The Mime Order (The Bone Season, 2)

Samantha Shannon is a force. So young, such a great mind. She created this alternative world with such detail, and then uses her amazing writing style to build that world so well that it's real! Or it seems so, because I can picture it all in my mind.

If you haven't read The Bone Season, go read it now. You have time before The Mime Order's release date. I wrote a post a few months ago -My RomCom with Coffee and The Bone Season, when I got to read the first bit of The Mime Order. After that little teaser, I could hardly wait for the rest of the book. It lived up to my expectations.

The Mime Order jumps right into action, and it keeps that edge throughout. We're thrown right into the drama and hysteria of Paige Mahoney's escape from Sheol I, and the adrenalin keeps pumping throughout.

The escape puts Paige back in the underworld of The Dials, although she is resistant at first to go back to her old life as Jaxon Hall's Dreamwalker. But she soon realizes that she has no choice,if she wants to make changes and reveal the dangers of Sheol I and The Rephaim. Soon Paige and her friends are caught up in murder, mystery, and intrigue. Paige has to decide how far she is willing to go to do what's right, not just for her but for the whole community.

Shannon takes the reader on a supernatural adventure that pushes the boundaries of the imagination. This one will be hard to put down. 4.5 stars.

When I saw the two magic words "London" and "Dystopian" I knew I had to have this book! Those are my two favourite literary labels. I was not initially impressed. The author is not very descriptive, and I like a good flowing sentence with plenty of adjectives. I also got a bit confused. Then I went to the back of the book, where there is a Proligue story, The Pale Dreamer. Definitely READ THIS FIRST. The rest of the book will make much more sense. Anyway, I enjoyed the story, so I went back to the beginning of the book again. It was good, not great, for a few chapters, but then a lot of things started happening, and my interest was captured. The author excels at battle scenes and character develooment. There are a lot of characters in this book, and they are well done. The book is imaginative and has great depth into its subjects. Anyone interested in clairvoyance, mind-reading, spiritualism erc will particularly enjoy this book. I bought the sequel quickly, so I obviously enjoyed this book! The writer is young and obviously has a successful career in her future. I hope she will continue to develop her descriptive abilities. If she does she might give J.K.Rowling a run! Five stars, and to the author, well done you. Cheri Hefley Grubbs

Last year I was sent a copy of The Bone Season for review, I was hesitant about reading it because of the amount of hype it was receiving, but I picked it up and was utterly amazed at how brilliant that book was, so when I got a an ARC in the mail of the sequel The Mime Order you can bet your ass I was beyond excited!

I was captivated and enthralled from the get go, this series goes from strength to strength, the anticipation, sense of tension and fear for the fate of these characters just adds another dimension to this world and story we find ourselves absorbed in.

It's hard to write a review for this book without accidentally posting spoilers so I'm going to do a very short overview, Paige has escaped the penal colony Sheol 1 and is set on taking down the Rephaite leader Nashira, she is also the most wanted person in all of London, with the fate of Warden unknown, the murder of the Underlord Hector and the fight that will see a new leader crowned there is never a dull moment.

This is an epic series that I can't get enough of, thank goodness it's going to be seven books long!

I ship Paige and Warden so bad, if these two aren't a couple by the time that this series concludes I'll be inconsolable, although I think that us readers will be tortured with this will they/won't they relationship for the next five books.

I really can't say enough about how amazing, fantastic and utterly wonderful this book and series is, everybody needs to check this series out themselves, you won't be sorry.

I eagerly anticipate book three, bring it on!

The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon is the second in her dystopian fantasy series – it is the follow on to The Bone Season which I have read and reviewed. It follows straight on from the ending of The Bone Season and deals with the aftermath of the events of that novel. I will say straight off that I enjoyed The Mime Order much more than the series opener. Much of the heavy lifting in terms of worldbuilding has been done – although there is naturally much more to learn – so Shannon is able to concentrate on weaving a strong narrative.

What I liked

Very strong narrative. For me this worked very well in this book. Our protagonist has a clear, logical goal towards which she is working – the uniting of the clairvoyant underworld to provide a viable opposition to the Raphaim – and while there are lots of twists and turns in the way, it remains the backbone of the story. Personally, I was invested in this plotline and enjoyed watching it coming to fruition. I also felt Shannon kept the plot moving on briskly and had me wanting to keep turning the pages.

Engaging protagonist. The more time I spent with Paige the more I liked her and was invested in her goals. She is clearly a smart cookie and I look forward to continuing her story.

Mix of genres. I enjoyed that the novel crossed quite a few genres. We had the dystopian fantasy (which took a bit of a back seat this time), a murder mystery, mafia crime novel and a bit of romance.

Audiobook narration. I listened to The Mime Order primarily in audiobook and once again Irish actress Alana Kerr took on narration duties. I really enjoyed her interpretation of the book and will certainly continue to follow this series in audiobook because of her excellent narration.

What I didn’t like

Lots of jargon. This was one of my biggest gripes about The Bone Season and that continues in the sequel After a while I gave up trying to work out what kind of clairvoyant particular characters were and where they stood in the clairvoyant hierarchy.

The relationship between Paige and Warden. I really couldn’t get behind this relationship at all in this book. As Paige’s friends kept pointing out to her, Warden did keep her captive for several months and exercised the power of death over her. I just didn’t feel that his aid at the end of The Bone Season justified the level of trust Paige placed in him. I keep thinking Paige, sweetie, jump online and do a quick Google of Stockholm syndrome please. It’s also very clear that the way their relationship developed in The Mime Order is going to come back and bite them on the butt very, very soon.

All in all I really loved The Mime Order. I gave it four and a half stars out of five and will certainly continue with this series.

After conspiring a second rebellion against Nashira Sargas and the other cruel Rephaim in her sway, Paige Mahoney has escaped Sheol I on a London-bound train with some members of her gang and a small number of slave colony survivors. After the events leading up to her escape, Paige is less than enthusiastic to reclaim her place beside Jaxon Hall as his esteemed mollisher and protege. When their escape from the Bloody Tower separates her from the other refugees, Paige decides to survive SciLo on her own terms. Unfortunately, Paige's plans are thwarted when the government unveils her - and the other escapees from Oxford - as traitors and deem her Public Enemy No. 1. With the rise of anti-clairvoyant security and the murmurs of new technology that would make the world impossible for clairvoyants to exist, except under the yoke of slavery, Paige has no choice but to turn back to the dark underbelly of mimecrime - and the White Binder - as means to survive.

From here, THE MIME ORDER really begins to build up steam: we learn far more about the inner workings of the London crime syndicate than we had in the first book, as well as the history of the cunning and ruthless Jaxon Hall, with his plans within plans. With Jaxon, Paige is never sure what he considers means to an end, and how far he will go to achieve his goals. And as Paige finds her footing once more in the London underbelly, she discovers that the usual corruption within the syndicate has reached alarming levels that could very well crush the syndicate - and by default, the clairvoyants who call the syndicate their 'family'.

After Paige stumbles across the aftermath of the threatening and extremely violent ends of the Underlord and his closest allies, the adjunct mime queen calls for a scrimmage between the mime lords and mime queens of London to determine who will become the new Underlord of the London citadel. But the scrimmage is the least of Paige's worries: Emim and Rephaim alike are spotted throughout London, and the serious threat of a puppeteer-government hellbent on capturing clairvoyants as Rephaite fodder is looming. Paige must stand against Nashira and the Rephaim, or watch the people and the city she loves fall.

While the story occasionally lulled in pace, I never once wanted to put it down. Just one more page, Haley, just one more, I kept telling myself. I read on my lunch breaks, between classes, and in the wee hours of the morning when I should have been asleep. Once I turned that final page, I knew instantly that I was going to follow this series until its end, as I was hooked. Ms. Shannon's writing is so much stronger in this book. She did a fantastic job adding layer upon layer to characters that I did not know much about before and stripping away facades when I thought I knew everything there was to know about a character, through and through. She has such a strong imagination (and she'll need it, if she's to fulfill the intended seven books slated for this series), and she did a fine job showcasing it here.

Samantha Shannon may have written about a fictional clairvoyant criminal underbelly based in London, but it was plain to see that THE MIME ORDER was an ode to the great city herself. We were exposed to great swathes of London that ranged from gritty to eccentric, from the seedy to maddeningly colorful. We ran with people from the lowest walks of life to the most clean-cut, discovering that heroism is not defined by class or gender. We watched Paige grow from a naive dreamwalker to a cunning - but ruthless - leader with each and every turn of the page. And at the very end, we realized that a traitor had always been in our midst...and that now we have to wait until next year to discover how this new development will play out.

My hat is off to Ms. Shannon for writing such a powerful sequel. THE MIME ORDER is definitely recommended to anyone and everyone - including the dog.

First Thoughts: 1. I want to live in Samantha Shannon's mind.

2. This book is the world’s way of repaying me for the fact that I live in Boston and have been stuck in a snowdrift for the past two weeks.

The Mime Order picks up right where The Bone Season ended and for those of us who can never remember what exactly happened in the last book (cough, cough, me) there is a helpful recap in Chapter 2. After her escape from Sheol II, Paige returns to her life as Jaxon’s mollisher. But everything isn’t as it appears and we are swept up in a web of intrigue and mystery regarding the politics of the underworld. In the Acknowledgements, Shannon writes “This is my love song to the city of London” and The Mime Order truly is a homage to London.

The bar was set high for Samantha Shannon after all the hype The Bone Season received and the critical praise it garnered. But The Mime Order surpasses The Bone Season and it’s clear that Shannon is not suffering from any sophomore slump. With The Mime Order, Shannon has continued to carve out a niche for herself as a master world builder with a flair for political intrigue. Despite the length of book, the pacing was taut and included some of the best action sequences in a long time. Paige remains one of my favorite recent fictional characters. She is smart, but not brilliant, strong, but not unbeatable, completely relatable despite the fact she lives in a supernatural dystopia.

Final Thoughts: RUN don’t walk to read this book and I’ll be here just counting down the days to the release of the third one and hoping Imaginarium Studios, who has optioned the movie rights, brings the series to the big screen (hint, hint.)

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True to its predecessor, The Mime Order (TMO) was a slow read. While we do not get as much information dumps as we did with The Bone Season, TMO's story moves at a sloth's pace.

We pick up right where The Bone Season (TBS) left us so there is no need to guess what happened between where one left off and the other one picked up. The downside? TMO had 501 pages that could have been full of epic battles, adventurous endeavors, lots of Warden/Paige action...but it fell flat. I get that TMO takes place in London while TBS took place at Sheol I but, do we really need 300+ pages of world building to get anywhere?

ALL IN ALL -Paige is still a bad ass, if not more. Granted, she could have stood up for herself on more than one occasion (take for instance that one time when Hector and his gang jump her in the middle of town and she just stands there) but given the situations she got herself into I wouldn't have faired any better than she did. So...I cannot be so harsh on her for this.

• Warden is still, well, Warden (and they say that women are complicated). Wish we had seen more of him though. He has two scenes with Paige (the two of them alone) and that is about it. Warden and Paige were the reason why I decided to read TMO and I was left wanting more. I need more!

• The new characters were OK but we really don't see much of them. I hope we get to see more of Ivy, Danica, Nick, Eliza, Nell, Jos, Wynn, and the Ranthen in the following books. I want Ivy to become something BIG! She needs to be stronger and an ally to Paige. They could be totally badass together!

-Jaxon is still Jaxon. Well, Jaxon became what Jaxon would be if he had absorbed the powers and ego of his evil twin...does that make sense?

THE ENDING That is the badass Paige I know she can be! The ending was great...sadly it took only 450 pages to get there!

I know that the series will amount to something big, I can feel it. But... If there is something I cannot deal with when reading is a slow paced story. Yeah, I get that there needs to be character development and world building but it needn't be that slow. Give me some battles in between, make me want to keep reading through the information dump. Make me want more. The Mime Order shouldn't have taken me so long to read!

And if this is any indiction to what the next 5 books will feel like....I don't know if I will be finishing this series at all. And that is very disappointing as I had great hopes for it!