The writing is on the simplistic side, and we get the impression to be taken for morons or children at times. The awkward way Paige constantly justifies her actions felt as if the author was writing out of a textbook to not piss the reader off : LOOK! I know I'm not supposed to trust him! But I have REASONS! LOOK AT THEM! WOULD YOU JUST LOOK AT THEM! So tiring.

There is a very large cast of characters about whom I could not care less. Short of a few main characters, the rest of the cast are largely extraneous and utterly forgettable. BFS: The instrument of Paige's botched onstage execution at the Bicentenary, a greatsword called the Inquisitor's Justice. Going into this novella I was pretty curious to see what this was gonna add to the world that we are presented and how it was gonna add to the story and move it. In retrospective, I should have paid a lot more attention to the fact that this is, in fact, a prequel to The Bone Season and, therefore, it was not gonna move the story forward in any way.Unlike pretty much all of the positive review here, I paid for this book and I am not a literary critic. Just a normal person who fell in love the The Bone Season many years ago. The new characters that we are introduced to are all so varied and different that it can't help but be really fun. I liked them all for very different reasons each and every one of them, but the one thing they all had in common that I enjoy it's their shadiness and mysteriousness about anything to do more personally with them. Of course, it makes sense why each and everyone one of them is mysterious, which only enhances everything. Shannon began writing The Bone Season while working for book agent David Godwin and attending St Anne's College, Oxford. [7] She had started working for Godwin when he offered her an internship after he declined her earlier novel Aurora. [1] After some time looking over manuscripts and gaining experience in the book business, Shannon came up with the premise for The Bone Season. [1] Shannon imagined "a girl, having the exact same day at work that I was, but she happened to be clairvoyant" and began planning the novel while on her lunch break. [8] She began using the environment of St Anne's College and the overall University of Oxford architecture and landscaping as an inspiration for the novel's Sheol I penal colony setting. An interviewer noted that Oxford has many "impossibly neat, manicured lawns and well-tended buildings that act as a kind of tree-ring-dating window onto Britain's architectural past (and present)." [1] Shannon came up with the idea of a shanty town in between the colleges as a way of "juxtaposing the squalor the humans were forced to live in and the grand colleges where The Rephaim live on either side." [9] Reception [ edit ] Writers have such a complex and often painful and confusing job and industry to navigate and art is hard enough as it is without all that. Abusing authors because they're not rushing is not helping the books come faster.

Drugged without her knowledge so that her 'master' can view all her memories as if he's watching a movie - she has NO idea that he's doing this, and once she does it's too late and irreversible. okay i DEFINITELY predicted that cade was a dreamwalker like she has that line where she goes "his aura feels familiar" and i was like HAHAHA unless? and then i forgot about it and THEN I WAS RIGHT????? You'll want to read this one after reading at least the first book in the series, as, even though this is a prequel, I think this would have been too confusing for anyone who doesn't have prior knowledge of the world and Unnaturalness. As it was, it had been a while since I'd read the first two books, and I found myself trying to remember details. I could have read the third book, The Song Rising, before getting into this one, as I do have it, but I was in the middle of assignment hell and just wanted something short and easy to take my mind off marketing plans and sustainable business. I love it when novellas are very important and add to the story and that is exactly what that one did. I also think it was brilliant that the hardest, rawest, and more triggering part of the healing process was handled in a separate work, so if that is uncomfortable or triggering for you you can just skip it and you will not really miss anything. The characters are great and the story has enough mystery to not be completely flat or boring in any sense. Really, is a good story, but it did nothing for me.Samantha Shannon is incredible at introducing us to new parts of her world without it ever feeling forced or unnecessarily. Lima Syndrome: Warden's treatment of Paige is singularly humane and considerate, which seems incongruous until we learn that he's a dissident of the Sargas regime and unsympathetic toward the violent colonization of Sheol I. He always intended to make an ally of her, should she prove trustworthy. But by looking through her memories to determine whether or not she's likely to betray him, he comes to empathize with Paige on a deeply personal level and eventually to desire more than alliance from her. In short: the publisher's overblown hype set this book up for judgment and failure, but the book itself provided the rope.