The Bone Season

Title: The Bone Season

Author: Samantha Shannon [Website/Blog][Facebook][Twitter]

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Series: Bone Season, Bk 1

ISBN: 9781620401392

Length: ""The Seven Orders of Clairvoyance" + Map of "The Penal Colony of Sheol I" + 452 pages + "Glossary"

Obtained: Library copy

Why this book?:

It first came to my attention because I was instructed at work to "keep an eye on" Today's new Book Club.  This was their first read.  I didn't read it on time for their purposes (and I won't be reading all), but it did sound interesting.  So I added it to my holds-list.

Comments:

I read this pretty quickly considering how long it is.  A couple of days around work/etc.  There's some world-setting (other reviewer's call it info-dumping), but I was fine with that.  The clairvoyants are "unnatural" and tracked down.  Of course this doesn't stop them, only makes them operate underground.  Many end up in syndicates that basically amount to gangs.

I hadn't heard all the "new J.K. Rowling" hype, so I never thought to compare them.  Instead, I thought of it more in terms of genre - dystopian.  With consideration for the aliens tossed in.

As for the characters, I liked Paige.  I even (mostly) liked Warden.  (I saw reviews after the fact of those who did not).  The other characters were good or bad as it goes, but not outstanding enough to remember (That's not to say the bad guys weren't sickeningly so.  I just think of them as more collectively bad than individually bad.)...

Amazingly, despite my bias against dystopian books, I did enjoy this.  Or at least I found it intense enough to keep my interest.  I was reading it during my dinner break and found myself frustrated that I was so close to the end and had to go back to work.  Ah, well.  Such is life.  I did eventually finish it.  And I'm very curious as to what will happen next.  Though I was surprised to see this has been proposed as a 7-book series.  What is going to happen that takes 7 books?  I guess we'll see if it's a good (I want more!) thing or a bad (totally dragging) thing.