Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant who can detach her spirit and jump into other people’s minds. The fact that the reviews for The Bone Season are literally all over the place (from 0 stars to 5 stars) tells me that this is one story that will be hard for some people to connect to. Samantha Shannon has a very bright future ahead of her, but let’s be real: she’s only twenty-one! The craft of writing takes years to develop, and although she clearly has oodles of natural talent, nothing can replace life experience and time. It had the potential to be spectacular but it just didn’t quite get there. I guess what I’m trying to say is that for me, this book was inconsistent. But there were also times when I felt the plot was too confusing, the writing was simply pedestrian and the characters merely frustrating.

(Notice that I said at times.) And there was a point in the story when I finally began to like the characters. Shannon’s writing at times was luminescent and lovely and emotional. On one hand, there were some magical moments in the story that actually brought me to tears. The Bone Season was quite possibly the strangest and most bewildering book I’ve ever read, and even now, as I’m trying to write this review, I’m having a hard time solidifying my reactions into words. It belongs not only on a different shelf in the bookstore, but on a shelf in a bookstore on a different planet altogether. I’m not sure where these came from, but this story is about as different from Harry Potter as it is possible to be. Rowling and Harry Potter that you may have heard.

If you’re going to read The Bone Season, the first thing you should do is forget about all the comparisons to J. I wanted to get out of the car and throw myself into London’s poisoned heart. I missed bidding on spirits and playing tarocchi and climbing up buildings with Nick to watch the sun sink. I never thought I’d miss the dirty gunmetal streets, but I did. The car was rolling through White City in II-3, past the mammoth shopping complex. In a word: A strange and drug-fueled story, an unfamiliar and dream-like landscape, filled with cruelty and danger, but ultimately too confusing to be truly enjoyable.

The bone season by samantha shannon