With The Dark Mirror, Samantha Shannon’s Bone Season Series Becomes the Fantasy Saga Our Moment Requires
It’s been four years since the release of The Mask Falling, the fourth installment in bestselling author Samantha Shannon’s Bone Season series. The arrival of the saga’s fifth book, titled The Dark Mirror, is certainly long-awaited, and fans everywhere have no doubt been dying to finally get the chance to return to the story of dreamwalker Paige Mahoney and her otherworldly ally-turned-lover Arcturus Mesarthim. But the most striking thing about this installment—which, let me just get this out of the way, is excellent—is how unexpectedly timely it feels and how perfectly tuned to our current moment its story happens to be, despite its wildly fantastical premise.
Of course, this probably isn’t terribly purposeful. Publishing is a notoriously unpredictable business with colossally long lead times, a release calendar that always seems to be in flux, and authors (like Shannon!) who prefer to take years between titles. No one involved in the writing of this book had any idea that The Dark Mirror would arrive right now, at a moment in which authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, dictators are seizing power, and broad questions about who governments are meant to serve are running rampant. And, yet, it also seems hard to imagine a more necessary moment for a story like this to hit shelves. A road map for resistance, an ode to perseverance, and a bright shining ball of hope in a bleak time, The Dark Mirror is both a fantastic next step in the larger story of Shannon’s Bone Season universe and a necessary reminder that everyone has a role to play in saving the world—-or, at the very least, making it a less overtly dark and frightening place than it is at the present moment.
As a story, The Dark Mirror is different than its predecessors in many ways. Most importantly, it takes place entirely outside of Scion, and gives us our first real look at the wider world that exists free from the controlling reach of the Anchor. Countries like Spain and Portugal are busily battling Scion forces, but others like Italy (at least for the moment), still live relatively normal lives beyond its influence. For the first time, we’re asked to consider how the seemingly inexorable march of Scion’s control, the existence of clairvoyance, and even the rumored presence of the Rephaite on Earth might play to an audience of normals, and the story is full of the sort of complex political intrigue and spycraft its predecessors simply didn’t have room to tackle. The end result is a story that makes the wider world beyond Paige’s immediate circle feel thrillingly real and expansive.
The Dark Mirror picks up six months after the shocking conclusion of The Mask Falling, as Paige awakens in an unfamiliar hotel with no idea where she is or how she got there. Though she remembers the moment when Arcturus seemingly betrayed her, everything since that time is foggy, and her altered dreamscape has been altered in a way that indicates her memories have been erased or otherwise suppressed. Most surprisingly of all: Paige is no longer in Scion. She’s now in the free world, where clairvoyants are acknowledged as citizens and free to do as they please. But what has Paige been doing for the past six months? And who tampered with her memories?
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