The Bone Season is dark, with a significant amount of violence, emotional manipulation, and physical abuse. While this book and subsequent series may not be for everyone because of that, I really enjoyed it. Like, stayed up until the wee hours of the morning because I couldn’t bring myself to stop reading it kind of enjoyment. I needed to know what was going to happen next.

To begin with, there is a lot of world-building and orders of magic that need to be explained. Rather than attempt to remember everything as I was reading it for the first time, I let myself be carried along for the ride and eventually the slang stuck. That leniency for the first 100 and so pages really helped my enjoyment of the novel and its world. I think if you try too hard to make sense of the different orders and types of clairvoyancy that are being thrown at you in this futuristic-yet-Victorian, alternate-universe London, it would become overwhelming very easily.

Shannon does a fairly good job at world-building in a way that feels natural by having characters from different backgrounds being confused by what’s going on and requiring an explanation from another character, but it is still a fair bit of info-dumping. For that reason, and our male protagonist, this was a four-star read for me instead of higher.

As for said male protagonist, Warden, or Arcturus, I really want to hate him. In fact, I do hate the origin story of him and Paige Mahoney, our main character, but even as I was hating him, I found myself giddy at the tension between the pair. 

When Paige is captured and imprisoned in the alternate-universe Oxford, she is “acquired” by the Warden who becomes her keeper, which straddles the line of a very dangerous, toxic trope. The Warden doesn’t help matters by being on the bad side of morally grey. On top of that trope, the Warden is also an other-worldly creature known as a Rephaite, so there is forbidden love and enemies-to-lovers tangled up in here. Especially during the first half of the book, his actions are damnable…but dammit I still liked his character. My hope is that the power imbalance between the pair levels out in the next book(s), which is to say that I’ll still definitely be continuing on with the series.

I didn't love it, but I liked it. I think Paige was very relatable, at least for me : she was brave, but sometimes scared, she was intelligent but sometimes made dumb choices... The world is quite confusing at first and so is the magic system, and I would have liked to know more about it. One of my major critic about this book is the romance, that I felt really unnecessary : 

 why would Paige (who is literally treated as a slave) fall in love with Warden (her master) ? Not to mention the huge age gap that made me so uncomfortable.
A way better depiction of a master / slave (not romantic) relationship is made in the Fifth Season by NK Jemisin.

Outside from these few critics, I think the book is still worth reading and I had a really good time doing so ! This is clearly a first book, but a promising first book, and I will for sure be continuing with the Bone Season. 

I can see how Shannon has matured as an author. I really enjoyed this book when it first came out but this story feels a bit more clunky on a reread.  The love story and Paige's misunderstood teen attitude are a little overdone. That being said- I still really enjoy this fast-paced adventure through London and Sheol 1. The variety of clairvoyants is so fun and I love the chart in the physical books. Whenever the next book in this series comes out I listen to all the books over again on audible - the narrator is excellent.