The Priory of the Orange Tree
Samantha Shannon
Bloomsbury presents The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon, read by Alana Kerr Collins. The stunning second novel in the New York Times bestselling Bone Season series expands Samantha Shannon’s epic world of Scion in a new heart-pounding story of revolution. Paige Mahoney has escaped the clandestine prison city of Oxford. Now a fugitive in London, she nurtures a new taste for revolution. Oxford may be behind her, but the Republic of Scion is undefeated. As it turns its all-seeing eye on Paige, she is forced to return to Jaxon Hall, her charismatic and brutal employer, to keep her foothold in the underworld. But Paige will bow to one now, and not even Jaxon will stop her exposing the corruption in the syndicate. As she plots to win the fabled Rose Crown, both sides of an ancient conflict seek her talents for themselves. 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.
Cheri Hefley GrubbsThe Action and Characters suck you in!!
"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 ["
January 21, 2022 Verified Purchase
hobbitualreaderSnoot Reviews: The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon
"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. ["
March 22, 2015 Verified Purchase