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This book was so addicting, yet so unnecessarily long for me! Which is even more absurd to say, because so much of this world building was difficult to comprehend; you’d think that the extra length would be helpful, but it wasn’t. Like, this chart saved my life:

You see this chart before chapter one, but you don’t realize how much you actually need this chart until all these different clairvoyant names start getting thrown at you, and it is the only reference you have to help you not feel completely ignorant. Maybe it was just me, maybe you’ll go into this feeling confident about all the different umbrella terms, but it was actually difficult for me, and would sometimes make me feel like I was studying, rather than reading for enjoyment.

But everything else? Everything else was amazing:

•I loved the strong female lead and I love her empathetic and understanding love interest that completely diverted away from the masters and slave trope that it could have very easily became.

“He was the single most beautiful and terrible thing I’d ever laid eyes on.”

•I loved how Samantha Shannon proved very easily that she is not scared to kill off her characters, and continued to prove it throughout the book

•I loved the surprise of one of the characters being gay, and the amazing and normal reaction from the other characters. There was no shock value or inappropriate questions, it was just accepted, and I loved it.

•I absolutely loved the tie-in with Greek mythology surrounding Adonis, Aphrodite, and Ares! It is probably the thing I’m looking most forward to in The Mime Order.

•I loved the social hierarchy and, as always, seeing privileged people in power doing what is right alongside the people who are lacking strong voices.

•And overall, I just loved how engaging and addicting this book was. I know I was complaining about it being too long, but I still devoured all these pages with a smile on my face, unnecessary information or not.

“I didn’t believe in hearts. I believed in dreamscapes and spirits. Those were what mattered. Those made money. But my heart had hurt that day. For the first time in my life I’d been forced to acknowledge my heart, and acknowledge its fragility. It could be bruised. It could humiliate me.”

This world is set in the future of our very own. The year is 2059, and the story is set in England, where clairvoyants of any kind are scared to have people learn of their gifts, because the world has outlawed them. Most, because of the fear of being discovered, have put themselves into mafia-like groups in the different districts, where they use their talents not necessarily for bad, but not for good, either.

Our main character, Paige, has a very unique gift, and her leader, a mime-lord named Jaxon, knows how very unique her gift is. One night, while Paige is trying to visit her last remaining relative, her dad, she ends up having a confrontation on the train. After the confrontation she is on the run, but she is sure that she will be caught and put to death.

And yes, she does get caught, but death is the furthest thing that happens to her. Instead, she is introduced to a whole underground network, inhabited by humans without powers, humans that are clairvoyant, clairvoyants that are not from our world, and beast like creatures that only want to destroy. The dynamic of this social hierarchy is cruel and unfair, and Paige will be pushed to her limits.

This secret society is set in Oxford, which is a city everyone believes to be long destroyed. And once Paige enters this world, she finds out that people have been keeping secrets for over two-hundred years.

“Once you know something, you can’t get rid of it. You have to carry it. Always.”

Overall, I did enjoy this, even with the tedious clairvoyant research it made me do. I also think it is important to note that this book was a debut novel by a very young author, and that in and of itself is impressive. I for sure think that this could be something great, and I am looking forward to continuing on with The Mime Order.