The Bone Season

by Samantha Shannon

This book is a debut novel by a young British writer.

It is a tale set in the future and with a somewhat altered earth history.

As the book opens in England there are many people with various degrees of clairvoyant skills.   These people are considered unnaturals and are being hunted.  The main character, Paige, has a high level of skill and she is being tested by her mentor to find out exactly she can do.  She has told her father she works at an oxygen bar but she actually works as part of an underground group of people with these skills.  She has to be careful as she travels around as there are people who can sense her skill and will attack or arrest her.

She is usually driven around in a taxi but one day she ends up having to take the subway home.  Another clairvoyant notices her and then some officials enter the train car.  Paige ends up killing one of the officials with her mind and making a vegetable of the other one.  She manages to make it to her father's house but shortly after she is chased and captured.

She is taken to Oxford.  The city is rumoured to be deserted but it is actually populated and governed by an an otherworldly race called the Rephaim who want to control all clairvoyants for their own purposes.

Many of the clairvoyants are used and abused in Oxford, they even have to scrounge for food.  Paige is lucky, her keeper, who is high up in the power structure tries to train her and does not mistreat her.  Even though she hates him she saves his life when he is injured.
Some of the clairvoyants are reconciled to her fate but Paige plots to escape.  She is surprised that her keeper and some of his kind seem to be on her side.

I am not generally a big fan of fantasy books but this book was certainly a well told story that kept your interest.  The various types of clairvoyants was a bit confusing, not sure why that was necessary. Quite impressive for a first book.