Review: The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon

Title: The Mime Order
Author: Samantha Shannon
Series: The Bone Season #2
Genre: Paranormal/Dystopian/YA
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication Date: January 27th, 2015
Edition: Hardcover, 517 pages
Source: Purchased
Purchase/Pre-Order: Amazon US | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | BAM

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.

It took me far longer than I wanted to read this book. A year-long reading slump, among other things, kept me from having the time, or perhaps energy, to read this book for hours at a time the way I wanted to.

The progression of this story is just amazing. Paige is a fantastic character. As are all the other characters. There isn't a single character, that I can think of, who is underdeveloped. 

The worldbuilding is one of my favorite things about this book, how it is seamlessly woven into the story without info dumping. There is a lot of slang made for this book, that I never felt the need to look up in the glossary at the back while reading. I didn't understand it, but I didn't feel like it detached me from the book or what was happening. It just flowed for me. 

I never liked Jaxon's character, even in the first book. He just came across as... smarmy. He put himself on this high pedestal wearing, basically, a silk bathrobe and drinking all day while everybody else did all the hard work. I know he was a Mime-lord, but he expected things from everybody without really providing much for those he was supposedly taking care of. 

Warden is still a mystery to me. I still don't understand the romance, or whatever that is, between him and Paige. I don't know what attracted them to each other. From what I remember, through most of the first book, she hated him because he was her keeper. He may have helped her escape, and he never beat her the way the other 'masters' beat the ones in they were in charge of, but still. It just didn't and doesn't make sense to me. I also don't remember what he is supposed to look like, it's been years since I read the first book, and I don't recall his appearance being mentioned in this book. 

This book was very politics based, and I really enjoyed that. There aren't many YA books that focus heavily on politics. Not really sure why, maybe some authors think that it would bore the target audience? Either way, I think it's insulting their intelligence. "Young People" want to read complex stories, they don't always want to read boring cliche books that they've read a hundred times.

I look forward to where this series is headed.