The Bone Season

“We are clairvoyants, Dr Nygård. We are the keepers of truth, the guardians of the future; the bridge between the living and the dead, the mundane and the divine.”

“The Bone Season” is set in London, the year 2059. It follows Paige Mahoney, not only is she high ranking in the criminal underworld but she is also a rare clairvoyant – might I mention that both of these are treasonous under Scion Law! She is then arrested for murder and held captive in Oxford where she has to decide if she should trust her enemy in order to escape…

“If your hope is alive, so are you.”

This book has a bit of everything! The rebellion and revolution of a dystopian novel, supernatural creatures from another world, and a magical deep dive into the different kinds of clairvoyancy.

The characters were unique and the focus on character development for Paige was an excellent narrative choice allowing us to understand this future alternative earth without clunky exposition. Equally crafted was the mysterious Arcturus.

Shannon’s world-building was detailed and intriguing. One of my favourite things about this book was that there was a constant flow of information – never a slow moment!

“I want to remind them that if you leave one spark aglow, it can still burn everything down.”

Reading some of the other reviews of this book is such a mixed bag, as some are for the original version and some are for the revised version. I haven't read the original so I don't know how different it is and if that did affect some ratings, but I read the new version and I loved it.

I read this one physically and it did take a while as long fantasy books tend to do (and also the font is tiny) but I loved every minute I was in this world. I was so absorbed in the setting, the atmosphere, the characters and the politics of this story.

I've had the original edition sitting on my shelves for 9 years and never got to it, but I'm actually glad I put it off and picked it the new version instead. I'll be ordering the others soon and can't wait to continue.

Also these new covers are stunning!

Thank you so much to Bloomsbury Books, Book Influencers and Samantha Shannon for sending me a copy of this book!

I was deeply invested in every single one of the characters. Even the characters we only got a handful of interactions with intrigued me and made me want to learn more about them and hope they’d show up again. The main characters like Paige, Warden, Liss, Julian, Nick, etc all grabbed my heart almost immediately. I’m so invested in all their storylines and where things will go from here. I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface for everyone. The villain characters also did a good job of making me feel intimidated while also just straight up hating their guts every time they were on the page.

I was pleasantly surprised when there wasn’t much romance at all so far. I somewhat went into it thinking we’d get romance fairly quickly and when that didn’t happen it kind of felt like a breath of fresh air. I’m intrigued to see how things will develop in the next books but for now I’m glad it wasn’t really an element here.

The plot, I think, had a good balance of necessary world building and getting to know the characters and actual plot that we’re following. There were so many moments in this that had me catching myself reading ahead because I was so anxious to get to the end of the scene. It kept me fully invested and interested throughout the entire thing. It was fun to have that anxiety of wondering when or if Paige would take things to far or be caught when she was doing things she shouldn’t.

The setting felt very immersive to me. I loved the element of a hidden city right under the general population’s noses. Everything that was described really made me feel like I was there with Paige and walking through these environments. I was able to really picture them in my head which enhanced the reading experience for me.

I’m a sucker for multiple POVs so I kind of wish we got to see someone else’s POV at some point whether that was Warden, Liss, or even Nick. But I also think only seeing everything through Paige’s eyes really added to the mystery of everything that was going on and coming to realizations at the same time as her I think was a good element of the story. I didn’t mind the pacing, it felt like we had a lot of fast parts that were broken up by slower, more mundane parts which I enjoy. It had a good balance.

The conflicts throughout this book had me very anxious and stressed for Paige and, later on, for other characters as well. The last few chapters of the conflict all coming to a head had me on the edge of my seat and had me fully crying at multiple points. I am extremely eager to continue reading this series to see what happens from here.

Overall, I very strongly enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read more!

After coming to this revised series from the Root of Chaos books, I knew that the world building was going to be immense. I think I still severely underestimated it, though, because we were introduced into a reformed/dystopian London and Oxford where those who were different from the norm were to be despised and apprehended. The characters are individually well written, but some characters have a more interesting background than others.
For example, our main character Paige has clearly been through a lot of hardship and turmoil in her life - surviving the Imbolc Massacre, bullying from her peers and authoritative figures growing up attending the Ancroft School, etc. - but it is kind of minimised by the fact that she is the main character and she almost needs to experience these in order to get to the point she is now (mollisher for the White Binder).

I definitely agree with many that there was an overabundance of specific terminology thrown at readers almost from the beginning. While I had read On the Merits of Unnaturalness beforehand, so it wasn't as harsh of an adjustment for myself, it was still a bit difficult to understand certain bits of the book. There was also a lot of new information coming in with the Rephs, Buzzers, etc. which caused some distractions. However, towards the latter half of the book it was difficult to put the book down and as soon as the book ended there was a need to pick up the next.

Looking forward to reading the rest of the revised series.

If you're looking for a gothic, intense dystopian novel full of vivid worldbuilding, look no further than The Bone Season. I read a 2023 revision of Samantha Shannon's 2013 novel & was sucked in to the stark, dangerous world she paints. I loved the inner conflicts endured by the main character, Paige, & how they reflect the terrifying world she is forced to inhabit.

According to the cover sleeve, Shannon is working on revising the other novels in this series, set to come out this year. I await their release eagerly, desperate to learn Paige's next steps.

1.5

I just could not care about any of the characters in this book. They were so uninspiring and uninteresting. 1.5 instead of 1 just cuz the premise was aight

It pains me so much to write this review but this book was baaaadddd. The Priory of the Orange Tree is probably my favorite book ever so I figured reading more of Shannon's work would be a good idea. It was not.
This book just fundamentally did not work for me. The reluctant female chosen one is such a tired trope in my opinion (and yes I know this was written in 2013). I felt like there wasn't any nuance in Paige's understanding of Sheol I. Characters like Carl were much more interesting to me but we barely got to see those characters with any depth.
This book was incredibly contradictory, especially Paige herself. I found multiple instances where a character would do something that made absolutely no sense. Some of these choices would have been absolutely impossible for the characters even a few pages before and yet they completely change their minds without any explanation.
And the romance? Probably the worst pacing of romance I've ever read. Of course I'm not stupid so I saw it coming the second they laid eyes on each other but literally nothing changed from the time they met to their first kiss. Paige was just starting to trust this man and suddenly she's making out with him? When she's had almost no sexual experience before?!!
Needless to say I will not be continuing this series. And Samantha if you're reading this, I'm so sorry. But also I'm incredibly proud of how far you've come as an author. I can't even believe this was written by the same person who wrote such beautiful prose and character arcs in Priory. Congrats I guess. 
Edit: Just found out Samantha wrote this when she was 19. That makes complete and total sense. 

dnf @ 10%

yeah this is a no from me. cannot seem to care one bit about what's going on or find it in me to learn the world. thankfully i got this secondhand for cheap so i'll be rehoming this and not continuing with the series

Oh my gosh, that was a ride and a fricking HALF! I need the second book ASAP!
Full review to come once I have coherent thoughts and it's not 11 pm lol

liked it, the story was okay. not a big fan of dystopian cities and stuff. not really my cup of tea

DNF at 21%
I was so interested in the premise but at this point I just don't care about the main character. Her lack of self-preservation compared to the start baffles me.

Three and a half stars. Some interesting ideas. The writing seemed off sometimes and irritated me. But overall it's fine. Curious to see where the second book goes, so Shannon did something right.

You know things are not going well when a book makes you feel like you had a stroke. This one... did that to me and I wasn't happy.
Not sure what I really expected, I mean it's a typical teenage girl YA, which is something I dislike from the get go, but I tried. Actually, I tried until about 80% of the book and I still dislike it, so I think it's safe to just give up and say how I feel.

In Scion London, in the future people with supernatural abilities are not treated well. If the government catches you, you are lost, nobody comes back from that. Paige Mahoney is one of these supernatural people, which is bad, but she has a perk; she got picked up by a criminal gang of outsiders like herself. Sure, it is crime, their boss is cruel, but among her kind, she has is great.
Up until one day she gets snatched from her home and it turns out the disappeared are taken to a secret colony, lead by not quite human creatures.

This is one of the most graceless things I've ever read. Miss Shannon has absolutely no idea when a world is adequately built, she just keeps tacking on more glitter, more weird crap, more bits and pieces. Sure, an intricate world is good, A Song of Ice and Fire is awesome with its million families and cultures and everything. This, though... is just messy and impossible to follow.
We have a million different kinds of abilities, a lot of them coming even with slang name, but we do not get explained what they do. Paige has... of course a special one, even among all the specials. So it makes even less sense.
All in all, we get pushed in without anything. The book contains an outrageous amount of in-world slang. You have a little dictionary in the back and some supposed helping material with the different abilities drawn up on handy diagram (that still doesn't explain what individual one DOES), but again, it feels like the writing itself lacks any subtle ways of easing us in. Which, in my mind, is a bad sign for the book's quality. I don't want to read up on a million things just to be able to get some ridiculous YA book.

Can we also talk about the way I am annoyed by yet another teen girl fantasy where the characters are dumb as hell? Paige is supposedly some criminal underground cool girl, yet she seems to absolutely NO perspective and she doesn't understand why starving, sickly, unequipped people enslaved under superhuman probably aliens in a place that is basically one massive prison just... don't feel like rebelling in pathetic, school girl ways.
Buuuuut of course she is just so special and unique and AMAZING that she gets picked as the heir of her crime lord, then she is chosen by one of the alien guys, who is special even among his kind to be his apprentice, but of course they form a magical soul bond and OMG, they are so going to be in love, because he's the hottest guy around and she is the protagonist.
I swear this couldn't even be more typical. She is protesting so far, though, which means it's even more romantic and totally not just some token resistance.

Another thing. According to Goodreads, this thing is going to be 7 books long. 7. I have absolutely NO idea what they can stretch out to fill 7 full size novels with this vapid little girl daydream. Let me guess, 10 more people will realise they just NEED Paige for whatever reason, because nobody can measure up to her greatness.

I didn't need this book at all. It wasn't good, it wasn't fun and it definitely didn't make me want to read any more of this series. The review probably turned a bit bitchy, but I completely lost my patience with this specific book and its ilk at this point.

Oh, by the way, the fact that the author is young is treated like some great thing. I find that counterproductive. Being young and writing a book is not some glory, literature is not a race. Maybe we should just allow every author to mature, to pick up enough experience in life, to work on their technique. God knows this book would have profited from someone with a more subtle technique that doesn't try to hit you in the head with a brick.

Have a nice day and let me leave on vacation during this season instead!

okay. wow. i totally adored this book !
from the outside to the inside all the way through. the characters, plot twists, everything !!

I loved the whole urban concept mixed with one of my favourite genres (FANTASY! , can you tell ?)
books with thieves or criminals ? count me in !
the writing flowed so smoothly and the characters just grabbed me didn't want to let go.
Paige was rebellious, determined and caring , in other words everything you want in a female protagonist in a fantasy world where a magical race takes over .
Can I just say that Nick is the best . so many feels because of him !!
Samantha . please. don't scare the hell out of me because of Nick again OK ?
he's too precious. shouldn't be harmed.
any-ways...
wait can we just talk about Warden ?
i didn't know what to make of him at the start but now .. oh my gosh . he is just so freaking sweet and cool and his language and everything !
okay . thumbs up
overall this book was one hell of a joyride ! made me cry ( of course i mean why not ?), and I laughed because well .. Jaxon hall anyone ?

super excited to continue on with the series with the Mime order and then The song rising ( I think that is the name ?) and any other future books too :)

love, bookishwolf

A tentative 3.5 that rounds up to 4 on pure enjoyment, not on critical reflection.

I found a hardcover of this book in a discount bookstore for only $6AUD. For context, a new release eBook is usually $12AUD at a minimum, and anywhere up to $17. A hardcover, is rare to even find in a store (and a bookstore itself is a dying breed) and is usually $30 at a minimum. So despite a few scathing reviews on GR, I thought I'd give this a try. I was relatively surprised.

I had my issues with the book, but not the same ones many others had. A lot of people though it was slow and info-dump-y, but whilst the first 50 pages were a bit info-dump-y, it wasn't much. Perhaps it is instead the result of the book being marketed as a YA book (which it is, sort of. Its borderline being straight up sci-fi/fantasy, but I think the romance finalised it for me that this was undoubtedly a YA book) , because anyone who has read any fantasy has probably had to deal with a lot more than a mere 30-50 pages of slightly slowed pace. This book was anything but slow, after Paige gets taken to Oxford. Too fast and too little character development if anything.

Paige is fighting an injustice that she has barely experienced herself. We get to see everyone else mistreated, but Paige has it relatively easy. She is extraordinarily angry, and she just acts like she is rebelling for the point of the matter. As if she must do it to make up for the lack of fire in everyone else. And I find it highly hypocritical, after gaining insight into Jaxon's character and his relationship with Paige and the Seals. Paige wants nothing more than to run back into Jaxon's arms like a pet, whilst she feels anger towards Warden for nothing more than his continued existence.

Wow. Didn't realise how much anger I had towards Paige's decisions.

The whole clairvoyance thing is interesting, but the amount of complexity felt like it was added so the author could say “HEY! LOOK AT ME WITH MY AMAZINGLY COMPLEX AND SPECIAL MAGIC SYSTEM”. The author has taken a few of trite terms and themes, added a few cool original concepts and mixed them around and called it depth. Complexity != depth. Making 100 different sub classifications for the lesser voyants and giving them long names doesn't mean you have depth.

The setting was magnificent. But it suffers from similar problems as the magic. A few trite themes, a few cool concepts, but no attention to putting them together in a way that works. Instead we get a needlessly complicated bunch of terms that we didn't need, and an effort to change everything and call it depth.

God. I'm making The Bone Season sound pretty bad for a 4 star book. because this book was never boring or slow. I finished in two days, and stayed up until 2am on night reading it. Despite its flaws and short comings, I'd be lying to myself if I said I didn't enjoy it immensly.

This book was slow going for me in the beginning. However, I fell in love with the story towards the end. I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

I have to admit, it did take me a little while to get into this world and how it was set throughout the book. I really enjoyed The Bone Season though and after about 200 pages in, I was hooked.

The Bone Season is about a clairvoyant dreamwalker named Paige. She is from Ireland but is now currently working for a man that uses her dreamwalking ability for what he wants. This helps Paige get some money and also makes he feel like she is not alone. The world that Paige lives in is an alternate reality of the world today. Being a clairvoyant is a sin. She is not supposed to show who she is. In the late 1850s, there has been an issue with the people of Britain and it ends up becoming what is now called “The Bone Season”. Every year they get new “unnatural” people to become clairvoyant slaves of the somewhat higher class beings. This is a type of prison for them. Paige ends up being caught as an unnatural as she is going home to visit her father. She is sent for the next bone season and ends up being picked up by the Warden to become his new slave.

I really enjoyed Paige's character. She was quite fierce and had a lot of backbone. She wasn't the strongest female lead I have read that would have someone in this type of situation, but I really liked how she stood up for herself. She was not submissive at all. It was nice to see how she thought about everything that was happening and how she wanted to fight it. It shows great leadership for her to want to help everyone that is there. The world that Paige is apart of as a dreamwalker is very interesting to read about. I knew as our main character, she was going to be special. Learning about her past and how she discoverd how she was made me like her even more.

I had a feeling when we met Paige's capture that he was going to be different that all the others. He gave her a bit of freedom in the beginning and he said he would help her train to be her best. I liked the Warden in the beginning but liked him even more in the end. I couldn't really picture what he looked like though. Throughout the entire book, it felt like a beauty and the best relationship. That is just a personal thought though. I really enjoyed his character and how different he was from the other owners. Near the end, I really started to enjoy reading about him. Paige and his connection was a good thing to add right at the end.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this book. The second one just came out and now it is time to read it after that cliffhanger. I hope to see more of Paige and the Warden in the second book. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes a type of fantasy meets dystopian meets magic type of world.

This book took me a long time to get through, but it was well worth it. The world Samantha Shannon has created is so unique and well-thought out. I really enjoyed learning all about the different clairvoyants and how the Rephaim fit in with it all.

The beginning of this book is quite the information dump with new terminology and a lot of background on the Scion and London. But once Paige is settled in at Sheol I, the plot thickens as she learns more about Warden and the Bone Seasons and what it means to be clairvoyant.

I think this book did a good job setting up the series and the fight against the Rephaim and Scion. I cannot wait to read the Mime Order and learn more about this world.

I really enjoyed the progression of Paige and Warden's relationship throughout the book. Samantha Shannon did an incredible job of detailing their lives in Sheol I.

This has been on my tbr list for awhile. I really liked it. I can't wait to read the Mime Order

Pros: intricate world-building, strong female protagonist, glossary of terms

Cons: lots of characters to remember (no character list)

Paige Mahoney is a dreamwalker, able to send her spirit into the aether. She works for the criminal underworld of Scion London because clairvoyant powers like hers are illegal. Unnatural. A series of unfortunate events leaves her hunted by the Night Vigilance Division, voyants who work for the state against their own kind. But it's a different group that finds her. Instead of being executed or brought to the tower, she's drugged and woken up in a different city. She finds herself a prisoner of a race of beings called Rephaite. Beings who helped bring Scion to power. Beings who are now her masters.

The world building in this novel is incredible. Shannon has created 1) an alternate history from 1859, when clairvoyance became widespread, 2) a kind of caste system for clairvoyants, including numerous ways to access the aether, 3) a complex crime syndicate based in London, 4) a dystopian government that's extending its powers, 5) the Rephaite and Emim, and 6) the penal city of Sheol I.

While there are a few info dump style scenes, they're quick and intigrated into the story. And you really need them. So much is going on that the faster you're grounded in the background of each section, the more interesting the story is. The information is explained in different ways, the branches of clairvoyance are delivered via an infographic at the start of the novel, there's an orientation meeting for Shoel I, and Paige learns more about the city from other inmates. I really appreciated that Paige's flashbacks not only allowed you to learn more about her character but were used as a point of intrigue later on in the narrative.

Paige is a flawed but still kick-ass protagonist. She makes mistakes in the book and pays for them, but comes back fighting. Her progression through the book feels realistic. She's trying not to give in to hopelessness like so many others around her, while at the same time understanding that she has something to return to should she escape, unlike many of the others.

The Rephaite are fantastic bad guys. The more Paige learns about them, the more evil they become. And yet, she's drawn to her keeper, who isn't quite like the others. Their relationship is complicated and rather fun to read.

One of the few complaints I had about the novel was the large number of characters. There are Paige's syndicate members (by name and codename), people in government, people from history, numerous Rephaite, and the people in Shoel I, who you have to remember by both name and number. The numbers could confuse you too, as Paige was sometimes her full number, XX-59-40, sometimes XX-40 and sometimes just 40. A list of characters, with their numbers/aliases, would have been a helpful addition alongside the included glossary of terms (which I had to refer to several times towards the end of the book).

Another complaint was that amaranth became too powerful towards the end of the novel, which reduced tension in some otherwise tense scenes.

This is the first of a planned 7 book series. Given everything introduced in this book, I can't wait to see what the author does next. There's so much left unexplored, especially with regards to the Rephaite. And while this book is definitely open ended, there is a sense of completion to this volume, which I appreciated.