The Bone Season

Title: The Bone Season
Author: Samantha Shannon
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: August 2013
Click to buy.
Click to pre-order the sequel (October 2014).

Set in 2059, The Bone Season is a futuristic, steampunk dystopia (marketed for adults, though I feel sure it has more YA appeal) in which clairvoyance is outlawed, but Paige Mahoney is a dreamwalker and can invade the minds of others. She sticks with a clairvoyant criminal gang in the underworld of Scion London, until she is kidnapped and brought to the hidden city of Oxford, run by a supernatural race called the Rephaim. Her ‘keeper’ is Warden, and a Beauty and the Beast relationship ensues with obvious homage paid to Jane Eyre (Helen Burns’ early assertion to Jane about the spirits surrounding her is used as an epigraph to the novel opening).

I loved this book; I finished it in one sitting last August. The narrative is compelling and the world-building is accomplished, deft and brilliant. Irish girl Paige Mahoney paints a picture of London haunted by spirits of the aether, the auras of others’ dreamscapes (distinguishable by colour) and the oxygen bars where people go for their highs. Meanwhile, the city of Oxford where Paige is taken hostage has been renamed Sheol I (apparently translating to ‘abode of the dead’). Colleges are replaced with Residences (i.e. the Residence of Balliol and Residence of Magdalen, where Paige is kept captive). South of the centre is No Man’s Land, and the land beyond the city is haunted by supernatural monsters (Emim). This enables the totalitarian reign of the more powerful Rephaim and there being, apparently, no escape for Paige or the other humans brought there. Every ten years, the Rephaim take more humans from Scion; these are their reapings, which they term ‘Bone Seasons’.

The opening to The Bone Season is riveting and the narrative never loses its gripping, taut tone, which compels you to read on and on. Perhaps my one tiny gripe with The Bone Season is that, in Twilight fashion, Warden has to be flawlessly beautiful; I do not like the rise of the beautiful male in YA fiction, but this is a subjective preference and otherwise I just love this book. There has been an incredible hype surrounding this book, but deservedly so; having followed A Book from the Beginning for a long time prior to publication, I waited a long time for The Bone Season to finally emerge in Waterstones and was not disappointed. I bought my hardback on the publication date last year, but as you can see, had to go and buy a paperback in order to get it signed at a recent Oxford event by Samantha herself. The hardback, unfortunately, I had left behind in Devon; but then one can never have too many copies of a good thing. It was great to go and meet Samantha Shannon in person last month and have my copy of the book signed.