Synopsis
About Samantha Shannon
See more books from this AuthorThe first of a projected set of seven novels, this book is for those who like their dystopian science fiction multilayered, philosophical and complex to the point of impenetrability.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from KirkusThis extremely strong beginning will have readers eager to see whether Shannon can maintain her stride for a lengthy series.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from Publishers WeeklyThis book enforces a rigid, color-coded class system that places Paige high above others and causes her captors, the Rephaim, to refer to themselves with great, formal grandiosity. At last, we reach a reason for reading “The Bone Season”: though “Rephaim” has biblical provenance...
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from NY TimesThe storyline really sticks in your head due to its difference from any other. It doesn't feel like another overdone storyline but rather something fresh and brand new.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from GuardianThe Bone Season, the first instalment in Samantha Shannon's ambitious and imaginative seven-book series, contains great ingredients, but the resulting soup is less than satisfying. It would have benefited from a vigorous session with a red pen.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from GuardianThere aren't enough attractive characters for an epic, and maybe even fantasy fans won't be rushing back for more. But the first volume of printed fiction, by now, plays a relatively small part in the prospects of the Bone Season project; and besides, episode two may be terrific.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from GuardianThis extremely strong beginning will have readers eager to see whether Shannon can maintain her stride for a lengthy series.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from Publishers WeeklyVital questions, all embedded in a provocatively incomplete but highly arcane stew of aether, auras, spirit-spools, angels and poltergeists and ectoplasm. Ms. Shannon certainly has an advanced vocabulary for such things.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from WSJ onlineSo how is The Bone Season? It's terrific—intelligent, inventive, dark, and engrossing enough to keep me up late to finish. Paige Mahoney, the novel's street-smart clairvoyant narrator, is more akin to the post-apocalyptic girl gladiator in Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games than to Harry Potter.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from NPR"The Bone Season," while an entertaining read that combines elements of the dystopian and paranormal romance genres, does not quite live up to the hype surrounding it. While Shannon proves herself to be a great world-builder, she is far more adept at telling than showing...
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonI picked up THE BONE SEASON on vacation and couldn’t put it down until I finished. Shannon is a first-time author, a 21-year-old college graduate, in fact, and the novel feels complete, until you get to the ending and find out it’s the first of a planned seven-book series.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonNicely dressed in a full wardrobe of psycho-speculative trappings...The Bone Season is a very effective, albeit very conventional adolescent fantasy. It has a YA flavour, but in recent years this has become an all but essential ingredient of bestsellerdom.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season | See more reviews from Toronto StarThe large talent on display here suggests just how good Shannon could get in the next six books of this promising series.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season...Shannon writes so well that you stay interested, intrigued by the knife-edge motivation of characters with “six-seater lips” whose “high-collared dresses always made her think of the gallows”.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonShannon’s smart and imaginative tale of intrepid dreamwalker Paige will captivate teen fantasy and suspense fans with its keen details, thrilling plot, lucid emotions, and moral concerns.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonModern mythmaking is no easy feat, but Shannon appears to be well on her way; this is a potential classic.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season...like a painstakingly concocted serum, Shannon has combined a cup of “Harry Potter,” a pound of “The Hunger Games,” and a smidgen of “Twilight,” pouring her words into a vessel that once held the Burgess “Clockwork” classic. The result is mixed — at times tasty, often bland, and never fully settling on its own unique formula.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonEven with so much going on, it's hard sometimes to imagine how exactly Shannon will stretch this tale into a seven-book saga.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonLong story short, The Bone Season is a good yet problematic first novel. The problems aren’t enough to derail the story, nor are they issues everyone will find difficult to deal with. They frustrated me, but not enough to want to throw the book across the room.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonDon't worry if the terms are confusing; readers are supplied with a glossary and a chart listing the 51 types of clairvoyants...At this point, there is a squeak of protest from those in the peanut gallery who take pleasure in the sound of words. It's difficult to find a satisfying pronunciation for many of Shannon's neologisms.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonWith Shannon being referred to in the publishing world as the next J.K Rowling, one would anticipate complex world-building characters to love...and a story to follow for several installments. While Shannon shows talent, "Bone Season" just doesn't measure up to all its hype.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season...remarkable is the discipline of Shannon’s prose. Young writers, and especially young fantasy writers, have a tendency to ladle on the description...But more often than not, “The Bone Season” is as economical (if not quite as stylish) as a hardboiled detective novel...
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season is a striking, brain-breaking, lushly vivid world, with a simple and beautiful struggle between men and monsters and the unspoken rules governing all.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThis series’ blend of sci-fi and sorcery recalls “Potter.” Its dystopian themes recall “The Hunger Games.” The population will likely be devouring these books — and probable film adaptations — well into the next decade.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe pace of the book is slow at times and there’s an information overload but Mahoney’s fictional escapist world is well-etched out and things start gathering pace towards the end.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season will cater to all age ranges. It has a lot of YA crossover appeal with a young heroine who is no longer a teen. Despite the familiar narrative, readers will appreciate this new world and the characters it brings forth. It’s a promising beginning to what could be an epic series.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonAs the tension ratchets up to a fever pitch, the action – which was already intense – kicks into high gear, and a reader can only sit back and enjoy the ride. The final breathtaking pages will not only leave a reader anxiously anticipating the next installment but also celebrating the diverse and multi-layered world Ms. Shannon creates.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonFans of fantasy, dystopian, science-fiction will enjoy Bone Season with is fleshed out characters and vibrant world-building.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe writing style of The Bone Season isn’t exactly smooth, but it’s easy to read. There are some rough spots in Shannon’s narrative style that will hopefully be smoothed out in future installments. Despite my quibbles with the book, however, I enjoyed meeting Paige and reading about her adventures in this well-detailed new world.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season...The Bone Season is a great start to a series. I became invested in Paige and Warden as well as some of the Seven Seals and the people Paige met at Oxford. I wanted to learn more about the various abilities and how they connect to the æther.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season is one of the most gripping books I have read in months. Its plot turns left me breathless, and often terrified. I really cared for Paige and her friends and became invested in Paige’s unnerving relationship with her Rephaim keeper.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonUltimately, I was entertained by The Bone Season and will likely return for book 2...Recommended, but with some reservations.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season is for the reader that likes a good story that engages you and takes you on a thrill ride. Make sure you ties your shoes tight and get ready to sprint through these pages until you cross the finish line.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season is a captivating page turner. You will stay up late to read it, miss your stop on the bus because you are so engrossed in it and you will regret nothing.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season is easily one of the most enjoyable paranormal/distopyian novels I have read...I’m excited about the development of the series...
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonAt almost 500 pages, The Bone Season is an investment, but it's one I would recommend. Anyone who enjoys a totally different, futuristic, paranormal society won't want to miss it.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season...I felt like a passive, uninvolved observer, when I much prefer to be pulled into the pages of a book, feeling just as much at jeopardy as the characters guiding us on this journey. In The Bone Season, this never happened.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThis story is original. The ideas of a clairvoyant being able to jump into the minds of others and linger in someone’s “dreamscape”, are complex and explained in such detail that it was believable and easy for me to detach from reality and enjoy this amazing ride of a book.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonHonestly, The Bone Season is the type of book a reader needs to experience for himself. It's not necessarily going to be everyone's cup of tea, because it's pretty dark, complex and twisted. But it was, personally, the book I didn't know I wanted until I had cracked it open -- and I devoured it instantly.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season is the kind of novel that reminds you why you love reading – one that not only transports you to another world but has you walking around in a haze after closing the pages and searching for fellow readers to discuss the book with.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season...I did find that attraction between Paige and Warden was a bit of a stretch. I enjoyed their later verbal and mental fencing but Paige’s trunaround from closed off to completely trusting was a bit too abrupt for me to completely feel comfortable.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonPaige is a scrapper and the world-building was interesting enough that I would pick up the second book. But I'm not as eager for that sequel as I am to get my hands on the third in Laini Taylor's "Daughter of Smoke and Bone" trilogy or the sequel to Rachel Hartman's "Seraphina,"...
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonI fell into this book completely, heart and soul, utterly invested in this world and its characters. It's hard to form such tight connections and bonds with just a debut, but Samantha Shannon manages to do it.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonUnderground London! Oxford! Futuristic fantasyness! Romance! So much goodness. I’ll definitely be curious to see how Samantha Shannon explores this world in the future books.
Read Full Review of The Bone Season...the romance between them...makes me a little uncomfortable. It’s almost like Stockholm Syndrome to me, which is a deal-breaker to me. Keeping it platonic might have been a better idea...
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonSamantha Shannon may or may not be the next whoever, but she is definitely a masterful storyteller. The Bone Season was engaging and thought-provoking, and I'll definitely be picking up a finished copy for my shelves.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonI knew I was in for a real treat when I opened my review copy to find pages upon pages of charts printed on the first few pages and a full-on GLOSSARY from the publisher tucked inside. To some that might seem daunting, too, but to me it says one thing: serious world-building!
Read Full Review of The Bone Season...Samantha Shannon has done an amazing job of keeping the pace up in this debut work. I had a hard time stopping at the end of each chapter, especially towards the end! The action grabbed me more than the characters did...
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season has an incredibly engaging plot. And to me it never felt excessively long or drawn out. I love fantasy novels, and it has been some time since I read one that engaged me the way this one did.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonSo this is one of those book that there are so many words to describe it with but even then they're not enough. Because quite honestly The Bone Season left me speechless. Phenomenal.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe characters in "The Bone Season" are good, but not great. Paige is a protagonist in the Katniss Everdeen mold but she isn't given the same purity of motivation as someone like Katniss and, while it's easy to sympathize with Paige, she isn't a character that the reader can connect to on a deep level.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season does have an interesting plot, and Shannon can write a heck of a fight scene, but it wasn't a book that I was compelled to keep reading from chapter to chapter...
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonI highly recommend you give this a try if you like this genre of novel. It is very well written. It is not fluff. It is amazingly imaginative and action-packed.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonYou see, The Bone Season has gotten under my skin, in a good way, but I would be a total liar if I didn't also say that I have so many freaking questions floating around my head right now that I feel like my brain might explode. And it's cool, I know it's probably all part of Shannon's master plan.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonFor about 200 pages, I felt a little anxious about absorbing everything, which might explain the fact that I didn't feel fully connected with the main character, Paige, until the last section of the book.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonThe Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine—a young woman learning to harness her powers in a world where everything has been taken from her...Samantha Shannon has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonI don't want to ruin it for you, but let me just say that plots are hatched, friendships are betrayed, alliances are made and broken, battles (small and large) are fought, kisses are kissed and lessons are learned...in the most amazing way.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonI like the world created by Shannon. It’s mysterious and dangerous – the atmosphere is thick with a mixture of fear, tension and frustration. Each person has their own agenda and there is no easy way to tell who can be trusted.
Read Full Review of The Bone SeasonAn aggregated and normalized score based on 1124 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes