Francesca's Thoughts

So far this year my fiction reading has entirely consisted of work that’s been out for yonks but I’ve never picked up before… and entirely of work that is a tiny bit bonkers. I’m having a fantastic time and I will inflict everything on you all bahahaa!!!

I don’t think I’ve ever done a Read, If You Like… for an as-yet-unfinished series, and I’ve definitely not done one for a series where the author’s reworked the originals.

Read The Bone Season (2013 to present) by Samantha Shannon, If You Like…

• Dystopian fantasy, but less in a Hunger Games way and more in a ‘what if the Victorians were even more insane that we thought?’ way. It is also a little bit Hunger Games.
• Criminal underworld stories. Think Six of Crows with more violence, or Peaky Blinders with with extremely prejudiced psychics. (There is an Aunt Polly joke there somewhere.)
• Adult books featuring young people. I think I missed The Bone Season when it first came out because it’s not a YA series – too much violence and the odd scene I believe the book community calls spicy – but a lot of the characters are in their teens and twenties, and making the same mistakes we’re all making in our twenties, just against the backdrop of a totalitarian regime and magic.
• A female protagonist who feels like a lady human. Paige has complicated emotions! Paige makes mistakes! Paige makes more mistakes while we’re yelling ‘Paige, no!’ Paige enjoys gradual and ongoing personal growth! Ugh. Perfect.
• Long reads. There’ll be seven total Bone Season novels; number five, The Dark Mirror, just came out. There are also two novellas – I actually recommend starting the series with The Pale Dreamer, a prequel that sets up the world fantastically. The first novel, The Bone Season, was published in 2013. Barack Obama was in office and Elon Musk was the PayPal guy. Give that a think. The PayPal guy.
• Author’s Preferred Texts. I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything that was a reworked version of the original published piece. Books one through four have all been revised, and have the most stunning covers. This is where you can keep track of the novels and novellas.
• Really fantastic twists and cliff hangers. I read The Mime Order, the second instalment, on my Kindle so I couldn’t slam the book shut and shout ‘I KNEW IT!!!’ at stupid o’clock when I got to the end of the novel. I may have to search out hardback copies of the series because physically throwing a book when you’ve read a particularly fantastic twist provides a certain je ne sais quoi you just can’t get with an e-reader.

I haven’t made it to an author event since about 2019 but I did manage to see Samantha in conversation with Tasha Suri a week or so ago (have I waxed lyrical about Tasha Suri’s books here yet? I will). And I bought a couple of Bone Season novels so I can happily yell NO!!!! when I reread and come across a twist I’d forgotten was coming. Highly recommend the experience. The novels are pictured here with Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender? because I also got to go to an evening with Butler – two evening events in four days, I wasn’t too knackered to take a photo of the whole stack but was too knackered to just do a Bone Season photo- and I am feeling very happy and grateful that I get to read books and talk about books and inflict books on people here.

If this post has whetted your appetite, you can find all my book recommendations here. I hit a bit of a fiction book slump after I finished The Dark Mirror but the Easter break is coming up soon so I’m hoping to sink my teeth into some more novels, and properly get into Who’s Afraid of Gender?. I suspect the answer to that question will be… lots of people.

Before I go, there are some signed copies of Rotting Trees available on my Folksy in a little book merch bundle. I have really limited copies and am still only shipping to the UK (sorry! Hoping to open to international orders this year!) but I wanted to let you know.

Look after yourselves,

Francesca

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to read my short stories and see behind-the-scenes work, you can sample? the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon for a month with this link. No pressure to stick around! Think of it as trying a miniature dessert with no requirement to eat the whole menu. You can also find me on Ko-fi. Thank you for your support – you’re helping to fund this space and pay for other costs of running a creative business, like paying editors.

Here are the books I’ve published so far and where you can find them. If you enjoy my book recommendations, browse my Bookshop.org page here.

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