The Bone Season Series: The Bone Season #1 Published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA on August 20, 2013
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / General, Fiction / Fantasy / Paranormal, FICTION / Fantasy / Urban, Fiction / General
Pages: 384
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Goodreads
From the author of The Priory of the Orange Tree, the New York Times bestselling first novel in the Bone Season series, an epic fantasy about a young woman fighting to use her powers and stay alive in an England entirely different from our own.
In 2059, Scion has taken over most of the world's cities, promising safety for all the citizens it deems worthy and wiping out clairvoyants wherever it can find them.Paige Mahoney, though, is a clairvoyant--and a criminal just for existing. Paige is determined to fight Scion's power, and as part of the Seven Seals, Paige has found a use for her powers: she scouts for information by breaking into others' minds as they dream.
But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly-as soldiers in their army.
Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.
The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine-a young woman learning to harness her powers in a world where everything has been taken from her. It 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.
Review:
The amount of imagination and detail that has gone into the world-building is stunning. This book will require patience from the reader because it takes a while to grasp some of the ideas, and just when you think you’ve grasped them, something new is thrown in. However, when everything eventually falls into place, its complexity will blow you away. It has elements of The Throne of Glass that will draw young adult readers in, but since you have lots of new concepts to grasp, it does take a bit to dive into the story. I first read this book in 2014, and here we are in 2025, eagerly waiting for book 5 to come out. So, I reread and evaluated my reviews for the series. I only wrote a vague one for book one and none for the rest. I also never read the novellas that are out so that I will include those too, but probably not in-depth reviews, as novellas are not that long.
This novel follows Paige, a nineteen-year-old woman living in a steampunk, futuristic London, working for an underground crime syndicate of “voyants.” Voyants are individuals who can see, interact with, and occasionally channel the mysterious aether of the afterlife. Voyants are brutally oppressed in this society, and Paige learns an even darker side of their situation when she is captured and taken to a penal colony of voyants in Oxford controlled by a mysterious race known as the Rephaim.
The world-building is going to be exceptional as we explore this world with 7 books slated to be written. While we spent only a tiny minority of the book in Scion-controlled London, Shannon unfolds a brilliantly dark and convoluted world. I loved learning about the different voyages, their classifications, and their powers. This is a unique, creative book, taking old dystopia tropes and steampunk influence and combining them into something fast-paced and fresh. While we only touch the edge of a massive, sprawling world, the amount of clever foreshadowing and well-placed Chekov’s guns indicate a bombastic future payoff. This felt like a book within a book, a story that is only a tiny piece of a grander tale. I enjoyed that we spent most of the time inside the penal colony of Oxford: it allowed me, as a reader, to adjust to the rules of this society and magic system while also experiencing a controlled introduction to some of the significant characters. The Bone Season for me is a refreshing series as most of the books I read are strictly in the fantasy realm, but The Bone Season for me is parked firmly in Science Fiction, so there are new terms, a new type of world-building, and a dystopian angle is a great hook.
About Samantha Shannon
Samantha Shannon is the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of The Bone Season series. Her work has been translated into twenty-six languages. The Priory of the Orange Tree is her fourth novel and her first outside of The Bone Season series. She lives in London.
This is a series I really want to read! Glad to hear it is so good. Didn’t realize it still had books coming out though. Great review!