'The Bone Season'

'The Bone Season' by Samantha Shannon

Review by Laura

 

 

 

Summary:

EVEN A DREAMER CAN START A REVOLUTION

Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London. Her job: to scout for information by breaking into people's minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant and, in the world of Scion, she commits treason simply by breathing.

 

 

Review:

The Bone Season is the gripping, debut novel from Samantha Shannon. The pages really do turn themselves. You get swept up on page one and you're not released until you’re finished, where you’re left reeling and eager for the next ride.

Samantha has been named the next JK Rowling by some critics, which is enough for anyone to be encouraged to pick up this book. The subject of the book is very different to that of the Harry Potter series but Samantha’s talent for writing at such a young age in her first book promises amazing things to come. She has a beautiful writing style that is a joy to read. The book has a very British feel to it which I love. It feels great knowing that a young British woman has written this - not much older than me. She’s really carving a path for young, aspirational, female authors.

The world of The Bone Season is so vivid and feels real. You feel as though the world could really be like this in 50 years as she blends modernity with new, futuristic imagery. Samantha has clearly thought a great deal about the world, evident in the hierarchy of Clairvoyance, which are shown at the beginning of the book. What I like is that the detail is there for fans to enjoy and yet, it isn’t totally essential for the book. You don’t have to try to learn all the names and what they mean to read the book; you can enjoy it without them. It really helps to have that part of the book separate from the story as many readers don’t like to have information dumped on them heavily throughout. The very start does info-dump as it lays down the foundations but the odd thing you may not understand isn’t crucial to the storyline.

Any questions concerning the content of the story can be referenced in the Glossary at the back of the book which helps with the world-building. The storyline really sticks in your head due to its unique spin on the genre. It doesn’t feel like another overdone storyline but rather something fresh and new.

The main character, Paige, is very likeable and relatable, and you really get behind her on her journey. As the story evolves, you see more and more of her and as you see the layers peel back and the past dug up, you really admire her endurance and strength.

The growing love story between Warden and Paige is subtle, well-paced and doesn’t totally overshadow the actual storyline. You never think it unbelievable or too rushed, but just enjoy the ride. It isn’t a big romantic story, which it may grow to be, but the very start of what could develop into an epic love. 

The book series is supposed to be seven books, at the minute I don’t know how the story will last that long, but hopefully that promises an expanding storyline that we will encounter in the second book. 

I hope the sequel will bring alive the more secondary characters in the story as they feature more to develop the story and act as expendables who help develop Paige and Warden’s characters at the minute. I’m fairly certain this will happen with characters like Jaxon and Nick on the scene who have GREAT potential to become favourite characters. The spark is there. 

The end of the book leaves you with questions and whets your appetite for the next instalment, The Mime Order. I would highly recommend The Bone Season. It is a fantastic story with a promising future, and with the rights to a film having been picked up by Andy Serkis’s company, Imaginarium, you really need no excuse to grab this book now.

 

 

Rating: 5/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

 

 



'Bomb' Will Blow You Away

'Bomb' by Sarah Mussi

Review by Christopher Moore

 

 

Summary:

I'm Genesis Wainwright. I'm a sixth-form student. I come from Somerset. My mum is the best mum in the world. I play the guitar (badly). My best friend is Holly. I'm searching for answers to the Meaning of Life. I believe in True Love. AND I'M IN LOVE WITH NAZ. I want to be a performance poet. And I'm crazy about motorbikes.

I can remember everything.

Except last night.

When Genesis goes on a blind internet date, she just wants to get over her ex-boyfriend Naz. She just wants someone to like her again. But when Genesis wakes up the morning after the date, she can't remember a thing. She doesn't know where she is, or how she got there. And she can hardly move because she is strapped into some kind of body armour ...

Before she has time to figure it out, she receives an order through an earpiece stuck in her ear. And then a voice sounds in her head: 'You have been chosen for an assignment ... The vest you're wearing is packed with high explosives. And with one mobile call we can detonate it.'

To her horror Genesis has become an agent of mass destruction, a walking weapon in the hands of a terrorist cell.

The countdown to detonation has begun: Genesis must re-examine everyone and everything she loves and make terrifying choices ... in the face of certain death.

 

 

Review:

 

The best YA books are those that stir a reaction - an emotion - in the reader. Bomb is a book that will make you sick to your stomach, give you heart palpitations, make you really feel for Mussi's protagonist, Genesis, and downright scare the absolute crap out of you. The story is dark and twisted and much like Mussi's previous book Riot, which explores forced sterilisation and overpopulation in a not-so-distant England, she pulls no punches. From the first page, she demands the reader's attention.

 

I thought it might veer into predictability by the halfway point but instead, I followed Genesis on her rollercoaster journey that had me almost tearing out the final pages with dread. In particular, I commend the in-the-moment, fast-paced, action that drives the story forward; something not every author can do and not something that I have seen successfully sustained over an entire novel. Mussi intertwines this effortlessly with Genesis' character. Living in London, I love how Mussi effortlessly anchors the story in London without removing us from the suspense of the story and the emotional connection between Genesis and the reader.

You can't help but root for Genesis. Regardless of what you might think, you feel her pain and her fear and you really have no idea how it's going to end. I love Genesis. Given her situation, she decides not to play the victim. She chooses to resist. She taps into her own power and weaponises herself against the enemy. She's clever and calculating and we need more heroines like her in the world of YA.

I rarely curse but in the immortal words of Louise O'Neill, this book is a "total mindfuck". It plays on your emotions. It's dark and gutsy but ultimately, it's a compelling read that will hold huge appeal for male readers but also, it is something that I would hugely encourage girls to read too. It doesn't have sparkly vampires. It doesn't contain star-crossed lovers. It's a bleak story, full of action and suspense and the perfect book for anyone that loves chills and thrills.

Rating: 5/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

 

Christopher Moore:

 

 

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-four year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

 

 

Follow Christopher on Twitter: @YAblooker

Find Christopher on Goodreads: Christopher Moore

Follow Christopher on Instagram: @yablooker
 





LBOY2015 Shortlist Review #5: 'Summer's Shadow' by Anna Wilson

'Summer's Shadow' by Anna Wilson

Review by Christopher Moore



 

Summary:

Her mother's will states that Summer's legal guardian is her uncle Tristan: a man Summer has never even heard of before. Forced to leave her life in London, Summer moves to Tristan's creepy, ancient house in Cornwall. There she is met with indifference from him, open hostility from her cousin, and an aunt who has chosen to leave rather than to tolerate her presence.

Soon Summer comes to believe that the house may be haunted. But is it haunted by ghosts, or by the shadows of her family's past?

Scared and lonely, Summer begins to spend more and more time in the beautiful sheltered cove she discovers nearby. But she's not alone. A local boy frequents it too. Can Summer find first love and the answers to the mysteries of her new home with this good-looking boy who appears to be too perfect to be true?


Review:

This is a sweet book that's almost literary in style, telling the story of Summer after the death of her mother and her new life at Bosleven with her estranged family. Summer is a middle-of-the-road character. It's a pity that I read Clare Furniss' The Year of the Rat before this because Furniss really captures the essence of her narrator's, Pearl's, pain and grief with splashes of humour and a distinct voice that intrigues the reader. Summer's voice is a bit flat. I found it difficult to engage with her or pay attention to what was going on. I found myself reading a page and having to re-read it because I wasn't sure what happened. I couldn't focus. I think the reader would have benefitted from a first-person perspective from Summer's point of view.

The settings were well developed; the beach, Bosleven. Wilson anchors the reader in specific places that are beautifully described.

As I read the story, I wasn't sure what sort of story it would be. There were some supernatural elements that almost echoed Alyxandra Harvey's Haunting Violet but ultimately, the story is more in line with The Year of the Rat. The characters were OK. I wanted them all to be pushed a bit further.

Overall, it's a nice read but it's not the best book in this area that I've ever read.

 Rating: 3/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ 

 

 

Christopher Moore:

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-four year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

Follow Christopher on Twitter: @YAblooker

Find Christopher on Goodreads: Christopher Moore



LBOY2015 Shortlist Review #5: 'Riot' by Sarah Mussi

'Riot' by Sarah Mussi

Review by Christopher Moore

 Summary:

England is struggling under a recession that has shown no sign of abating. Years of cuts has devastated Britain: banks are going under, businesses closing, prices soaring, unemployment rising, prisons overflowing. The authorities cannot cope. And the population has maxed out.

The police are snowed under. Something has to give. Drastic measures need taking.

The solution: forced sterilisation of all school leavers without secure further education plans or guaranteed employment.

The country is aghast. Families are distraught, teenagers are in revolt, but the politicians are unshakeable: The population explosion must be curbed. No more free housing for single parents, no more child benefit, no more free school meals, no more children in need. Less means more.

But it is all so blatantly unfair - the Teen Haves will procreate, the Teen Havenots won't.

It's time for the young to take to the streets. It's time for them to RIOT:

OUR RIGHTS, OUR BODIES, OUR FUTURE.


Review:

The novel is more plot- than character-driven but that's fine and the sterilisation of the school leavers from poorer classes is so strong that it actually ensnares and intrigues the reader from the first gruesome pages. The story reads like a sucker-punch to the face. It's bold with a fast-paced narrative and plenty of action.

Mussi flicks emotional switches at the right times though, allowing us to identify with her characters even though her characters read, for me anyway, as physical, ideological representations in this dystopian Britain. That's not to say they're bad characters and in fact, I think it mostly works for this kind of story.

Tia is an interesting enough narrator though I felt at times, there was some repetition with her language; in particular the "flipping" curse word stripped her of some of her credibility as a teen - and in general, I felt like she could have been pushed even further (to the extent that Day was in Marie Lu's Legend trilogy). She also lapses into Americanisms which conflicts with the London setting. The only other thing that irked me was that the antagonist read a bit cartoony when I wanted more depth to match the gravity and severity of the law that's being implemented.


Overall, it's a fast-paced story with a good backstory and setting that will please fans of Sophie Kenzie and Marie Lu.

 Rating: 4/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ 

Christopher Moore:

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-four year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

Follow Christopher on Twitter: @YAblooker

Find Christopher on Goodreads: Christopher Moore

LBOY2015 Shortlist Review #4: 'When Mr Dog Bites' by Brian Conaghan

'When Mr Dog Bites' by Brian Conaghan

Summary:

Hilariously touching and outrageously unforgettable: Mark Haddon's Christopher Boone meets Holden Caulfield on one *#@! of a journey. . .

Dylan Mint has Tourette's. Being sixteen is hard enough, but Dylan's life is a constant battle to keep the bad stuff in - the swearing, the tics, the howling dog that seems to escape whenever he gets stressed... But a routine visit to the hospital changes everything. Overhearing a hushed conversation between the doctor and his mother, Dylan discovers that he's going to die next March. So he grants himself three parting wishes or 'Cool Things To Do Before I Cack It'. But as Dylan sets out to make his wishes come true, he discovers that nothing - and no-one - is quite as he had previously supposed.


Review

When Mr Dog Bites is the second novel from rising talent Brian Conaghan and similar to his debut is a novel with wide crossover appeal between adult and YA fiction. The book is shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year award and is in exceptional company alongside many wonderful YA novels. When Mr Dog Bites is a pleasant addition to the list as it is not strictly just a YA novel; it was simultaneously marketed with an adult cover and contains complex adult relationships alongside the teen characters.


Our narrator is Dylan Mint a 16-year old teen with Tourettes syndrome in his last year at his high school for teens with difficulties. Dylan is attending a routine visit at the hospital when he overhears from his doctor that he has only got six months to live. Determined to make these months count, Dylan creates a list of desires to fulfil before he passes on. His first wish is to have sexual intercourse with Michelle Molloy, his second to help his best friend Amir who is constantly bullied by racist cretins and lastly to get his dad back from the army to see him before he dies.


Dylan is an exceptional narrator and intriguing voice, I’ve not read a book from the point of view of a character with Tourettes and Conaghan brings such depth and clarity to his character that I immediately empathisde with Dylan. The results are honest, heart-breaking and hysterical - I loved Dylan’s attempts to speak to Michelle yet his nerves make him yell obscenities at her causing her to threaten him with violence. Or when Dylan tries to correct racist taunts by pointing out that the two insults are from different ethnicities and therefore can’t be used together.


When Mr Dog Bites is an exceptionally well-written book, observant, clever and engaging, I was completely swept away in the story. Due to its unflinching and vivid portrayal of its wide range of characters with various disabilities, the book is also educational and enlightening and I left the book with a greater understanding of Tourette’s Syndrome. A friend of mine who works in a high school library described this book to me as the best book she couldn’t have in her library (due to the swearing as her school has a no-swearing policy) and I think this realistic language and racism might limit the book’s appeal to the younger choosers of this prize as it’s a more challenging read than many books on the list. However it is a worthy contender for the prize and I would be pleased to see it win as it’s a book that deserves wider recognition. 

Rating: 5/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Sarah Nuttall

Sarah is an active contributor for the YAfictionados blog site. She has written posts for the Waterstones blog and has worked as a bookseller (for 9 years), a Children's bookseller (for 6 years) and is now a manager at her local bookstore. Needless to say, Sarah is a valued member of the YAfictionados team - a true Children's and YA literature expert.