Book Review: The Bone Season

I really enjoyed The Bone Season. After recently being sucked into a hyped book that miserably failed, I was skeptical about this one. Fortunately, the world and the characters were more engaging than I expected.

My favourite thing about this book is that the world building and the ‘magic system’ is nothing like I’ve read before. However, the beginning stages of this book provides a lot of info dumps that were honestly quite confusing and hard to follow. I can sort of tell you what some of the characters are able to do but I also can’t explain it well. It made enough sense to follow but I basically had to hope it all sticks and becomes clear to me in the end. I didn’t mind it as much though, because the story itself was interesting.

I was actually thrown off by how old Paige, the main character, is. She’s introduced to us as 19 years old but she felt more like a 20-something to me. This book also felt part adult fiction, part YA to me and I’m still not sure if it fits one more than the other. The narration didn’t feel YA but it also reminded me of certain YA books (mainly Divergent and Twilight) because of a few things that happened. This wasn’t necessarily bad but I guess I expected the book to be unique throughout so these similarities felt a bit disappointing.

I was definitely a fan of the pacing of this book. It kept me engaged with the mystery, suspense, and action. The backstory wasn’t as interesting but I still found the book hard to put down.

I also loved the fact that there was barely any romance! That was so refreshing to me and while it was hinted at in the beginning, it was a slow build up that lasted months (THANK YOU). My only gripe about this is that when something did happen near the end, it felt too sudden or impulsive. It could be because of one detail but I guess I won’t know til I read more of the series.

I’m also a little bit torn because while I liked the MC’s development, I didn’t really care about the characters. I could see which ones were meant to be liked and disliked and I guess the predictability sort of underwhelmed me. I may also just be getting tired of the Chosen One trope because some things were just too convenient for Paige.

Overall I liked this book and I’m curious enough to see where it goes. I’m wary of it being a seven book series though, because I don’t want to see it drag just for the sake of having that many.

[star rating=”3.5″]