Unraveling Words: Unraveling: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Title: The Bone Season

Series: The Bone Season Book One

Publication Date: August 20, 2013

It is the year 2059. Several major world cities are under the control of a security force called Scion. Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London, part of a secret cell known as the Seven Seals. The work she does is unusual: scouting for information by breaking into others’ minds. Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare kind of clairvoyant, and in this world, the voyants commit treason simply by breathing.

But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city—Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now 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.

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My Thoughts

The Bone Season was one of those special kind of books. The kind where you get caught up in the story and you finish it and you think it's brilliant then about 10mins later you start thinking about the awesome review you have to write for such a great book, and that's when it hits you. It's not actually that great.

When I finished reading The Bone Season I rushed over to Goodreads and rated it 4 Stars. That's a great rating right? Then I started thinking about the review. What I was going to write and how, and it was when I started getting pissed. Everything about the book started ticking me off. I didn't like most of the aspects that made The Bone Season what it is, but I still got caught up with the story towards the end. By the end of my mental review writing I ended up going back to Goodreads and lowering the rating to 2 Stars. Yes, you read that right. Two.

I'll start off by saying what I did like. That it was about psychics. I am a sucker for books about psychics, and Shannon built and incredibly detailed world about them. So detailed that I would have to stop and think about what kind of power they actually had half the time. This shouldn't have been such a problem since there is a diagram and everything to break them down at the beginning, but I read this in an eBook format and therefore the diagram was completely useless. I could not read it for the life me. I tried EVERYTHING. Nothing zoomed it in enough to actually make out what was written. If anyone knows how to read maps/diagrams on a eBook please let me know.

This ties in to my second point. The language. Or the language used in this world. Yes we are in London, so they are speaking British English. I have read enough books with this English before that I have mostly gotten used to it, but the problem is that this wasn't just British English it also had steampunk-like elements and slang to top it all off. I had learned my lesson with Stormdancer, read the glossary first before attempting to read and understand the whole book, so after 5 minutes of reading I went looking for the glossary, read the whole thing, cleared up some of the issues, and went back to reading. It helped quite a bit. But the whole time I felt like I was reading to study something. As in I had to remember everything from the glossary and piece together the diagram that I couldn't read. It was a bit exhausting to say the least, but I passed the 15% mark, got used to it and it was much smoother after that in that sense.

Next up we have Paige, the special snowflake. I didn't like her. She made no sense. At first I thought she ended up on bad times and that's why she had to join the psychic Mafia, but here is the kicker. She is rich! Or at least her dad is! Maybe her dad doesn't love her and gives her a hard time then? (I actually thought this for a good portion of the book) He actually does love her! So I don't get it. So she doesn't like school big woop, most people don't, that doesn't mean the all end up joining the damn Mafia. She had to have options! But it was all just so close minded.

Then we have her actually personality. I REALLY didn't like her. Once she gets to the Rephims or whatever they are called, she starts acting all high and mighty like she is up on a pedestal and they are all lowly, horrible creatures and she is just So. Much. Better. She starts getting the other humans in trouble while she doesn't suffer any of the consequences because Artur is protecting her and she has the gal to go off on the guy all the bloody time! Everyone is telling her she is so damn lucky to be living with Artur, and they are right! But since she is so high up in her pedestal having an actual room to herself with a bed and everything is not good enough, while everyone else is pretty much sleeping on the floor with no blankets, barely any food and getting physically abused most nights. But ya know, the hell with it.

Moving on! The romance was also a no-no. I understood that it was building up to that. How could it not? Artur was always protecting her for some reason or other and she was always being a brat, but the spark, the connection, was never there. Then suddenly past the 80% mark they suddenly just start kissing and being all over each other and it just wasn't natural. It was like someone flipped a switch and they wen't from tolerating enemies to lovers all of a sudden. Just no.

Now, I did say I got caught up towards the end. And I did. The climax of the plot had me immersed, because there was finally something exciting going on. Explosions, fighting, people dying, psychic fighting going on. It was awesome. But that was the last 20% of the book, which is why I was left feeling good about it.

When it all came down to it, The Bone Season just couldn't hold it's own. Notice how I didn't talk much about the world-building, just touched on it? Needless to say it didn't quite make sense either. The reasons where there but when you put it all together it wasn't enough to have ended up as this new world. 1+1 did not equal 2, more like 1, then 0 xD

So...