48 pages • 1 hour read
The Bone Season
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Chapters 27-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 27 Summary: “The Anniversary”
Paige prepares for the Bicentenary. Scion emissaries arrive, marking the establishment of Sheol II, the beginnings of a global Scion empire. In preparation for the fulfillment of their plans for rebellion, Paige and her fellow rebels have spiked the red-jackets’ wine to dull their responses and have arranged to evacuate all voyants to the train. David arrives to escort Paige to escort her to the celebration, but he is aware of the spiked wine, and she fears that he may betray the rebellion.
Inside the Guildhall, the rebels finalize their plans before they are set to be paraded before the Scion emissaries. In the grand hall, Paige confronts the Irish emissary about her cousin Finn’s arrest and threatens to hold him responsible if Finn has been executed. Nashira instructs Warden to watch Paige until Nashira can summon her, and this order confirms that she plans to kill Paige in public. Nashira addresses the crowd, proclaiming the virtues of the human/Rephaite alliance, and introduces the “second blood-sovereign” (402), possessed of an “ancient and terrible” dreamscape. The evening’s festivities begin.
Chapter 28 Summary: “The Prohibition”
While harlies perform a play designed to elicit hatred of “unnaturals,” a derogatory term for voyants, Warden suddenly escorts Paige out of the hall to a space below the stage. He tells her that Nashira will kill her in the play’s final act but urges her to fight back. They make love, spontaneously and passionately, but Paige is aware of Nashira’s presence. The blood-sovereign knows about Warden’s betrayal, and two of her loyal followers drag him away. Two others—allies to the rebellion—take Paige to face Nashira. While they leave to help Warden, she is summoned to the stage for execution, but she possesses Nashira’s body and forces the Reph to drive a knife into her own chest. Nashira revives, however, and a spirit battle ensues. As Nashira stands poised to kill Paige, Warden and other Reph allies intervene and drive Nashira away. Paige is lifted and carried from the stage.
When Paige regains consciousness, Warden tells her that “the [Seven] Seals came for [her]” (421). She drifts in and out of consciousness, and when she wakes again, Nick and Jax are there. She is too weak to move, so Warden gives her a dose of amaranth. Revived, she runs for the exit with Nick and Jaxon but returns to find Liss mortally wounded. Gomesia, Liss’s killer, lingers in the shadows. Several Reph allies attack, but Gomesia dispatches them easily until only Warden is left. Suddenly, the stage explodes.
Chapter 29 Summary: “His Parting from Her”
Nick and Paige barely escape the burning building and head for the train, but Warden is missing. Outside, warfare rages in the streets, and Paige and Nick join the battle. A Reph is poised to feed on Paige but is killed by a rampaging Emim. The creatures are now loose in the city.
Paige and Nick make their way to the meadow, where Warden and several voyants are gathered. Paige fires a flare gun to signal their location to any remaining voyants. Jaxon is also there, and he is furious that Paige has alerted everyone to their location with the flare. When Jaxon claims her as his “property,” Paige declares her resignation from Jaxon’s employment, but then she realizes that he would rather kill her than allow her to serve another mime-lord. Nick intervenes; the priority now is to get to the train. On the way, they encounter a dying Scion representative whose final words to Paige are: “They [the Emim} will destroy everything…Find Rackham” (440-41).
The group is aware of Rephs in pursuit—Terebell and other allies. They will wait for Warden until the humans are safely aboard the train. Paige and the others arrive at the platform, and she unlocks the gate by coaxing the poltergeist—Seb’s spirit—from the lock. She confronts him, assuring him that she can free him from his prison. He tells her to avoid Nashira, that there is a “secret” that he cannot reveal. She frees his spirit and is jerked back into her body. The hatch is opened, and the humans make their way to the underground platform just as the train arrives. As they board, Paige bids farewell to Warden, who must stay behind and deal with Nashira. As the train accelerates into the tunnel, Paige looks back, but Warden is hidden in darkness.
Chapters 27-29 Analysis
Rather than waste time with a traditional denouement, Shannon wraps up her narrative with a bang and deliberately leaves the action hanging in anticipation of the sequel to come. The long-anticipated uprising provides a myriad of adrenaline-pumping scenes that crescendo in pure chaos as Oxford burns, red-jackets die, and Warden and his allies make sure their scarring punishment will not be repeated. With the pacing of an action film, Paige also fulfills her role as budding hero by facing down Nashira, reuniting with former allies, and guiding the voyant prisoners to safety—all actions designed to bestow upon her a number of heightened responsibilities and set up a potential path forward for her as leader and hero when the next novel begins. Shannon plans six more books in this series, so certain questions and plotlines are intentionally left open to speculation at this point. Warden is left behind to deal with Nashira, the Emim now roam free with no voyants to stop them, Paige and Jaxon’s business relationship may or may not be dissolved, and Seb’s cryptic hint about a “secret” is left undefined. There is, however, enough death to stain Paige’s conscience—Seb, Liss, and possibly Julian—and to keep her sufficiently motivated to seek future vengeance on Nashira.
At the conclusion of The Bone Season¸ Paige is caught between two worlds—her past, to which she has struggled to return, and her future, which seems likely to include Warden in a significant capacity. Throughout the rhythm of the novel, Shannon has deftly flipped their relationship, transforming them from enemies into lovers. Paige, understandably suspicious until the very end, has finally come to trust her former keeper, and has in fact learned the very definition of ultimate trust: placing faith in another person with no true guarantee that such trust will be rewarded. Ironically, although she would initially have given anything to escape him, she ultimately stands inwardly torn in the decidedly cinematic moment on the train platform, unable to bring herself to say goodbye.
In these final chapters, Shannon also sets up a future global conflict for the remainder of the series, for just as Paige and her compatriots attempt to overthrow one oppressive regime, two more gestate, waiting to propagate the same fear and hatred that has worked so effectively in London. Paige’s battle is not only against the Rephaim or the Emim—or indeed, against the loss of her own autonomy—but against the pervasive fear of the other, a fear so easily evoked in human beings, even when that fear pits allies against each other.
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