The Battle for London

Author: Samantha Shannon

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Price: Rs 399 Paperback

Pages: 466

Late last year,the release of The Casual Vacancy was met with the usual nail-biting anticipation that is reserved for a JK Rowling. In July,she was unmasked as the true author of The Cuckoos Calling. And now,along comes 21-year old Samantha Shannon with The Bone Season the first in a seven-part fantasy series,which got her a six-figure advance from her publisher and movie rights,drawing immediate parallels to Rowling and her monstrously successful Harry Potter series.

Well,JK Rowling she is not. But The Bone Season suffers under the weight of those comparisons. Rowlings world of wizardry haunts it like a spirit left behind. Rowling sets up her wizards in a larger good versus evil battle; Shannons battle lines are drawn between greater and lesser evils,between forces that are not given enough reasons to exist.

The year is 2059. Set in a dystopian London,a ruthless human regime called Scion rules over the city. Two hundred years ago,King Edward VII was believed to have turned clairvoyant,with murderous consequences. Construed as evil since then,clairvoyants,called Unnaturals,have been hunted down by Scion humans. The clairvoyants live on the margins of London,suppressing their unnaturalness. Organised crime syndicates of clairvoyants,however,flourish in the city and crime-lords run armies of recruits picked for their voyant gifts,who subvert the systems of Scion. Paige Mahoney,the heroine of the series,belongs to such a syndicate. Her crime-lord is a collector of gifted voyants of a higher

order binders,furies,jumpers,whisperers,mediums. Paige is the Pale Dreamer,a dreamwalker; a jumper whose spirit can walk into minds,unlock dreams,and,at her most powerful,even possess people.  

But Scion is just a puppet regime for an older,magical race called the Rephaim,who have established colonies for harvesting clairvoyants to battle their enemies,the Emim. Each 10-year harvesting season is called a Bone Season. Nineteen-year-old Paige is captured by Rephaim soldiers. She arrives at Sheol I,in the lost city of Oxford,only to find clairvoyants mired in slavery and poverty,much like in Scion London. Determined to break free,Paige finds a Keeper who nurtures her gift,is her co-conspirator to overthrow the Rephaim there is a precedent to these voyant rebellions and expectedly falls in love with her. The ensuing battle is confusing a voyant uprising against the Rephaim regime hosting Scion governments,with the Emim jumping in.  

While Shannon concocts an impressive lexicon that describes these worlds,clairvoyants and their masters,the plot runs along predictable lines. The clairvoyant avatars make for interesting reading,but their subjugation,and their lack of familiarity with technology erodes the idea of a dystopian,noir-ish,not-too-distant future. For instance,Paiges father is a leading research scientist with Scion but her own skills on a computer are questionable.

The ideas of clairvoyance,however interesting,are not new. Before Christopher Nolans Inception,a 2008 film Jumper had explored dreamwalking and crime under the guise of teleportation. In the Potter books,Voldemort could possess,share dreams and transfer thoughts; dementors fed on the souls of their captives; and the Sorting Hat had a much cooler way of picking students to the Houses of Hogwarts than the Rephaim way of skulking to pick up slave voyants.

At least Samantha Shannons book is motion-picture-ready fight and chase sequences on the London landscape,the potential for romance and heartbreak. Before the second in the series hits bookstores,a slick adaptation of the first Bone Season should be lighting up the big screen. Whatever fantasy may be,it is definitely big business.