'...Some of us don’t want Styrofoam, Paige. Some of us want silver and satin and sordid streets and spirits...' [loc. 6640]
The novel opens in London in 2056, over a hundred years since Scion took control in response to 'an epidemic of clairvoyance'. Paige Mahoney lives with her father and works in an oxygen bar (caffeine and alcohol being prohibited substances) in what initially feels like a steampunk setting. But Paige lives a double life: she's a member of a notorious gang of clairvoyants, or 'voyants' -- the term is used for a broad spectrum of psychic powers -- and her special talent is out-of-body excursions, dreamwalking. One night a job goes wrong and Paige is hauled off as a prisoner to Scion's secret base: the 'lost city' of Oxford, a Type A Restricted Sector. There she discovers that everything she thought she knew about Scion is wrong. What used to be the United Kingdom is under the control of an alien race, the Rephaim, who use Scion to 'harvest' human clairvoyants in their decades-long war against the Emim. The harvest is every ten years, and it is known as the Bone Season.
The ambience of The Bone Season is very much epic YA, with a protagonist who's uniquely gifted, whose worth -- though she's at pains to conceal it -- is recognised by both humans and Rephaim, whose courage and determination, et cetera. The world-building is good, and very detailed, though inevitably a lot of it is conveyed in infodumps: I did love the alternate history, and the meticulous classification of various forms of clairvoyance. The emotional switchbacks of the plot are well-paced, and the central romantic relationship credibly Gothic. (It took me a while to realise that the romantic subplot of The Bone Season has more than a little in common with Jane Eyre.)
I don't think I am the target audience for this novel: I enjoyed reading it, but I didn't love it enough to continue the series (three more books so far, another three to come).
Another read from the depths of my Kindle: purchased in 2014 ...
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