Blog Tour: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Date Released: February 26th 2019
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Genre: Fantasy

Synopsis:
"From the internationally bestselling author of The Bone Season, a trailblazing, epic high fantasy about a world on the brink of war with dragons—and the women who must lead the fight to save it.

A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep."

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YOU GUYSSSSSS I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS BLOG POST TODAY!!! LOOK AT THE EXCLAMATION MARKS. My most and I mean MOST anticipated release of 2019 is Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree AND IT IS HERE - it is glorious, it is MAGNIFICENT.

I am beyond thrilled to be part of the blog tour for the release of this masterpiece and today I have for you a playlist inspired by the book.

For me this playlist represents many of the elements I felt and saw whilst reading the book: fighting,  war, the world falling apart, dragons, believing in yourself and freedom. I thought these songs embodied these ideas and I hope you feel them too when you listen.

Listen here:


(I created the playlist on YouTube as Swordland isn't available on Spotify, sorry peeps!)

Review: The Song Rising (The Bone Season #3) by Samantha Shannon

Firstly, thanks to Bloomsbury Australia for this review copy <3

Date Read: March 4 - March 15 2017
Date Released: March 7th 2017
Publisher: Bloomsbury Australia
Source: Review copy via publisher
Genre: Fantasy
My Rating:

Synopsis:

"Following a bloody battle against foes on every side, Paige Mahoney has risen to the dangerous position of Underqueen, ruling over London's criminal population.

But, having turned her back on Jaxon Hall and with vengeful enemies still at large, the task of stabilising the fractured underworld has never seemed so challenging.

Little does Paige know that her reign may be cut short by the introduction of Senshield, a deadly technology that spells doom for the clairvoyant community and the world as they know it…"

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With each book in The Bone Season series, the world somehow keeps on expanding and I have to remind myself there’s seven books in all. Let’s be honest, I’ve fallen so far into Scion I’m probably never going to make it back out of this intricate and devastating world.

The Song Rising opens with Paige hitting the ground running as Underqueen and it’s daunting how much discord her reign starts with. Everybody is divided on her right to rule and her betrayal of Jaxon in the Rose Ring. If The Song Rising had an alternative title it would be Everybody is Out to Get Paige! They either hate her and want her dethroned, or they’re afraid of her and want to kill her for her powers. Or all of the above, take your pick! Paige faces a massive challenge with the need to prove she’s ruthless enough to be Underqueen, while balancing her internal desire to be considerate and kind. As someone accustomed to being in the thick of things and doing the dirty work, it’s a real lesson for Paige in learning to pick her battles. Her journey and growth isn’t easy and I have to keep reminding myself Shannon has to pace the growth across the books. I think Shannon did a good job of giving Paige just the right amount to develop and leaving lots of room for improvement in character.

There are so many great secondary characters in this series but the real standouts were of course Nick and Eliza, Paige’s mollishers. These two have stuck with her through thick and thin and I loved the unquestionable trust they have. Shannon peels back the layers of these characters and we get a glimpse of what betraying Jaxon meant to them. We see the consequences of this – their sacrifices and their wants, overridden by their need for the greater good. We finally see glimpses of the human villains and masterminds behind Scion; it’s hard to picture these people as human because they cause such tragedy on a large scale but at the end of the day they are definitely mortal. And then you got to wonder how such evil and callousness exists in the world… oh wait *looks at reality* nevermind.

In typical Bone Season fashion, the romance continues to be slow burn and the tension is wonderful and UGHHHHHH it also makes me want to rip my hair out ‘cause JUST GET TOGETHER ALREADY. On the other hand, it makes the stolen moments all the more precious and the angst and feels are delicious.

The plot though. Wow the plot. The world keeps expanding and the web reaches farther than I thought possible. Scion’s corruption is deep and I think the Rephaite have their own hidden agenda (what’s with their world?!) that Shannon’s going to slowly reveal throughout the series and it’s going to be mind-blowing. In The Song Rising we see life outside of Scion London and the effect Scion has had on the rest of the UK. It’s a sorry sight, everything leeched of life, perpetual poverty everywhere people turn. The streets seem layered with scum and nobody walks around carefree. Shannon really has a way with words and her imagery is always on point, to the point where you read about filth and you sort of spew a little in your mouth. Oops sorry TMI? She’s that good!

What a ride guys, what a ride. I get the chills thinking of what book 4 will bring because it’s like a whole new world of unknowns, but excited for all the possibilities and the havoc Paige will wreak. I get a little more scared for Paige with each book as her powers become more coveted and Scion is increasingly more far reaching and dangerous. It’s a thrilling and fast-paced world, there’s no safe place, no surrender.

Review: The Mime Order (The Bone Season #2) by Samantha Shannon

Firstly, thanks to Bloomsbury Australia for this review copy <3



Release Date: January 27th 2015

Publisher: Bloomsbury Australia
Source: Review copy via publisher
Genre: Sci-fi/paranormal
My rating: 

This review contains spoilers for The Bone Season but not The Mime Order.

Synopsis:

"Paige Mahoney has escaped the brutal prison camp of Sheol I, but her problems have only just begun: many of the survivors are missing and she is the most wanted person in London...

As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on the dreamwalker, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take centre stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. But where is Warden? Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided."

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“Hope is the lifeblood of revolution. Without it, we are nothing but ash, waiting for the wind to take us.”

When I turned the last page of The Bone Season last year I knew that I would trust whatever journey Samantha Shannon took us over the course of the next 6 books. Some 500 pages later as I finished The Mime Order, I knew that trust had not been misplaced.

“And words, my walker – well, words are everything. Words give wings to those that have been stamped upon, broken beyond all hope of repair.”

Get ready to deep dive back into the world of Scion and strap yourselves in for a wild ride because Shannon’s gripping sequel holds you from the first page, much like how Paige holds the dreamscapes of those she’s jumped into. You surrender yourself and your surroundings to The Mime Order. You are in Scion.

Paige is back to being mollisher of I4. Well sort of. She’s trying to incite change in the voyant world and warn the Unnatural Assembly of the impending danger of the Rephaim. She’s a changed girl. No longer the mollisher that bows to the White Binder’s every whim, she now questions his actions and those around her. I loved her growth in TMO from TBS. I still remember our girl telling Warden she’d had enough in Sheol 1 when he pushed her, but now? Now she doesn’t give up. Paige manages to get herself in so many dangerous and sticky (slimy, literally) situations but she always thinks ahead. She holds so much potential and the power she harnesses is phenomenal. Because she has sparked a rebellion and she’s the only one strong enough to turn that into a revolution.

“I want you to jump into the aether as if you belonged there. I want you to fly between dreamscapes.”

I loved being able to see the Seven Seals in-depth. Where we got snippets of events and memories from The Bone Season, we see the real thing in The Mime Order. There’s ever kind and caring Nick who’s one of the most genuine and sweet guys I’ve ever read; adorable Zeke who I think is still finding his place; the bitter Nadine who is so loyal to Jaxon and has to step down as temporary mollisher when Paige returns; sweet Eliza who loves the Seven Seals more than anything. And then there is Jaxon Hall. You know how people used to go “talk to the hand” (or still do I don’t know) because they didn’t really care what you had to say and thought themselves better than you? This is Jaxon Hall. And he has every right. He is arrogant, intelligent, cunning, flamboyant, eccentric, a pure genius, fabulous and a dickhead. Ohmygoodness the way he speaks is so lavish and eloquent, Shannon has really done a number on his dialogue to make him stand out. I adored the layers of his character. Does he really care about his Seven Seals? Is it their actual person he cares for? Or what their gifts offer him? Or that they worship him? It was amazing reading and slowly peeling back the layers that were Jaxon Hall only to find more underneath. Mark my words, we haven’t seen them all yet. This man is a piece of work I tell you. I think the White Binder is one of the most intricately developed and memorable characters I’ve read in my entire life.

“I know we have our differences, but we are the Seven Seals. Brought together across oceans and fault lines by the mysterious wiles of the aether. It wasn’t chance. It was fate. And we shall bring about a day of reckoning in London.”

You know what else is memorable? The world building of this Scion London Shannon has created. There was rustic Sheol I in The Bone Season and now we can truly see Paige’s Scion through her eyes as she traverses through the sections. The descriptions of the city are so detailed and enigmatic, enticing yet repulsing. Filled with slums, mazes of streets and buildings above and below ground, it’s almost like the whole of Scion is encased in a sheen of poverty regardless of the riches of the mime-lords and mime-queens. I got the sense that the luxurious furnishings were slightly shabby with time, passed down through the decades from a better era. Buildings decayed by the rain and perpetually dank. Yet this is balanced with the lush, mouth-watering foods the rich do have money to spend on. Wao I’d be willing to live one day in Scion just to taste the amazing foods Shannon described. Fantastic writing is fantastic.

“Shiny buttered peas, steaming in paper ramekins; masses of mashed potato, some fluffy white, some tined with pea-green or rose; sausages spitting in a cast-iron pan.”

Underneath all this worn grandeur are lies upon lies. Conspiracies within conspiracies. Scion. Rephaim. The Unnatural Assembly. There are secrets everywhere. As the story continues, the plot thickens and I had no idea what to make of everything that was happening and who to start pointing fingers at. It’s all so delectably crafted so that you just keep gobbling up the words and then pages trying to see what happens next – the settling in Scion of Part One, the questions beginning to form in Part Two, and then that increasing tension and jaw dropping Part Three which was my personal favourite. THEN, Shannon decides to throw me completely off my feet with the last page. BOOM. And where is Warden you ask? Well you’ll have to read and find out (; I will say one thing – I think I love him.

“My sordid, sacred SciLo, my prison and my home.”

And here we are. Secrets, lies, betrayals and a helluva lot of tension later… there are more secrets, lies and betrayal. Scion, you just keep on giving.

“You’ll have to wait and see how it ends.”

Blog Tour: The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon

Australian Tour Stops

Behind the Pages

Speculating on Specfic

Thoughts by J

My Reading Dress

Fiction in Fiction in Fiction > you are here

Happy Australia Day! I'm the final stop on the Australian leg of The Mime Order blog tour. Welcome back to Scion! Look out for my review of The Mime Order later this week - hint, I LOVED it. It comes out tomorrow and I'm telling you, you NEED this book.

Have you been following the blog tour so far? Because you totally should've been - not only do you get a special sneak into The Mime Order but you also have the chance to win something cool! Read on.

 

Release Date: January 27th 2015

Publisher: Bloomsbury Austrralia

Genre: Science fiction, paranormal

Links: Goodreads | Bloomsbury Australia | Bookworld | Booktopia | The Book Depository

Chapter 2 - Sneak Peak 5

‘You know we can’t take you to a hospital,’ I said, ‘but I want to know you’re going somewhere safe. Do you have a gang that can look after you?’

‘No gang.’ Her voice was a wasted husk. ‘I was . . . a gutterling in Camden. But I can’t go back there.’ 

‘Why?’

She shook her head. Camden was the district in II-4 with the largest community of voyants, a busy market town that clustered around a stretch of the Grand Canal.

I placed the lighter on the gleaming table and clasped my hands. Old moons of dirt sat under my fingernails. ‘Is there no one at all you can trust there?’ I said quietly. More than anything I wanted to offer her somewhere to stay, but Jaxon wouldn’t put up with strangers invading his den, especially as I wasn’t intending to go back there with him. None of these voyants would last long on the street.

Her fingers pressed into her arm, stroking and grasping. After a long pause, she said, ‘There’s one person. Agatha. She works at a boutique in the market.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘Just Agatha’s Boutique.’ Blood seeped from her bottom lip. ‘She hasn’t seen me in a while, but she’ll take care of me.’

‘Okay.’ I stood. ‘I’ll send one of the others with you.’
Her sunken eyes were set on the window, far away. The knowledge that her keeper might still be alive made my stomach roil.

The door slid open, and the other five came in. I picked up the lighter and walked across the carpet to meet them. ‘That’s the White Binder,’ someone whispered. ‘From I-4.’ Jaxon stood at the back, grasping his bladed cane. His silence was unnerving, but I had no time for games.

‘How does Paige know him?’ Another, frightened whisper. ‘You don’t think she’s—?’
‘We’re ready, Dreamer,’ Nick said.

That name would confirm their suspicions. I focused on the æther as best I could. Dreamscapes teemed within my radius, like a seething hive of bees. We were right underneath London.

‘Here.’ I tossed Nick the lighter. ‘Do the honours.’ He held it up to the panel and flipped the lid open. Within a few seconds, the fire alarm glowed red.

‘Emergency,’ said the voice of Scarlett Burnish. ‘Fire detected in rear carriage. Sealing doors.’ The doors to the last carriage snapped shut, and there was a low-pitched drone as the train glided to a halt. ‘Please move towards the front of the train and remain seated. A life-preservation team has been dispatched. Do not alight from the train. Do not attempt to open any doors or windows. Please operate the slide mechanism if extra ventilation is required.’

‘You won’t trick it for long,’ Danica stated …

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Now you have the chance to win something soooo cool. Thanks to Bloomsbury Australia you can...

*Got a few burning questions you'd like to ask author of The Mime Order and The Bone Season, Samantha Shannon? Well here is your big chance! One lucky reader will win the once in a lifetime opportunity to exclusively chat via Skype with Samantha Shannon for a 15-20 minute period.

To be in the running, simply send through the one most pressing question you'd love to ask Samantha Shannon to au@bloomsbury.com

Entries close on midnight Feb 15th.

*Click the banner for more details.

Andddd there's also an awesome offer too!

"Here at Bloomsbury we understand that it may be hard to part with a copy of your favourite book even after you've read it. Books are some of our most prized possessions too, so we're not that keen on lending them out either. So we've come up with an idea that will help you get one of your friends or family hooked on The Bone Season.

Simply buy a copy of The Mime Order and we'll send your friend or family member a copy of The Bone Season, so they can get started too. It doesn't matter where you bought it, online or in a bookshop, simply send us a screenshot or photo of a receipt of purchase, along with the name and address of the person you believe really needs to start reading The Bone Season and we'll ship them a copy, for absolutely nothing.

Hurry, this offer is only valid to the first 100 requests we receive through au@bloomsbury.com"

I've supplied buy links up top guys... You know what to do.

I hope you've all enjoyed the sneak peek into The Mime Order c: 

Review: The Bone Season (The Bone Season #1) by Samantha Shannon

Firstly, thanks to Bloomsbury Australia for this review copy <3

Date Read: April 8 - 11 2014
Release Date: August 20th 2013
Publisher: Bloomsbury Australia
Source: Review copy via publisher
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-fi/Dystopia/Paranormal
My rating: 

Synopsis:

"The year is 2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of Scion London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. Her job: to scout for information by breaking into people’s minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant and, in the world of Scion, she commits treason simply by breathing.

It is raining the day her life changes for ever. Attacked, drugged and kidnapped, Paige is transported to Oxford – a city kept secret for two hundred years, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. Paige is assigned to Warden, a Rephaite with mysterious motives. He is her master. Her trainer. Her natural enemy. But if Paige wants to regain her freedom she must allow herself to be nurtured in this prison where she is meant to die.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine and also introduces an extraordinary young writer, with huge ambition and a teeming imagination. Samantha Shannon has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut."

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I have a story about reading this story…

I really should have read The Bone Season last year prior to its release. Sadly, uni and work and this horrible thing called real-life got in my way and instead of reading it before Samantha Shannon visited Australia, I kept pushing it back… And back… To the point where I was scared to read it because I really like Samantha and omg what if I didn’t like it? Also, the book’s size was pretty intimidating. However, I came to the resolution about a fortnight ago that I would have a To-Be-Read Jar for all my books, AND a To-Be-Read Box for my ARCs/review copies. The Bone Season was the first pick of this new thing I’m trying out. And so it began…

“I like to imagine there were more of us in the beginning.”

Shannon’s England is unlike any I’ve read before. It’s the year 2059 and London is known as Scion, a place where those with the ability to communicate with spirits and the dead are killed for their abilities. Clairvoyants, or voyants as they’re colloquially referred, inhabit the SciLo (Scion London) underground, a world of organised voyant crime complete with gangs and sectors for each.

Our protagonist Paige Mahoney is the second-in-command to Jaxon Hall, leader of one of the most notorious gangs, the Seven Seals. As a Dreamwalker, she walks the dreamscapes (or minds) of people to gather information. I loved Paige’s character. She was extremely strong and independent and had a “don’t-take-shit” attitude, hardened by her life in the underground. Paige was so relatable and I completely understood her inability to trust. I loved how she thrived on danger, always living on the edge and craving freedom. Despite everything she’d been through and is put through in the book, I am so grateful to Shannon for writing a character that I did not pity, but rather, admired. These are the kinds of female protagonists books need.

“He was going to see why Jax had chosen me: because against all odds, I had survived.”

Shannon introduces a whole ensemble of characters throughout the book, from the Seven Seals to those that Paige meets on her journey to discovering Scion’s darkest secrets. There were probably nearly twenty secondary characters introduced and I’d be hard-pressed to remember them all in a normal book, yet Shannon managed to make them all so unique and memorable. Each character had their own purpose and motives in the novel. Even though many were just first glimpses I could tell that each had been intricately layered, each with their own stories to tell. I was so intrigued by everyone, but especially Warden, Nashira, Zeke and David… I’m really, REALLY intrigued by Warden.

“The White Binder, the Red Vision, the Black Diamond, the Pale Dreamer, the Martyred Muse, the Chained Fury and the Silent Bell.”

Anybody who knows me knows I’m a hopeless romantic and sucker for a good love story. The Bone Season had hardly any romance and you know what? I was perfectly fine with that because I was so invested in the world building and Paige’s journey. That being said, the little romance there was – literally one chapter and five pages maximum – was filled with longing, yearning, pain, desire, tension… GAH the feels. Shannon managed to accomplish in the space of those fifteen pages, what other books took a whole 300 pages to achieve – she made me cry.

“I wished I could hear voices. I wished I could hear spirits, so I could listen to them, and not to this. I had to focus on not crying.”

Okay so plot/storyline? Um… How do I put this… Yeah there’s no other way: absolute mind fuck. Excuse the French. Shannon’s mind must be like a Rephaite’s because the world she came up with and built? Indescribable. When I first opened the book and got to the page on The Seven Orders of Clairvoyance (note the story hasn’t started), my face was legit just like “WTF?” I’m going to attempt to describe this spectacular world. Shannon has put so much thought into the universe of The Bone Season it’s sort of scary. It’s one part history, three parts magical/paranormal, two parts fantasy and one part mythology. Add in a dash of action and sci-fi and you can maybe imagine what The Bone Season is like. Seriously spectacular. To think that voyants captured were killed? HA. I had another thing coming for me. Scion has dark secrets. Otherworldy dark secrets that make clairvoyance look like child’s play. The aether/dreamscape isn’t merely a place for spirits to dwell, it’s the connection to the world and vice versa. It’s a fantastical place full of possibilities and The Bone Season is only the beginning.

“The aether exists alongside meatspace – around us, not outside of us. This is something more.”

Can we just fast-forward to October so I can possess The Mime Order? Shannon gave me closure then took it away with a cliff hanger. Derp. Although not perfect, The Bone Season is an amazing first in what is going to be a mesmerising heptalogy.

“I cannot tell you that. That is trust Paige. Not knowing whether to trust at all.”

And some fan art I created for The Bone Season