The Mime Order – Samantha Shannon – Book Review

Goodreads blurb: Paige Mahoney has escaped the brutal prison camp of Sheol I, but her problems have only just begun: many of the survivors are missing and she is the most wanted person in London…

As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on the dreamwalker, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city’s gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take centre stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. But where is Warden? Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided.

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With The Mime Order, author Samantha Shannon has the unenviable task of coming up with a competent sequel in what was truly a mindblowing book, The Bone Season [Link to my review of the book], and man, does she kick ass or what, quite literally and figuratively as well.

The enigmatic Paige Mahoney, the protagonist, the dreamwalker, the Pale Dreamer has escaped the clutches of the Rephaite, and has come back to London having spent a tortuous six months in Sheol I. And although the experience has made her wiser and helped her understand herself and her inherent strengths a lot better, there is a lot to be done and hardly any time to do it all. As if this wasn’t enough, the unholy partnership between Scion and the Rephaite are doing all they can in their power to take down Paige before she can do any further damage to their carefully laid plans.

While Paige struggles to come to terms with all that she has learned about the Scion and the Rephaite and their devious dangerous plans, she is completely clueless as to how she can convince the Syndicate about how the Scion is anything but good for them as well as for the amaurotics. The fact that her face is plastered all over London as a wanted criminal does not help things, nor does the sudden death of Haymarket Hector, the Underlord of the Syndicate. While Paige is not directly involved with the same, there is enough circumstantial evidence against her to implicate her of the crime.

Things reach a point where she has to completely rely on her Mime Lord, the White Binder Jaxon and his power over the Syndicate to remain free from Scion. But with the death of the Underlord, a scrimmage is announced and the White Binder and his mollisher, the Pale Dreamer enroll as participants in a melee to decide the next Underlord of the Syndicate.

Action packed, fast paced and adrenaline filled, The Mime Order is a non-stop roller coaster ride which leaves the readers with no time to catch their breath to enjoy the scenery. I only wish Samantha Shannon had written all the books in this series and then published them at six month intervals or so to enable readers to savor and enjoy the series in its entirety. Suffice to say, I now have one series whose next books I shall fervently look forward to buying and reading with great gusto.

Click here to purchase the book from Flipkart [Link] or Amazon [Link]

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A review copy of this book was provided to me by the publishers in return for an honest and unbiased review.

The Bone Season – Samantha Shannon – Book Review

Goodreads blurb: The year is 2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of Scion London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. Her job: to scout for information by breaking into people’s minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant and, in the world of Scion, she commits treason simply by breathing.

It is raining the day her life changes for ever. Attacked, drugged and kidnapped, Paige is transported to Oxford – a city kept secret for two hundred years, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. Paige is assigned to Warden, a Rephaite with mysterious motives. He is her master. Her trainer. Her natural enemy. But if Paige wants to regain her freedom she must allow herself to be nurtured in this prison where she is meant to die.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine and 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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Although I haven’t read too many books in the fantasy fiction genre, I have read enough to know a really good book from an ‘also-ran’ one, and trust me when I say this, The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon is one of the really good books in this genre, and marks the first book of what promises to be a wonderfully written series in this genre.

As the blurb states, this book is set in a dystopian London of the future where in the world of Scion, clairvoyants like Paige Mahoney are treated like the enemy and jailed like criminals. But Paige is not like any of the other voyants, she has gifts that are unlike powers that other voyants and ‘unnaturals’ have, she is far more powerful than most of them, but she doesn’t quite realize it.

It is only when she is imprisoned and sent to Oxford that she slowly begins to realize the full strength of her powers. While her relationship with her keeper, The Warden, a member of the Rephaites is strained at best, the fact that he tolerates her tantrums and outright rebellious behavior is something that strikes her as odd. The simmering tension between Paige and the Warden makes for the more interesting portions of this book, and what their relationship finally develops into as part of the gradual journey this book takes us on makes for lovely reading.

At the heart of it, this narrative is, in my opinion, as much a ‘coming of age’ story of Paige as it is of how she emerges the ‘most unlikely hero’ of the masses and how she harnesses her immense power for the greater good of the masses.

With Scion, the citadel and Oxford, the author creates what probably is the best dystopian future that I have read about in quite a while now. And with the various types of voyants, Rephaites, and other species mentioned in the narrative, she ups the ante in this wonderful first book. Given the fact that this is the debut book of this author, it speaks volumes for her ability to engage with her readers and immerse them in her world of Scion and Oxford.

Gotta go now as I am ready to jump straight into The Mime Order, the second book in this series.

Click here to purchase The Bone Season from Flipkart [Link] or Amazon [Link].

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A review copy of this book was provided to me by the publishers in return for an honest and unbiased review of the same.