Tuesday 20 August 2013

URBAN FANTASY REVIEW: The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon

Release Date: 20/08/13
Publisher:  Bloomsbury

SYNOPSIS:

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.


REVIEW:

This is a book that whilst I’ve heard quite a lot about it for some time is one that I kept on the back burner for a time when I felt that that I wanted something different, something genre breaking and of course a story that I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to get.

This tale by Samantha is all of this and yet it also breaks Science Fiction boundaries, adds a good dollop of Urban Fantasy and also blends within a good helping of criminal mystery that all round makes this a book that will be a firm favourite of book clubs up and down the country. It’s one that is going to get a tremendous amount of hype behind it and whilst a fair few of these are overrated, I’ve been lucky enough to read this before it really got going.

It is a book that has great characters, the author really knows how to weave a cracking story with great pace and prose which all round, alongside a lead character that I just loved so spend time with, made one of my reading experiences of the year so far. It really is going to take some beating and definitely something I’d recommend a lot of others to try.

No comments: