BLOG TOUR: The Mime Order Review AND Scion Guide!

The time is upon us, The Mime Order looms, and I have for you my review aaaannddd a cool little guide Samantha knocked up for me to post on here. Coolest blog tour ever riiight!? First up.....review times! 

The Mime Order

Rating: 5/5

Buy or Borrow: Buy it NOW

Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!

In The Bone Season Paige escaped the brutal penal colony known as Sheol I, taking as many  Voyants with her as she could but having to leave behind Warden. In Mime Order, we join her on the second leg of the escape, and her problems are only just beginning, what with the train letting out at the Tower...full of guards. After that, most of the fugitives are dead or missing and Paige has no idea where they are. Thanks to Nashira, she is also the most wanted person in London with her face plastered everywhere.

Scion has it's Sauron like eye on Paige, but while she's still Jaxons Mollisher, she's untouchable, no-one will risk his wrath to turn her in. But Paige is chafing under Jax, she didn't leave one slave position for another, and Jax has no intention on acting on what they know, he'll do everything in his power to make sure she doesn't breathe a word about the colony and the Rephaim to the Unnatural Assembly. Not that they'd do anything, considering the corruption festering under the surface, encouraged by the Under-Lord, the only one who can call them to do something. Warden is still MIA and when said Under-Lord and his entire group are killed, including his mollisher and heir, the Unnatural Assembly need new leadership, and to get it, all eligible parties will have to participate in a scrimmage.

Jaxon and his Seven Seals are prepared to fight and win, but Paige can't allow that to happen. Secrets are everywhere, nothing is as it seems, and the Seven Seals are about to be torn apart, but who will fall on whose side? Paige is determined to do something about the imposing threat and destroy the corruption in the Unnatural Assembly, and she won't allow Jaxon to control her anymore.

Paige is going to have to make a stand, the question is....who will be her allies? Everything Paige thought she knew, is wrong. Who can she really trust, when she's being hunted?

Oh maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! How can you leave it like that!? Waaaaa! Dammit give me the next book noow! This is going to be a horrible wait, I can tell, because right now I can't think about anything other than this book, and the series, and what's possibly going to happen next, and every bad thing that could happen is going through my head, and I need to know what happens! But I will calm myself to write this review! Expect some gushing though! Although I'll try and keep it as spoiler free as possible!

Mime Order seriously starts off right from where Bone Season ended, so we're on the train heading towards Scion, and Paige is trying to figure out what to do next, so as you can imagine there is some intense emotion and atmosphere from the beginning as well as action that starts from the beginning and carries on throughout, making the book impossible to put down. Every chapter leaves you needing to know what happens next, there is no appropriate place to stop, because there's never a lull, if it's not an awesome fight scene, then it's clues dropping in to your lap, or you being shocked at a plot twist, and so on. Something is always going on, and urging you to keep reading.

This series is incredibly unique, it's incredibly detailed and intricate with the politics and the time line and the explanations for things like Jack the Ripper, and the different levels of Voyants, and the world and everything. Everything is explained so well and so concisely that you immediately get the world, and slipping back in to it for Mime Order is so easy. I love the uniqueness of the book, I really do, there's so much about it I could mention, but I'd be here all day and no-one wants to read a review that's longer than the book! I suspect fans of the books will know what I mean anyway!

Mime Order also shows just how clever the book is, I mean at the Tower of London, the guards are called Ravens. You know....the Ravens at the Tower....get it?! There's little nuggets like that throughout the whole book and I'm not sure about other readers, but native Londoners like myself will be reading it and chuckling at all the little nuggets like the Tower, that show our London exists in this future, alternate London, but has been subtly changed, and fits in to the world and so on. It's incredibly well done.

This installment is just as intense and emotional as Bone Season, if not more than, the atmosphere is just....all over you as soon as you start reading it. You can feel the danger, unrest, terror, oppression, slight stirrings of rebellion and so on, and the atmosphere stays with you throughout the entire book, changing subtly with each new part of the plot. It's this atmosphere, along with the fantastically vivid world building, that draws you in to the world and refuses to let you step back out. For me, it wasn't hard to layer this alternate London, over my London. Besides that, for someone who's never been to London, it's going to feel like you have been.

I loved the mix of times, it's set in the future, but there's Victorian elements strewn throughout, and it's all blended together to make a unique setting that you're engrossed by and wanting to know more about with every bit you learn about. Like I've said multiple times, I've been on a roll lately with uniquely awesome books, and this is one of those instances where a sequel is equal to it's previous installment if not better.

Bone Season, as fans will remember, was all about the Colony and the Rephaim, and learning about them and what's really going on with Scion, with brief hints of everything else, although I think it's safe to say there where some bad vibes from Jax, and how he treated Paige, which isn't how she remembered him. Mime Order is all about the Unnatural Assembly, it's structure, the different Cohorts and their resident Mime-Queens or Mime-Lords, their mollishers and other members, the politics of it, and how corrupt it really is and has been allowed to become by Hector. I mean, it's a lot more corrupt than even Paige thought it was.

I continue to love Paige, and connect to her, and feel for her, and I'm right there along with her in the book, feeling what she's feeling and everything. I love how strong she is, and how she keeps on surviving despite what's thrown at her, keeps on fighting. I've loved watching her develop, and continue to develop in this book, I mean she could have just given in and gone along with Jackson, but she didn't. She did what she needed to do, to keep everyone safe. Jaxon is not how I was expecting him to be from the bits Paige mentioned of him in Bone Season, and him at the end, appeared to be out of character, in this book he seems to be totally different from how he's supposed to be, and the whole thing at the end makes you realize what his problem is, why he's acting this way and so on, and I'm totally hitting myself for not picking up on it!

I love the characters in the book, all of them, not just Eliza, and Warden and Nick, but all the secondary characters, because even the really shitty characters, are all incredibly well written, they're all larger than life, they all leap off the page, they're all different from the others and it's a really colourful cast of characters! Not to mention I love the different types of Voyants and all the different gifts they have and Numa, I love finding out more and more about them!

The plot is complex, there's a lot going on under the surface, and there are clues, but I for one, was incredibly engrossed in the book so I missed some clues, obviously, and all the theories I had where totally wrong. Like reaaaaaally wrong! I loved how you're reading, and there's hints of something under the surface, something  more going on, but it's eked out, and you're desperate to know how it all connects and what's really going on and then the reveals just totally blow you away. There are seriously plot twists everywhere and it keeps you on your toes, and I seriously wasn't expecting certain things to happen and I had so many feels. So many. Like I said, I should have guessed certain things and picked up more of the clues, but I didn't, and I couldn't work out some of the clues, because I suck.

There's also a smidge more background about the Rephaim, and you see their point of view about what happened when they arrived back in the 1800's, how they framed Edward as the Ripper, how the veil works, how the clairvoyants came about and how Warden and the others became rebels, and started working against the Sargas. I love the timeline the author has created to explain the Ripper, and her current Scion London, and I love how she's changed history so it starts back in the 1800's, it fits so perfectly.

The Mime Order is reaching the climax of the overarching storyline, change is happening, revolution is coming, and the fight is about to start, and things are going to get even more intense and serious, and there's probably going to be heartbreak. You can feel the change coming at the end of the book, when Lotte shouts out you can literally feel it, it almost makes you shiver. Mime Order ends on a cliffhanger with a plot twist that seriously comes out of nowhere and pretty much punches you in the face and leaves you stunned for a good period of time after, as all the implications come crashing down on you and things click in to place.

The Mime Order is slick, and has a fast, action packed pace that continues strongly all the way through until the end, you don't want to leave the world, you NEED to know what happens next, you want to be as badass as Paige! I loved the Unnatural Assembly and how it's set up, and all the different names, and I'm excited to see what happens with this new Unnatural Assembly with it's new leadership, and the third book is looking to be utterly fantastic, and explosive and just amazing. I need it nooow!

Oh oh oh, and, P.S, I LOVED the little interludes breaking up the story and keeping it fresh and the cool pamphlets and things!

I know I know, so much writing, so much fingerling, y'all should be used to this from me by now when I love a series! If my review got you super excited for Mime Order, check out the link for the coolest guide ever! Reacquaint yourself with Scion London! 

Clickety click, riight....HERE for the open in new page, giant view, OR, below is a little viewer thingy I rigged up. As you can tell I have no idea how I managed it :')