This post is a part of an original series created by librarians/media specialists across Central Minnesota featuring books. If you have a book you would like to showcase, please send your review to our offices

Title: The Bone Season, by Samantha Shannon

Review by Maria Burnham, Sauk Rapids-Rice High School Library Media Specialist

I had high hopes for this book.  I had heard that the book was “The Next Hunger Games” which led me to believe I would irresponsibly be staying up until all hours of the night reading, devouring chapter after chapter.  That’s not what happened.  It took me almost a month to read this book, and that hardly ever happens for me.  I am a loyal book finisher–even if I don’t like a book, I do my best to finish it in the off chance the story picks up at the end.  But several times I seriously considered abandoning this book.

Why, you may ask?  Although a dystopian action plotline (which I normally LOVE to read), I found the details of the book to be too–confusing.  Too many minor characters that I never really connected to, too many details that distract from the plotline, and too slow of a start compared to other dystopian books on the shelves.

The Bone Season is about a girl named Paige who is captured and brought to an underworld as a prisoner.  The reader finds out she is captured because of her rare gift–she is clairvoyant.  Paige can walk amongst others’ dreams and read their auras.  Upon her capture, she is assigned to a keeper, a man called the Warden, and it is in this strange relationship that we learn more about Paige’s old life and new assignment in the underworld.

Although parts of the book were intriguing, and I will say that I did have an audible gasp or two at the end of the book, overall, I found the story to be tedious and disengaging.  Others who have read the book have liked it (more than I did), but I have yet to hear anyone say that it is a “must read” for our students.  It’s a good recommendation for someone who likes dystopian fiction, but beyond that, I’m looking forward to [finally] moving on to another YA book.