Abounding with dream scapes, spirits
Will she be the next J K Rowling and come out with book after book filled with supernatural characters and unbelievable happenings and also see her books visualised on the big screen like Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games ? Well, we have to wait and see. The first of a seven book series, The Bone Season by British writer Samantha Shannon is on the lines of Harry Potter series. However, one should give credit to this young author for coming out with a storyline that is skilfully weaved from Seven Dials to Oxford through the main protagonist Paige Mahoney in all its originality.
Set in a complete escapist, fictional world in the year 2059, the book focuses on Paige who works in the criminal underworld of Scion London that is based in Seven Dials. She is employed by a mime lord Jaxon Hall and her basic job is to scout for information by breaking into people’s minds.
Paige is a clairvoyant, a dream walker and in this criminal set up, where she works, she commits treason simply by breathing. But one day, her life changes as she is attacked, kidnapped and kept a prisoner in Oxford. Here the author has faltered as there is no clarity about her kidnappers, the Rephaites who she writes are not humans but no other clear details have been provided about them. In fact, your head spins with the amount of information dumped on you as one skips from page to page and the author jumps from clairvoyants to dream walkers to poltergeists to blood consorts to amaurotics to bone grubbers. The book highlights the concept of ‘dominance and submission’ to the hilt, albeit in a different setting where naturals, unnaturals and aliens as well as spirits inhabit this society.
The dominance of the powerful over the weak, which is as old as man, is the underlying theme of this novel which is a flawed and dystopian system. The slangs used in the book are nasty and unacceptable. Another aspect about the book, which is – why the Rephaims are so brutal and inhuman towards the unnaturals – has not been explained properly while Paige’s keeper Warden who is betrothed to Nashira is hardly developed. On the lines of the Twilight, Paige and Warden don’t like each other (she fears and hates him) but ultimately help one another (blood sucking episode) and invariably fall for one another where the oppressor helps the victim as in a cliched Victorian romance.
A promise that this young author fails to keep is an information chart identifying the hundreds of seers, mediums, augurs, sensors and those Rhabdomancers, Halomancers, Theriomanc ers, Daphnomancers, Cleidomancers, etc.
In fact, it is better if the reader keeps a dictionary for reference. The length of the novel is as unbelievable as the concepts in the story and one has to put in a lot of effort to finish reading the book that may stretch to many days. Recently, the film rights to this book was sold to actor Andy Serkis’s company, The Imaginarium, and it’s easy to comprehend the reasons as the narrative is slick, hurtling through the dreams and fantasies of its main characterPaige.