Book review: 'The Mime Order' by Samantha Shannon

Book: The Mime Order
Author: Samantha Shannon
Pages: 528
Price: Rs 334

In 2013, 21-year-old Samantha Shannon, and Oxford student was hailed as the new, upcoming voice of literature. Her dystopian seven book series, The Bone Season released to rave reviews and climbed up bestselling lists all over. The book was sold to 28 countries and the film rights were snapped up by Andy Serkis’ Imaginarium Studios. 

The Bone Season tells the story about Paige, a young clairvoyant living in dystopian England in the year 2059. The country is ruled by a dictatorship, Scion. Paige is a voyant which means she has clairvoyant power; her specific talent allows her spirit to travel in other people’s ‘dreamscapes’ and control their bodies. She is the Pale Dreamer, the mollisher (heir) in London’s most popular criminal gang or voyant syndicate, the Seven Seals, run by the ‘mime lord’ Jaxon Hall, a smooth- talking, extremely cunning man. 

Paige soon finds herself shipped off to Oxford, to a penal colony known as Sheol I run by other-dimensional beings called Rephaim, the real power behind Scion. The Rephaim are immortal and feed on the aura of clairvoyant humans, which Scion provides in return for protection from the destructive force Emim. The book ends with Paige planning a mutinous escape with other prisoners back to London with the help of her Rephaim protector, Warden. 

The second book released this year, The Mime Order, picks up a few minutes after their daring escape. She has to now go into hiding as she is a fugitive; if caught, she will be publicly hanged. 

Paige is forced to look for protection with Jaxon, who takes her back as his mollisher (heir). Their confrontations - he refuses to join her fight against the Rephaim and she is determination to make herself heard – are a treat to read. 

There are obstacles. Scion has clamped down on clairvoyance, the syndicate is selfish and a few murders throws open the battle for leadership, and she has to decide whether the rebel Rephaim (led by the Warden) can be trusted. 

Paige comes into her own in this book, and you finally feel yourself liking her character, feelings the first book didn’t really evoke. She fights off poltergeists, rescues the Warden from captivity in a dungeon, risks her life to forges alliances with people and play detective, and engages in combat with the toughest mime lords and mollishers and even Jaxon.

While Shannon’s characters are many, they enter and fall out and back stab at alarming intervals. The supporting cast of characters is strong but they aren’t given enough space to have you rooting for them. 

What works in the book’s favour, and sometimes against it, is the richness in detailing. Shannon’s ability to build worlds shines in this book as she lays the basis of the spirit world and its people. The detailing (the book covers 500 pages) can get a bit tedious and the lack of action is a disappointment after the drama in the first book. 
 
The sequel though is better than The Bone Season. It has politics and betrayal. There’s bloodshed but there are also moments that warm the heart – the deepening of the illicit relationship between Paige and the Warden or using a publisher to get out details of the Rephaim and Scion partnership via the trashy ‘penny dreadfuls’.  The slang used in the books is loosely based on words used in the criminal underworld of 19th-century London.

Add to this a history of the Rephaim struggle and a detailed look into the social structure and the functioning of Scion and you’re left gasping at the magnitude of her imagination. Luckily there are three maps of the city, a glossary and a 2 page order of clairvoyances, for help. The lot builds up slowly but the ending had a nice punch. 

Shannon now has five more books to write so it will be interesting to see how she fleshes out Paige’s defiance and her rise as a leader of a revolution, without losing the reader’s interest.