thing and on the next page seem the other, traitors and misplaced loyalties abound.

And the secondary characters are so so good. Lissa and Seb especially stole my heart, and I cried when Seb died, even though I barely knew him at that point. And when he comes up again later, I cried buckets. I think it's because I felt everything through Paige, and she feels so strongly about everything. She's always passionate in whatever emotion she feels - passionate hate, passionate love, passionate fear, passionate sorrow. It makes her reckless, but since she somehow manages to get out of (almost) every scrape, her blazing passion propels her forward to every next step, and her passion for the others in the prison, especially the amaurotics and harlies, makes me love her as fiercely as she loves them.

Paige's group from back in the citadel is satisfyingly hard to pin down. They're her family, but she doesn't particularly like all of them. I loved seeing her unrequited feelings for Nick, though, because it gives her that vulnerability she seems not to have. And then there's her relationship with Warden. As maddeningly confusing as Warden is himself, and completely unsatisfying in how it's left at the end of the book. Which of course means that aside from wanting the next book for the secrets it will reveal, I want to know what happens to Warden, and what happens to Warden and Paige. show less

Ten years ago, I received an ARC for the first book in a new series written by a debut author while she was a student at Oxford. I let this book sit on my bookshelves, unread, and focused on e-galleys and other books from better-known authors. I finally read it a few weeks after its publication date. When I finished it, I knew I would not hesitate to read anything Samantha Shannon wrote.

I stand by that original assessment today. The six novels Ms. Shannon wrote and published over the last ten years are among my all-time favorite books. The Bone Season series is my favorite series. I've read each book in that series at least twice and listened to the audiobook versions at least that many times.

I am in awe of Ms. Shannon's writing. She show more is so careful to build as much realism into her fantasy world. She never makes up words but chooses them for their meaning and linguistic origins; this is especially true of her proper nouns. For The Bone Season series, she visited each place that appears in the novels in order to get the details correct when adding them to a scene. The characters are as alive to the reader as they are to Ms. Shannon; it shows in every aspect of the stories.

When Ms. Shannon announced she was rewriting The Bone Season for its tenth anniversary, I could only wonder why she would do so. I loved it as it was, and I knew I wasn't alone. The series has a rabid fan base for a reason. While it wasn't perfect, it reflected Ms. Shannon's writing as it was then - untested and a little too descriptive. This isn't a bad thing; it simply is due to the fact that it was her first novel, and she was a young first-time author.

Having read The Bone Season: Tenth Anniversary Edition, I recognize the changes she made and acknowledge that her rewrites make for an even better series opener. The world-building is more fluid and done in a more natural manner. She connects key figures and plot points to future books. The pacing is more even. She fleshes out the world of Scion and the Underworld. More importantly, she matures Paige to reflect her years as the second-in-command of a crime lord. Gone is the slightly naive girl, and in her place is the world-weary, hardened, sarcastic Paige Mahoney we see in the later books.

In rewriting her first book, Ms. Shannon wanted to show her improved writing skills as well as do a better job of introducing readers to Paige, Warden, and the world of Scion. In my opinion, she has done exactly that. The Bone Season: Tenth Anniversary Edition is tight in all the right places and filled with the perfect balance of world-building and action. There is no doubt Paige and Warden's burgeoning relationship will be important in future books. More importantly, she sows the seeds for upcoming storylines and starts developing characters we most definitely see again.

As a fan, I want everyone to read The Bone Season: Tenth Anniversary Edition. The new cover design is so gorgeous that I almost feel unworthy to touch it, but it is what is between that cover that excites me the most. Ms. Shannon already proved herself to be an outstanding writer. In doing a few rewrites, she shows mastery of her craft and creates a series opener worthy of her characters. show less

"Believe the hype: orginal, gritty, exciting"

The hype said that Samantha Shannon had received a six figure advance for the first three books in a seven book series and had already sold the film rights to book one: The Bone Season.

What the hype didn't prepare me for was a rich, complex book filled with original ideas, vivid characters, powerful emotions, gritty realism and page-turning action.

Shannon's alternative future Britain is fully thought through and skilfully evoked. She weaves her tale from a deep understanding of the politics of hatred and fear and the fundamental evil of slavery and brightens it with new ideas on the nature of magic.

What makes the book truly exceptional is the character of Paige Mahoney (how nice it was to show more hear this name pronounced the Irish way for once): brave, dangerous, more than a little broken but fundamentally good. She is easy to care about and root for. Her way of seeing the world is humane without being in the least bit soft. Her bravery comes from a refusal to submit to fear or to be treated as anything less than human. Even when everything has been taken from her, she holds on to the power that comes from knowing what she values and what she is prepared to do to protect it.

The relationship between Paige and Warden, her "keeper" is rich, complex and credible, exploring the boundaries or trust and otherness, suspicion and attraction, power and weakness.

Although it is book one in a series,"The Bone Season" is a full novel and not just an instalment in a story.

This is one of the best speculative fiction books I've read in a long time. That it was début novel from a young author fills me with pleasure. I look forward to reading all of her books as they come out over then next several years. show less

I loved this book SO much! It immediately pulled me in and kept me engaged with the fast-paced action and dynamic characters. The author was very good at balancing telling us about the world and showing us aspects of the world. It kept the world building from being too info dumpy. The humor in this book was also great. Right at the beginning of the book, the line “Pieter was depressed again. Being dead got to him sometimes.” That line made me laugh. I loved the relationships in this book. The buildup of tension between Paige and Warden was so great. I kept waiting and wishing something would happen, and when it did, it was so satisfying. I also appreciated the author’s willingness to put the reader through an emotional roller show more coaster. One minute something in the book would make you happy and rejoice, but the very next minute, the author could rip your heart out. This book was a trip, a weird and fun one that had me laughing and crying and scared all the way through. show less

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#1 The Bone Season - ★★★★
#2 The Mime Order - To Be Read

I was surprised by how much I really enjoyed The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon. When I picked the book up, I knew I was looking at an international bestseller, but I still had my doubts. Well, not anymore…

Synopsis:

The year is 2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of Scion London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. Her job: to scout for information by breaking into people’s minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant and, in the world of Scion, she commits treason simply by breathing.

It is raining the day her life changes for ever. Attacked, drugged show more and kidnapped, Paige is transported to Oxford – a city kept secret for two hundred years, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. Paige is assigned to Warden, a Rephaite with mysterious motives. He is her master. Her trainer. Her natural enemy. But if Paige wants to regain her freedom she must allow herself to be nurtured in this prison where she is meant to die.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine and also introduces an extraordinary young writer, with huge ambition and a teeming imagination. Samantha Shannon has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut.

My Thoughts:

The Bone Season gripped me from the start. Literally from the first chapter, I was alongside Paige, getting to know her clairvoyance as she’s discovering it herself. Paige is a character that you want to root for, but you also want to understand the other side, just to ensure she’s making the right decisions. Meeting the gang in the underworld of Scion London gave me an introduction of the dystopian world that Paige lives in. Clairvoyant people are being imprisoned left, right and centre, and when something goes horribly bad for Paige, she discovers that it could be much, much worse. And somehow she managed to end up there.

“I fitted with these people. They understood the strangeness of my world, a world I was only just beginning to discover.”

The world building in this book is on another level. Samantha Shannon created a world with different orders of Clairvoyance. On top of that, she created dystopian cities and a different type of creatures that have a role to play as well. Through Paige, we meet so many vivid characters, all unique and lovable in their own way.

I loved the chapters when Paige would reminisce about her past. It helped me understand her so much better and it ties very well with the story in the present. I also loved how the parts with the past tie into the plot to create a plot twist in itself. I feel like every scene was created the way it was with a certain purpose. To serve a bigger role and to tie into the plot in one way or another. But it never felt as if a scene was written just for the sake of it.

One of my favourite parts in this book were the parts focusing on emotion. There isn’t a romance in this book, so to speak. But there were moments of building connections. Of building trust. Times of sharing experiences, memories and big heartbreaks. But all these moments were an addition to a friendship that turned into a little bit more. It only complimented a personality, rather than become a main focus of the story, which made these moments even more special.

“I didn’t believe in hearts. I believed in dreamscapes and spirits. Those were what mattered. Those made money. But my heart had hurt that day. For the first time in my life, I’d been forced to acknowledge my heart, and acknowledge its fragility. It could be bruised. It could humiliate me.”

And that ending… When that ending happened, it shattered me in a very delicate way. I grieved for one reason, but felt joy for another. The bittersweet taste is still between my fingers, feeling it as I was closing the last pages. But there is one thing for sure – this story doesn’t end here and I’ll sure as hell read the next book in the series. show less