Review – The Song Rising

From Goodreads:

The hotly anticipated third book in the bestselling Bone Season series – a ground-breaking, dystopian fantasy of extraordinary imagination

Following a bloody battle against foes on every side, Paige Mahoney has risen to the dangerous position of Underqueen, ruling over London’s criminal population.

But, having turned her back on Jaxon Hall and with vengeful enemies still at large, the task of stabilising the fractured underworld has never seemed so challenging.

Little does Paige know that her reign may be cut short by the introduction of Senshield, a deadly technology that spells doom for the clairvoyant community and the world as they know it…

This one throughs you straight back into the action and I really enjoyed it. It really diverges from Book 2. I loved that this pulled us out of London and out into how the rest of the UK copes under Scion. It was fun getting a glimpse of how Edinburgh copes under the Anchor.

I think this helped me figure out why these books are just not hitting five stars for me despite loving Shannon’s writing style. there is a lot of ‘Blank’ space in the other novels, downtime where the characters are not moving forward and those moments are just to extended for my liking, they draw me out of the story and I prefer it when Shannon dives into the action as they are just intense and amazing scenes. There are also no side stories to follow. Once I realised this I sort of figured out why I just found something so linear about this series and the fact that we don’t get any side story or any asides seems rather jarring for me.

This instalment had so much more action and the movement around the UK makes it feel like we just got a lot more worldbuilding and constant movement in the plot. It really ramped up to the ending which was fantastic. I would have loved to have spent more time in each location but did like the frantic nature of it all. As we solely focus on Paige I am really loving how much growth we are seeing from Paige’s character, she adapts so much during the story and it really made me love her as a protagonist

So far this is my favourite of the series. I adored the ending and it got me very excited to continue.