Tuesday, June 04, 2013

2013 book 159

Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season
This is one of the big buzz books of summer--Shannon apparently sold a seven-book series (of which this is the first), and it's already been optioned for a movie by Andy Serkis (Gollum). It takes place in the near future in an alternate world where lots of people have special psychic powers (they're called "voyants," ie, clairvoyants) and are feared and ostracized. Protagonist Paige can sense dreamspaces and some other things; it's all hard to explain. Anyway, she gets kidnapped and taken away to a weird place called Sheol I, run by some other form of being, and . . . it's complicated, I don't know. There is a LOT going on here and a LOT of characters to keep track of. At first I was intrigued by the world but thought Paige was a little bit annoying, but by 3/4 of the way through I was like, yeah, I'd totally read seven books set in this universe. The writing is solid even if the story is all over the place, but I assume a lot of that is setup for later action. There are a few characters I'd really love to read more about, and the ending leaves things in a pretty interesting place. Really looking forward to the follow-up. B+.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in August.

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