I read in a review in a paper that the"Bone Season" series would be the next "Harry Potter Series", and having been a huge fan of J.K.Rowling, never able to put down one of her books, I downloaded "The Bone Season" onto my Kindle that day. The author is a 21 year old who exhibited quite a bit of creative writing ability so I couldn't wait to read the book. Settling into my favorite reading place, my couch, covered in a quilt with my Kindle, I began reading.
Upon beginning the book that evening, I spent the next two weeks suffering through an almost interminable book that droned on forever with the efforts of an author who clearly wanted to create a "new futuristic world", which in itself, makes it blase', but it was one of the first books in a very long time that I actually stopped reading in the middle because I really don't have any desire to know how it ends.
The characters are unbelievable, the plot is almost impossible to follow. The main character, Paige, is very well developed in the story and her greatest attribute is that she is strong-willed and not afraid, even if it means her own death, to do what she wants rather than what she is told to do. Other than that, the story is simply a series of events that are horrific, that occur in a dirty, terrifying futuristic story that isn't even scary - it's simply depressing. The author tries to weakly delve into the occult, but with very little detail or obvious knowledge about much, if any, of it. Every time I read more, I continued to ask myself why I was wasting one more night on it. Now, upon looking back and comparing, this author was trying to recreate a story similar to the Hunger Games, in my opinion (which is just an opinion), but with no plot to follow.
The author is clearly talented and has a great imagination. She creates scenes that are not difficult to visualize, including the characters. You can actually see them in the story as you read. But, rather than trying to come up with something new and hopeful, the author delves weakly into mind-reading, the ability to dislocate ones' self in order to inhabit the physical body of another, several other manifestations of occult practice, etc., and each of the "talents" labels that person with a name that isn't even creatively unique - just unreal words. The names given to the persons with those talents are very bland and even halfway through the book I was unclear about what the title had to do with the book!
The heroine of the book is not believable in her behaviors and the peripheral characters are not likable. Example: this is one of those books where the main character actually befriends and begins to care for the man who holds her captive and sucks her blood to stay young. As with other stories that become series like the Harry Potter series, the reader was left waiting impatiently for the next one. Any reader who actually makes it through this book will be relieved to close the cover of the book and be through with it. The second one in the series, if there is a series, would stay on the shelf, at least for this reader.
Good luck to this bright, articulate new author in her endeavors. Perhaps her next book will be a true product of what she is clearly capable of doing. As I have always been told, "write about what you know". With her talents and her young age, surely she has much to write about that she is familiar with that she could turn into a page-turner. Good luck to her in her endeavors:)
Two out of Five STARS **
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