Book Review: The Bone Season (The Bone Season #1) by Samantha Shannon

The Bone Season (The Bone Season #1) by Samantha Shannon
Release Date: 20th August 2013

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Format: Paperback 
Pages: 452
Rating: 4.5/5.0

This book was read as part of the 2013 ODY and 2013 BSR

Summary from Goodreads:

"It is the year 2059. Several major world cities are under the control of a security force called Scion. Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London, part of a secret cell known as the Seven Seals. The work she does is unusual: scouting for information by breaking into others’ minds. Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare kind of clairvoyant, and in this world, the voyants commit treason simply by breathing.

But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city—Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly—as soldiers in their army."

Review:

For the past couple of days, I've struggled to write this review, because I'm not entirely sure what my feelings for The Bone Season are. On the one hand, the storyline is brilliant, the detail of this new world is amazing, and I loved our main characters. But on the other hand, there's just something that feels a bit off, and I think it comes down to the fact that I didn't feel immersed in this world - I felt like an outsider looking it.

But isn't that what we do with every book? Well, yes, but this is different. With most stories, I feel like I'm there with the protagonists. I'm invested in the storyline, I care about our protagonists futures. A book may be set in a completely new and foreign world to me, but I believe it and I'm there with the characters - I'm completely immersed in the story. But with this, I didn't get that. It wasn't until well into the second half of the novel or so that I finally began to feel invested in these people and this new world. Up until that point though, I felt like an outsider looking in, and overall, it made me struggle to get into the book.

That being said, this is an amazing read. The storyline is so new and interesting, the new world established is so messed up, and the Rephaim are a real treat to read about. There's just enough mystery to keep you intrigued, enough action to keep you on edge, and plenty of romance. I don't know what it was that wasn't allowing me to get invested in the beginning, because I was well invested in the end, and will undoubtedly be continuing on with this series. I would definitely check this one out for a new twist on the supernatural and dystopian genres. 

Book Review: Fracture by Megan Miranda

Fracture by Megan Miranda
Release Date: 12th February 2012

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing 
Format: eBook 
Pages: 272
Rating: 3.0/5.0

This book was read as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge

Summary from Amazon:

"Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine
-despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?"

Review:
I have to say that this book underwhelmed me. The premise is really, really interesting, and I did enjoy this part of the plot - it's a fascinating idea, the idea that severe trauma can cause changes in our body and our mind, that science and medicine can't explain. However, I don't really think that this book pulled this concept off that well. It's not that it was bad, but I do think it could be better. It's kinda like how I felt about Slide by Jill Hathaway in this respect. The premise of the story is interesting in itself, but I don't really think that Megan Miranda pulled it off. There was no OMG moment for me in the novel; there was potential for an OMG moment at one point, but it played out way too quickly for my liking.

Moving onto another point, I wasn't the biggest fan of the romances in this novel. The romance between Troy and Delaney felt, to me, forced and a bit convenient. I get that they share some sort of bond because they are both afflicted with the same kind of problem, but you don't become romantically interested in someone just because of that, which really is the only reason that these two come together. Troy was acting a bit stalkerish at the beginning of the novel, and any sane girl would have run in the opposite direction (this was especially the case when Delaney found out something about a certain old man with a cane), but Delaney didn't, and I just didn't understand that. Secondly, there's Decker, and the relationship between these two and the way it progressed was completely predictable. I didn't mind the romance between these two, but I knew what was going to happen between these two from probably the first page.

Overall, this wasn't what I would call an amazing read. Which is interesting because I'm seeing this book pop up on some people's best books of the year lists. So, really, you can't just trust my word on this, it's probably that this book just wasn't for me.