Backlist Review – The Mime order

From Goodreads:

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. 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.

I have to admit while I enjoyed the overall plot I found this book far to long for what actually happened. There seemed to be a lot of downtime in between plot elements which seemed to drag on just a little too long and really didn’t impact the plot enough to warrant so much time spent on them. I just feel there is a lot of dawdling and I just want to dive into the action as its so good. When we did dive into Paige’s adventures they were fast paced with lots of drama which really kept me reading. The murder mystery aspect was great, uncovering all the secrets of the underworld.

I really like Shannon’s narrative style, I like how Paige is developing, but occasionally it does get a little bit repetitive, and her story does seem to cycle for a bit in the middle of this book. This didn’t give us much more development into the other main players of the story, focusing mainly on Paige and how she is coping now she has returned to the the Seven Seals. While I would have liked to learn more about the individual members, we still have a lot to learn about Paige.

We did get to explore Scion London which is so interesting, seeing more of the day to day lives of Londoners and how those within the Mime Order survive under the Anchor. We learnt a lot about the political structure of the Mime Order and the Mime-lords and Ladies which was It is such an interesting dystopian world that I am happy to wonder around learning more about the different factions of the Mime order etc.

Overall, I enjoyed the plot of this one, despite it being a bit too long in places. The end was really interesting and I think the series could really go places.