The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon | Review

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads | Amazon

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 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 is the first book I’ve read since my hiatus and I’m so happy that it pulled me out of my reading slump, but where do I even start with this review?

At the beginning of Chapter One you are shown a chart called ‘the seven orders of clairvoyance.’ Now being me, I always skip the charts and maps at the beginning of the book Don’t shoot me! I don’t know why I do it but I always have done until after I have finished the story, I think maybe its because I don’t want to spoil myself in some way so I can go into the story completely blind.  This is the one time, reading the chart may have been helpful because the world building is incredibly intricate and complicated, there are a fair few things to get your head around from the many types of characters to the story plot itself.

Image from meltotheany.com

As you can see from the chart, there are seven orders of clairvoyance present in this story, but if you look on the chart you can see that there are numerous types of gifts which fall under these. Each of these is explained in the book so you have quite a bit of information dumped on you and at times I will admit, I became confused. Along side this, we have spirits and poltergeists, creatures, angels and humans.

A bit of advice, I know a lot of people like to read multiple books at once but I would recommended reading ‘The Bone Season’ alone so that you can focus and keep up with the information. There was a few times I got confused myself so I imagine trying to juggle two books, may be difficult when one is quite information heavy. This being said, despite there being tons of information, I loved the world building. It felt very dystopian and the topic of clairvoyance wasn’t like other things I had read before. Many people have compared this to Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, if I’m completely honest I can’t remember a thing about what happened in that trilogy as I read it so long ago, so I couldn’t pull any comparisons myself.

An element which I really enjoyed was the plot focus. I am a huge fan of romance in YA books but sometimes it can overtake the story. Samantha Shannon handled this really well, there was tension and chemistry between the Warden and Paige, enough to tease you and make you want romance but the whole focus never moved away from Paige’s journey and her trying to escape her captivity and return home. Instead the chemistry was drizzled in which offered lighter moments.  

I really enjoyed our main protagonist Paige. She was strong but not to the point where she was cold-hearted, she cared about other people, she had a real survival instinct and determination, but she also had self-doubt. Throughout ‘The Bone Season,’ we go on some real character development with her. One of my favourite things is how she comes to the realisation that despite The Seven Seals being a family to her and Jaxon being a protector, he ultimately was another version of Nashira. He offered protection which came at a price, Paige didn’t have a choice but to do what he asked and they got paid when he remembered. Whilst Nashira was more brutal and under her hands Paige was a slave, Jaxon too liked having the power and control and Paige had little choice in that life too.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I can’t wait for The Mime Order as this one ended somewhat on a cliff-hanger and I have a bunch of questions on what is going to happen next. Ashleigh from A Frolic Through Fiction introduced me to this series and I am so thankful that she did, I’ve missed reading so much!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Have you read The Bone Season? Tell me your thoughts!