I remember meaning to read The Bone Season when it came out but then before I got around to it, seemed like the reviews and reactions from people whose judgement I trust was pretty middling so I didn’t prioritize it, and never got around to it.
I quite liked A Priory of the Orange Tree (and the prequel novel) so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Samantha Shannon had gone back and revised The Bone Season for its 10th anniversary and it was Narfna approved.
Paige lives in an alternate version of England – in this time line, people have been aware of magic and people with powers since Queen Victoria’s son murdered 5 people under the influence of a demon (allegedly). The government now is an authoritarian surveillance state, and being an Unnatural is illegal (there are also some things historically that appear to have gone differently with Ireland – I am not sure if the time line is delayed or repeated or how Shannon would describe it but the anti-Irish prejudice felt like something that was from about 50-100 years earlier in our version of history).
Paige is both Irish and clairvoyant, the term preferred by people with illegal magical abilities, and works as part of an underground crime syndicate. Her boss has written a pamphlet classifying the clairvoyant community by their abilities and class, and Paige has an incredibly rare ability, dreamwalking.
One evening, Paige is caught in a random check, and uses her abilities in a way she never had before. While she escapes, it isn’t too long before she is detained. From here, she finds out that there is so much more going on than she realized, and that the government has been covering up quite a bit, including the fact that they have a secret treaty with a species of incredibly powerful beings from another dimension, and that the government supplies these “Reph”with clairvoyants to serve as soldiers (or cannon fodder, more accurately) in a secret war against other supernatural beings from the Netherworld that are crossing over into Earth and threatening the balance.
However the Reph are far from the good guys – whether or not they are on the right side when it comes to this inter-dimensional war is yet to be seen, but their treatment of the humans is cruel and abusive. With her background, Paige has no interest in submitting to yet another bully, and given her specific power, she is concerned that the leader of the Rephs may have some more nefarious plans for her.
I enjoyed this and will be continuing the series – compared to Priority of the Orange Tree, this does feel a bit more like your usual fantasy series with the whole authoritarian government, nefarious forces and secrets but even within that, she pays a lot of attention to detail and how society, the underground and the magic system are organized. Additionally, I appreciate the connection she made to Ireland because i don’t feel like I have seen Ireland and nods to Irish history show up much in this kind of fantasy.