Once Upon a Twilight!: Samantha Shannon

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten New to Me Authors I Read this Year

Walter Jury & S.E. Fine: They co-wrote SCAN due out May 2014. Scan is science fiction at its finest, great team work behind the book.

Morgan Rhodes: Not sure why it took me so long to finally read Falling Kingdoms but I'm glad I had Rebel Spring in hand to read back to back. LOVED!!!

Heidi McLaughlin: Started with Lost in You and now Ive read a couple of McLaughlin's books such as My Unexpected Forever. Great writer.

Samantha Shannon: It took me a few tries to get into the book, but when I came back to it and started from the beginning again with a clear mind, I was SOLD on The Bone Season.

Jennifer Miller: Pretty Little Lies was a much needed HEA read and I loved Miller's writing especially how she began each chapters, Awesome touch!

Sarah Crossan: Breathe is one of those books that pops into your head time after time long after you finished reading it.

Shannon Messenger: I am thrilled I did pick up Let the Sky Fall, its such a unique concept Messenger wrote that I fell in love with.

Rick Yancey: The 5th Wave was amazeballs, had me at the edge of my seat the whole time.

Zoraida Córdova: Love me a great story based in the sea with all sorts of sea creatures such as Mermaids with razor-sharp teeth. Córdova won herself a fan with The Vicious Deep.

Abigail Gibbs: Her story started off on Wattpad and now is a published book that has turned series, Can't wait to sink my teeth into The Dark Heroine's sequel Autumn Rose.

Welcome to our stop on Samantha Shannon's blog tour for 'The Bone Season' hosted by Bloomsbury USA. The Bone Season has already been optioned by The Imaginarium Studios and is set as a 7 book deal that Shannon got a 6 figure deal for. She is a recent graduate of Oxford University. All this at the age of 21. TODAY book club has kicked off making 'The Bone Season' the first book in this interactive digital book club.

The Bone Season
The Bone Season #1
Author: Samantha Shannon
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Dystopian/Fantasy
Released: August 20th 2013
Review Source: Bloomsbury USA

“Welcome to Scion, no safer place. 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, she commits treason simply by breathing.

But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister than Scion. The 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 clairvoyants 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.”

Samantha Shannon's debut is thrilling complex futuristic fantasy tale situated in a dystopian London. When you crack the first page to begin reading you are immediately introduced to Scion London's criminal underworld. Their is a secret society you can say that protects its Clairvoyant residents from the Amaurotic (non-clairvoyant) residents listed as Seven Dials. In this world that Samantha Shannon created if you are clairvoyant in any way you are at risk every second of your life because its treason to be any of the seven orders. So most clairvoyants turn to a life of crime to earn protection.

I hope so far I'm not too confusing. The Bone Season is probably one of the most complex novels I have read in a long time. The last time I think I had to think so hard and pay very close attention to the story was with one of Dan Brown's novel. The Bone Season comes with a glossary that I referenced to quite a few times throughout the whole book. I truly recommend to study the terms written in the glossary a little before beginning and then using it once you have started. If not I think it will make the book a bit hard to follow. It does sound like a bit of work but in the end the story itself is worth the homework. I can see why The Bone Season was optioned to become a movie. Shannon goes into a lot of details and keeps the reader consumed with every chapter.

The narrator of the story is 19 year old Paige. She of course is clairvoyant and part of Scion. Instead of continuing school like a normal 16 year old, Paige got involved or brainwashed into being employed for Jaxon. He is the mime-lord in charge of I-4 which is in SciLo (Scion London). She believe this was what she must do because her crush Nick introduced them. Jaxon of course took her in with open arms because Paige is one of the rare clairvoyants. See Paige is what the call a Dreamwalker. Being a Dreamwalker, Jaxon uses her to break into others mind to get information he needs. Jaxon has recruited 6 others with rare gifts like Paige and named themselves the Seven Seals.

What is a Dreamwalker you ask? A Dreamwalker is classified in The Seven Orders of Clairvoyance as Jumpers. This group is able to affect the æther outside their own physical limits. Greater sensitivity to the æther. And if you are wondering what æther is, its the spirit realm, accessible by clairvoyants. Also called the source. All these definitions are found in the book.

Everything changes one day for Paige when she is out and about alone which is extremely dangerous and this leads to her getting kidnapped. She is taken to a place that has been erased from the map for over 200 years. Paige basically can tell she isn't in Kansas anymore. And she isn't surrounded by the Lion or the Tin Man but something much worse. Are these beings Immortals? Paige has been captured by the Rephaim. The Rephain value all clairvoyants and create armies with them to fight of the Emin. The Enim are the enemies of the Rephaim and are called "the dreaded ones". They feed off flesh and are extremely mysterious. Sounds good so far? That's until you start to get deeper into the story and see how the Rephain really treat the clairvoyants. Paige is lucky in a way because she is assigned to Warden, her new keeper and trainer. Being his she is somewhat protected from what truly happens Sheol I. Even though she is still a slave and her life can be taken at any second.

Paige will have to work at fine tuning her gifts and trust her worst enemy if she ever wants to be free again or at least see Nick again. The 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.

About the author:

I'm the author of The Bone Season, the first in a projected series of seven novels. I was born in Hammersmith in 1991. From 2010 – 2013 I studied English Language and Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford, specialising in Principles of Film Criticism and the American poet Emily Dickinson. I'm now working on the second book in theBone Season series.

I'm a fan of old music, gramophones, silent film, good coffee, and real books. I have four siblings, four parents, and a male tortoise named Lily-Beth, some of whom live with me in west London. The Bone Season is my first published novel.

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To celebrate this new debut, Bloomsbury USA is offering a final copy of The Bone Season to a US or CA resident. You can enter below in the rafflecopter and read the terms and conditions. Good Luck!

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