The Bone Season | A reread
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon Series: The Bone Season #1
Published by Bloomsbury USA on August 20, 2013
Pages: 466
Goodreads
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 introduces a compelling heroine and 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.
I haven’t been shy in stating my love of The Bone Season. I think it will always be one of my favourites so I knew that going into this reread I didn’t have too much to worry about. I decided that seeing as I was running out of time at the end of 2020 that I would pick up the audiobook and it showed me a completely new experience. It’s one of the things I love about listening to books on audiobooks, there’s always something new to hear. The Bone Season definitely fell into this category with my love for Paige and Warden becoming almost unbearable at parts. I was worried that the audio version might have diluted some of the drama for me but it didn’t, it just made it all feel so much real which was fantastic.
Characters for me has always been The Bone Season’s strength, I adore their stories and how they each deal with the world they are thrust into. I think the best is watching each of their survival techniques coming out at various moments and seeing how they each deal with situations out of their control. The moments that make these characters shine are unfortunately the cruelest and seeing how everything crashes around them and how they rise from the rubble. It really is a glorious thing to read and listen to, especially watching Paige coming to terms with her surroundings.
When I look at the characters in The Bone Season, they are exactly what I want in the books I read and that hasn’t changed with the rereads. If anything I love them more and learn something new about each of them with every read. I love characters that are well built and well rounded and Shannon’s writing does that, each character, it doesn’t matter what role they play within the story has some kind of complexity within them. I adore it, I love reading about them all and trying to work out what their flaw is or what their story is and I love it. Plus they don’t all have happy beginnings or happy ever afters which is just another added plus in all honesty.
Best bit for me is always going to be the world and Warden. The fantasy layers that Shannon has managed to add to the dreary streets of London and Oxford are not only wonderfully written but it’s what makes The Bone Season such a brilliant book. It turns the mundane into something magically wonderful and at parts truly believable. Then there’s the addition of Warden who is a centuries old being who likes to sit in a tower like a pouty teenager listening to Sinatra, I mean really, who wouldn’t fall in love with that kind of character. I can safely say I am fully invested in Warden and his life.
Worst bits…. are you kidding?
Definitely recommend this one, I did way back when and I still do. It is one of my all time favourites and I cannot wait to reread the next book in the series.
What are some of your all time favourite books? Let me know!
