Book Review: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

The PR campaign for this book was *insanely* effective.

⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

Summary: The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe. In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing. When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal – and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.

As someone who works in book publicity, I can say with conviction that whoever ran the PR campaign for this series rebrand deserves a raise. And whoever redesigned the covers? Get them a bonus, stat. I only picked up this 2013 dystopian-urban-fantasy hybrid was because A) I kept seeing author interviews everywhere, and B) the new covers are so pretty—so, yeah, the publisher made a good choice on this one.

Though, I have to say, as someone who’s 22, it’s a little intimidating picking up a book series that was published by a 21-year-old. Throughout the book, I found myself alternating between picking apart the plot, wondering, could I have written something this intricate?, and thinking, how would I have done this better?

That push and pull kind of sums up my entire relationship to The Bone Season. It was good—even impressive for someone so young—but perhaps a little too ambitious to be great.

Shannon builds an entirely new world from scratch (only the skeleton of London’s neighborhoods remains as we know it). It’s ambitious in a Brandon Sanderson kind of way, complete with a deeply complex (and borderline unmemorizable) magical caste system. Just when you’re starting to get a grip on how things work, Paige is yanked into another world with a completely different set of rules. The inciting incident isn’t just a twist, it’s a full genre swerve that took me another fifty pages to reorient to.

Paige, at times, also falls prey to some of the cliche savior complexes of 2010 dystopian media (how is the world always relying on one 19-year-old girl?), but Shannon does a great job making her feel human. The snarky narration and ever-sarcastic dialogue kept me laughing throughout.

So, even though I had a few bones to pick with the book (hahah, get it?), that’s not to say that I wasn’t hooked. I burned through all six hundred pages in less than a week, then moved on to the second book in a blink. The world-building, while confusing, was innovative and definitely unique. She did a great job grounding the reader with visuals, slang, and well-timed context. I also, admittedly, really enjoyed the romantic subplot. While it takes literally the whole book to come to any sort of fruition, Warden and Paige are a textbook enemies-to-lovers slowburn, and their completely different personalities played off of each other well.

I’d recommend The Bone Season to any fantasy fan who’s nostalgic for that 2010s Divergent-era, grassroots-rebellion, chosen-one kind of vibe. Just one warning (and this is what the glossy PR campaign won’t tell you): the series started in 2013 and still isn’t finished. With two books yet to come and no clear timeline in sight, it’s giving George R.R. Martin–level uncertainty. Proceed at your own risk (but maybe admire the covers while you wait).