Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere.
— Epigraph
The Bone Season is a seven-book series by Samantha Shannon. Set in a Dystopian, Alternate History England, the story follows a young clairvoyant woman named Paige Mahoney. Since 1859, when the phenomenon of clairvoyance first became public knowledge, England has operated under an oppressive and strongly anti-voyant government called Scion. Paige belongs to a class of criminal voyants who use their contact with spirits and the spirit world (called the æther) to make a living while avoiding the authorities. She is a rare kind of voyant known as a dreamwalker, capable of separating her spirit from her physical body and entering the æther in spirit form.
One night, Paige is subjected to a spot check by government agents and accidentally kills one with her gift. She is arrested that very night and transported to a secret penal colony run by a race of supernatural creatures known as Rephaim, who have been controlling Scion from the shadows for two hundred years and whose aim is to colonize the human world. Every ten years, a number of captive voyants like Paige are sent to the penal colony to be trained and indoctrinated. These decadal harvests are known as Bone Seasons.
Four out of seven books have been published as of January 2021, along with two novellas: The Pale Dreamer, a prequel to the whole series, and The Dawn Chorus, which takes place between The Song Rising and The Mask Falling. Each installment deals with Paige's escalating fight against Scion's tyranny and Rephaite control.
Be warned that not all spoilers on this page are marked.
For character-specific tropes, please go to the character page for this series.
For book-specific tropes, please click on one of the following:
This book series contains examples of:
- Alternate History: Splits off with the main timeline around the Victorian Era. In 1859, a rift opens in the æther due to a build-up of dead spirits, allowing the Rephaim and the Emim to enter the corporeal world. Edward VII is blamed for the Jack the Ripper murders and deposed as King, and the government of Scion is established.
- Ancient Conspiracy: Britain has been secretly controlled by the race of Rephaim since before Scion's conception.
- Astral Projection: Played with. Paige's spirit can leave her body and travel through the æther, but she can't see her own body or anything in the physical world — just dreamscapes and other spirits. Her body stops breathing when she does this, so she can't do it for long without life support.
- Aura Vision: "Sighted" voyants can see the aura given off by others of their kind.
- The Berserker: A type of sixth-order clairvoyant that flies into an Unstoppable Rage during spirit combat.
- Bilingual Bonus: For speakers of Swedish, Gaeilge and especially French, as Nick and Paige will occasionally speak in their mother tongues and all of The Mask Falling is set in Scion Paris.
- Cast Full of Gay: Nick and Zeke are gay, Jaxon is asexual, Cutmouth is bi, Ivy is lesbian, Ognena Maria is a trans woman and Paige is demisexual, most of which is made explicit on the page. The author has also stated that the Rephaim, being attracted to their partners' spirits, are the equivalent of pansexual
. - Color-Coded Wizardry: Each voyant gives off an aura with a different color, depending on their gift.
- Combat Clairvoyance: The average voyant can bring spirits together into a "spool" and throw it at an adversary, temporarily stunning them. Powerful voyants such as binders and summoners can use especially strong spirits which are capable of killing their opponents. Dreamwalkers, however, are the ultimate incarnation of this trope, as they can leave their bodies in spirit form and directly attack other dreamscapes.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Emim.
- Fantastic Racism: Very much the Rephaim toward humanity. The ruling family's goal is to colonize the human world and install themselves as the apex predators of the Earth. Being ageless and immune to the ravages of time, they see humans as being in a perpetual state of decay, as petty and weak and naturally subordinate. Even the Ranthen, who share a common enemy with the clairvoyants of London and must work together with them, tend to belittle humans to their faces without a second thought.
- Fate Worse than Death: A few, considering that death isn't as permanent to voyants as it is to regular humans.
- Nashira's murder victims become "fallen angels," spirits which are bound to protect her for eternity.
- Paige nearly gets one when she tries to possess an Emite in The Mime Order; its dreamscape almost devours her spirit.
This was what we feared, we voyants. Not death, but non-existence. The total destruction of spirit and self. - Feminist Fantasy: The series takes place in what appears to be an equal-opportunity society. Besides a strong and willful protagonist who becomes Underqueen of the London syndicate, we meet a multitude of female characters in positions of power: Nashira, one-half of the Rephaite sovereignty; Terebell, sovereign-elect of the Ranthen; Hildred Vance, a seventy-year-old military commander and strategist; all the mime-queens; etc.
- Fictional Document: Jaxon Hall's On the Merits of Unnaturalness, a pamphlet published several years before the start of the series. It goes into detail about every known type of clairvoyant gift and arranges them into a hierarchy. This pamphlet not only restructured the way clairvoyants everywhere thought of themselves, but set off a series of gang wars in London and resulted in the ostracization and imprisonment of the vile augurs.
- Flower Motifs: A plethora of them.
- Amaranth, the only flower to grow in the timeless Netherworld, comes from Paradise Lost's amarant and means eternity. The blooming of the amaranth flower in the bell jar — also known as the "flower of transgression," the Ranthen's call-to-arms — is one of the central mysteries of the whole story.
- Paige's dreamscape is full of poppies, which signify sleep. After her experience in the penal colony, they change into poppy anemones to reflect how guarded she must now be against the Rephaim.
- Every contestant in the scrimmage is required to declare their candidacy with a posy of flowers. Using the Victorian language of flowers, Paige puts her posy together using bells of Ireland for luck, bittersweet for truth, and poppy anemone for Rephaite-slaying, all of which denote the kind of leader she plans to be.
- In The Song Rising, Alsafi and Paige encode messages to each other using floriography.
- Foreshadowing: Several examples.
- In Paige's final memory, the one where she gets her heart broken for the first time, Nick whimsically points out the star Arcturus in the night sky. From Paige's perspective, this foreshadows her next great love.
- In another memory, Jaxon tells Nick and Paige that he is "further from the Archon than the cradle from the grave. Not that those two states are all that far apart." The Song Rising throws this into a new light.
- In The Mime Order, Nick gets oracular visions of a waterboard, one that isn't meant for him. The sequel has Paige being waterboarded in the bowels of the Westminster Archon.
- Paige visits a soothsayer for a reading and asks her who the King of Wands is, already suspecting that it's Jaxon. The soothsayer tells her that the King of Wands is "seven." It's revealed later that Jaxon is XVIII-39-7, the man who singlehandedly destroyed the penal colony's first rebellion.
- Paige remarks in an offhand way that when she found Haymarket Hector and his henchmen dead, they'd been disfigured "Ripper-style". We find out in The Song Rising that the poltergeist responsible — the same poltergeist who tortured the Ranthen after Bone Season XVIII — was in fact the spirit of Jack the Ripper.
- Future Slang: Played with, in that the book is set 50 years in the future but much of the slang comes from Victorian English.
- Ghostly Chill: Spirits draw on heat energy to sustain themselves, so it's always colder when they're around.
- Go into the Light: When a person dies, they can either choose to stay in the corporeal world as a ghost or to go into "the last light," the final death, from which no spirit has ever come back.
- Great Offscreen War: It's mentioned a few times that the voyant syndicate of London was plunged into a series of bloody gang wars after the publication of On the Merits of Unnaturalness. We never learn anything more about it.
- Guardian Angel: A spirit that returns to the corporeal world to protect the person they died to save. There are also archangels — guardian angels who stay with that person's family after their death, sometimes for generations.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Paige is five foot nine, which is nothing to sneeze at, but her Rephaite keeper / companion / partner-in-crime towers over her at nearly seven feet. She doesn't even come up to his shoulder. Luckily, he's a tactful sort who usually stands at enough of a distance that she doesn't need to crane her neck up at him.
- Humans Are Psychic in the Future: The story begins in 2059 and revolves around the oppression of clairvoyants.
- Immortal Breaker: The Rephaim are ageless and invulnerable to amaurotic weapons, yet their kryptonite is a tiny red flower called the poppy anemone. Simply touching one causes painful burns, while getting a small quantity of pollen to the face inflicts catastrophic physical damage akin to accelerated decay.
- Immune to Mind Control: An unreadable is a type of clairvoyant who is impervious to all spiritual attack, including possession by a dreamwalker.
- I See Dead People: The whole series is based on the existence of clairvoyants, people who can sense spirits and interact with the spirit world.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: Downplayed. Every time she possesses another body, Paige must first get through each "zone" of their mind to reach the centre, where the host's spirit lives. It never seems to take much longer than a second or two in real time.
- King of Thieves: London's voyant syndicate is governed by an Underlord or Underqueen.
- Le Parkour: How Paige and her more able-bodied allies prefer to navigate London, dodging street security by staying off of street level altogether. This skill serves her on countless occasions throughout the series.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Paige and the Warden. Also qualifies as Interspecies Romance and Forbidden Love.
- Mental World: The interior of someone's mind is called a dreamscape, which looks different for every individual depending on their memories and personal experiences; according to Warden, it takes the shape of whatever makes them feel safest. Paige's dreamscape, for example, resembles the poppy field from her childhood.
- Mythical Motifs: Several aspects of the series are inspired by ancient myths.
- Warden's history is loosely based on that of Prometheus, a figure from classical Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. Like Prometheus, Warden risked himself to help humans (by staging the rebellion of Bone Season XVIII), and like Prometheus, he was punished for it with agony and torment.
- In the first book, Warden tells Paige the story of Adonis: Aphrodite's youthful, mortal lover, who was slaughtered by a jealous Ares. The lifeblood of Adonis begot the poppy anemone, and his spirit was permitted to spend half the year in life and half in death. This particular myth is implied to hold the key to the true nature of Rephaim.
- No Honor Among Thieves: The London syndicate is comprised of dozens of clairvoyant gangs and petty factions "all willing to floor each other to survive." Most of them wouldn't blink twice at selling out one of their own for cash.
- Numerological Motif: The number seven crops up a lot, being strongly associated with the supernatural and the divine: there are seven Seals, seven orders of clairvoyance, seven books in the series, and seven tarot cards predicting Paige's future. The arch-traitor of Bone Season XVIII was XVIII-39-7. Also, Paige's London gang is based in Seven Dials, where seven roads converge on a sundial pillar. May also qualify as Arc Number.
- Once per Episode: Paige visiting a certain Rephaite's dreamscape.
- Point of Divergence: In the year 1859, Earth broke its ethereal threshold, allowing a large party of Rephaim — led by the Sargas — to cross over from the Netherworld. The Sargas were determined to establish themselves as the new rulers of the Earth, so they revealed themselves to the British prime minister of the era and convinced him that they were angels come to save humanity. Control of the British Empire was effectively turned over to them. The Sargas then used this power to establish Sheol I and the government of Scion, both tools for controlling the clairvoyant population of the world.
- Poltergeist: An angry spirit capable of interacting with the corporeal world. Paige encounters several of them over the course of the series.
- Powers via Possession: Certain mediums can use the abilities that the spirits possessing them had in life. An automatiste like Eliza, possessed by the spirit of a dead artist, would be able to paint in perfect imitation of that artist's style. A psychographer possessed by the spirit of a dead writer would write and write until the spirit had produced a new work of literature through them. When a medium and a spirit are familiar with each other and work well together, it's called symbiosis. Mediums are in regular danger of Possession Burnout, especially when they get possessed by an extremely prolific spirit.
- Propaganda Machine: Scion has one, naturally, to justify their systematic butchery of clairvoyants. Unnaturals are blamed for every ill in Scion society, from theft to rape to murder, to the point where even Scion sitcoms are based on the triumphs of amaurotics over unnaturals.
- Protective Charm: In the first book, the Warden gives Paige a sublimed pendant that repels poltergeists. It ends up saving her life many times over the course of the series.
- Psychic Link: Paige and the Warden share a "golden cord," a spiritual connection that allows them to transmit emotions and images to each other through the æther. This connection is one of the central mysteries of the whole story.
- Psychopomp: A little-understood type of spirit whose original function was to guide spirits to the Netherworld. They're implied to have abandoned this duty after the ethereal threshold broke.
- Red and Black Totalitarianism: Scion's official colours are red, black and white.
- Significant Anagram: "Archon" is an anagram of "Anchor."
- Supernatural Repellent: Salt is used to ward off the Emim and to treat their bites.
- The Syndicate: A highly organized underground society of clairvoyants has existed in London since the 20th century.
- Tarot Troubles: In the first book, a cartomancer divines Paige's future using seven tarot cards: Five of Cups, King of Wands inverted, the Devil, the Lovers, Death inverted, Eight of Swords, and one that never saw the light of day. This reading will continue to haunt Paige throughout the series.
- In fact, these can be understood to represent each book in the series in chronological order.
- Five of Cups is associated with regret, disappointment and pessimism; of being stuck in the past and unable to let go. In The Bone Season, Paige relives many of her own memories, most notably the one where she gets her heart broken for the first time.
- King of Wands, inverted, represents ruthlessness and high expectations; for Paige, this indicates Jaxon, a figure whose authority over her she felt even in Sheol I. In The Mime Order, she struggles to break free of his control in order to be able to decide her own future and that of the London syndicate.
- The Devil is associated with a force of darkness and hopelessness, one so powerful that we are tricked into thinking we can't break free of it. In The Song Rising, Paige struggles with despair while imprisoned in the Westminster Archon and even gets a What You Are in the Dark moment when Nashira asks her to betray the Mime Order.
- The Lovers is self-explanatory. In The Mask Falling, having been left alone with him in Paris for several weeks, Paige realizes the true depth of her feelings for Warden and reaches a far more honest understanding with him than anything they've had up until that point.
- In fact, these can be understood to represent each book in the series in chronological order.
- Urban Fantasy: The series takes place 20 Minutes into the Future in modern-ish England, with trains, cars and mobile phones coexisting with spirits, clairvoyants, and supernatural creatures from another plane of existence.
- Whatevermancy: Soothsayers and augurs are classified this way in On the Merits of Unnaturalness; those who scry with mirrors are called catoptromancers, with ice — cryomancers, with fire — pyromancers, and so on. An uncommon example of the -mancy suffix, which stands for divination, not magic, actually being used correctly.
- Witch Hunt: Scion's government is built on the systematic rooting out and execution of clairvoyants — none of whom, of course, can possibly be human beings with the right to exist. Amaurotics tend to be very paranoid as a consequence, especially when Scion encourages them to turn in anyone they suspect might be unnatural.
"You know what they used to call the British Empire? 'The empire on which the sun never set.' That's the same empire Scion is built on. If it's us against the sun, who wins?"
