A review by isaacreads
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

1.0

I found this book thoroughly underwhelming. I couldn't relate to Page as a character at all, and I feel like she could have been replaced by a cardboard cutout with the same powers and the book wouldn't change at all except for being much much shorter. The world building was extraordinarily broad, but not deep or complex enough, I study architecture, and while the descriptions of areas was vivid enough to make me visualize it, I really struggled to visualize the scale of the different rephs areas, and where they are in relation to each other, which is a problem I have never had with books before. There are too many nicknames for too many things that you just can't keep track of. It definitely feels like a book trying to set a series up, it doesn't feel like there is a self contained plot within this book. I feel like this is largely due to the false start in London, where alot of time is spent creating that world, then you get to oxford and then you start the novel all over again, with a new set of world building happening.

As for the pacing its simultaneously too fast and too slow, to much time is spent explaining what harlies, bone-grubbers- and mime lords are, and far to little exploring why the system their trying to over throw. It feels like it should have been a trilogy within itself rather than the start of a entire series.

This book chooses to tell rather than show the inequality that exists in the society. The romance that blooms between the main character and the love interest feels utterly forced, I saw it coming from a mile away, and considering the lack of slow careful development, and the way the plot kind of forced them together, im sad to say that that romance is NOT it.