The Bone Season: Author's Preferred Text

By Samantha Shannon

The New York Times bestselling first novel in the sensational Bone Season series, a heart-pounding epic fantasy by the author of The Priory of the Orange Tree.

“Intelligent, inventive, dark, and engrossing.” NPR


Welcome to Scion. No safer place.

The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe.

In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing.

When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal – and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.

With its intricate worldbuilding, slow burn romance, and “complex, ever evolving, scrappy yet touching” (NPR) heroine, the Bone Season series shows Samantha Shannon at the height of her considerable powers.

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Published May 14, 2024

624 pages

Average rating: 7.69

64 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

PerpetualRevision
Dec 22, 2025
8/10 stars
This story gripped me in a way I didn't expect, and that was due only partly to the lovely Irish accent of the audiobook narrator. In some ways the plots is similar to other dystopian series, where groups of people (or tributes or outcasts or whatever) are gathered together and classified according to some kind of system. But there's also something that felt pretty original to me about the characters, the world they inhabit, and the alternate world they discover (or rather, the beings they discover inhabiting their own world).

If I had known when I started reading this that a second book was on the way but not yet published, I would've waited to read it. But as it is, I have the second book on my wish list!
TheCleverReader
Feb 03, 2023
8/10 stars
I enjoyed this one just as much as the first time around! I forgot how unique this setting is and I can't wait to revisit books 2 & 3 before the release of The Mask Falling this upcoming February!
Ashli Hutchison
Nov 19, 2024
10/10 stars
must read

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