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The Bone Season
The Bone Season
Samantha Shannon | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
9
7.3 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
The year is 2059. Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of Scion London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall. Her job: to scout for information by breaking into people’s minds. For Paige is a dreamwalker, a clairvoyant and, in the world of Scion, she commits treason simply by breathing.

It is raining the day her life changes for ever. Attacked, drugged and kidnapped, Paige is transported to Oxford – a city kept secret for two hundred years, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. Paige is assigned to Warden, a Rephaite with mysterious motives. He is her master. Her trainer. Her natural enemy. But if Paige wants to regain her freedom she must allow herself to be nurtured in this prison where she is meant to die.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine and also introduces an extraordinary young writer, with huge ambition and a teeming imagination. Samantha Shannon has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut.

This is a reread for me and I lived it more the second time round. I admire Samantha Shannon at such a young age to develop such an intricate fascinating world. It was so good to go back to the beginning of Paige's and wardens journey. These characters are so brilliant it's good to see the little things I missed the first time round. Now to wait patiently for Bone season 4 and my hardcover copy of The Mime order.




  
Hats Off To Del Shannon by Del Shannon
Hats Off To Del Shannon by Del Shannon
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I’ve always loved Del. He was my first hero when I was young. When 'Runaway’ came out I was only 13 or 14. I had to have my own rock star. Well, they weren’t called ‘rock stars’ then – they were all pop stars. But my sisters had had Elvis – and I loved Elvis of course – but you had to have your own hero, you know? So Del Shannon was my one. But there’s a great story about Del and ‘Runaway’. He’d made the record and he was on the road and someone had sent him a copy of the record and he put it on his record player, played it and went, ""what the fuck?!"" It was semitone faster than it should have been! And he phones up his manager and he says, ""what the hell have you done to my record?"" And the manager said, ""oh, we sped it up because we thought it was too slow."" And that’s how it is to this day. It’s in B flat minor instead of A minor. Which is amazing and it sounds better when it’s sped up. I’ve slowed it back down to see what it sounded like when it was originally done and it doesn’t sound as good as the sped-up version. You can tell that his vibrato is really fast and you can tell it’s sped up."

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The Shape of Water  (2017)
The Shape of Water (2017)
2017 | Drama, Fantasy
Sally Hawkins (1 more)
Michael Shannon
Beautiful and Enchanting
The Shape of Water really is one of those movies where I feel the trailer doesn't really do it justice. From seeing the trailer, I wasn't really sure how much I was going to enjoy the movie. Like I'm sure many others will be, I was persuaded that I might be wrong by the 13 Oscar nominations it recently received. I shouldn't have had any doubts to be honest. Pan's Labyrinth, also directed by Guillermo del Toro, is one of my favourite movies and The Shape of Water shares many similarities with that. A beautiful and enchanting mix of fairy tale, love story and monster movie.

Sally Hawkins plays Elisa Esposito, a mute woman who works nights as a janitor for Occam Aerospace Research Center along with friend Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer). At home she lives a simple life, watching musicals with her gay neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins) and finding joy in the simple things in life. One day a strange creature is brought into the research center to be studied, surrounded by military and medical personnel. Colonel Richard Strickland has accompanied 'the asset' from it's previous location, and appears to have developed a serious dislike to it. He carries an electrified cattle prod, which he takes great delight in using on the creature. In return though, the creature does manage to remove two of Stricklands fingers, and also inflicts serious injuries on others.

But Elisa takes pity on the creature and over time tries to befriend it, bringing him hard-boiled eggs and teaching him sign language. When she learns that plans for the creature involve vivisection, she hatches a plan to help him escape, and from that point their feelings for each other develop into love. A true Beauty and the Beast style fairy tale.

I found myself absolutely captivated, swept along by the story, and everything about it is just beautiful. Sally Hawkins is incredible, portraying such varied emotions without speaking, she provides much of the films humour, and shines in the more serious scenes too. Doug Jones does what he does best as the creature, but the real monster of the movie is Michael Shannon as Colonel Strickland. Terrifyingly brilliant.

For me, I'm not sure if this beats Pan's Labyrinth, but The Shape of Water is certainly worthy of all the praise, and hopefully the awards, it receives.