The Dark Mirror
A Novel
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4.5 • 60 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The highly anticipated fifth novel in the New York Times bestselling Bone Season series-an epic and spellbinding fantasy from the author of The Priory of the Orange Tree.
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 By: Goodreads * Barnes & Noble * Screen Rant * The Nerd Daily * Paste Magazine * Book Riot
Everything is about to change.
Paige Mahoney is outside the Republic of Scion for the first time in more than a decade-but she has no idea how she got to the free world. Half a year has been wiped from her memory.
Her journey back to the revolution soon takes her to Venice, where the Domino Programme has uncovered evidence of a secret Scion plan. Before Paige can return to London, she must help the network unravel the sinister Operation Ventriloquist, which threatens to bring Europe to its knees in weeks.
And it soon becomes clear that the one person who could recover her memories-Arcturus Mesarthim-might also hold the key to thwarting Scion, allowing the revolution to strike an unprecedented blow . . .
With its intricate worldbuilding, slow burn romance, and "complex, ever evolving, scrappy yet touching" (NPR) heroine, the Bone Season series shows Samantha Shannon at the height of her considerable powers.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
There’s room for politics, magic, romance, espionage, and action in the world this complex fantasy conjures. Told in three parts, The Dark Mirror is the fifth novel in Samantha Shannon’s Bone Season series, and it’s where the rubber really hits the road. After a dozen years, clairvoyant Paige Mahoney is finally free from the fascistic Republic of Scion that has outlawed her kind and gradually taken over more and more of Europe. But before she can get back to spearheading the fight against Scion, she’s got some issues to deal with. Why can’t she remember anything from the past six months? How can she help the resistance organization Domino? And what’s the deal with her and the immortal Arcturus, with whom she seems to have the ultimate “it’s complicated” relationship? The struggle gets grittier and more action packed, but Shannon ratchets up the romance too. (Some moments between Paige and Arcturus are sizzlingly sexy.) And she ties together so many threads from previous books that the thrilling sweep of it all becomes more epic than ever. The Dark Mirror’s got so much going on that it would be engrossing even without its intoxicating supernatural side.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shannon expands the world of her Bone Season series in this pedal-to-the-metal fifth installment (after 2021's The Mask Falling). It opens with series heroine Paige Mahoney awakening in an unfamiliar hotel somewhere outside of the Republic of Scion without any memory of the past six months. Paige, a 20-year-old with ESP, works to make her way back to her home and the struggle against the Sargas, a subgroup of the Rephaim, "immortal humanoids of the Netherworld," who traveled to Earth after a Rephaim civil war and have been attempting to control human clairvoyants. Her journey takes her through Venice, where she learns of a new Sargas plot: Operation Ventriloquist, a scheme to overtake governments "from within" by turning their leaders into puppets. The stakes are high, the pace is rapid, and Shannon's gift for evocative prose makes the shadowy streets of Venice come alive. Readers who need their memories jogged regarding both the characters' elaborate backstories and Shannon's frequent neologisms will find a comprehensive glossary at the back of the book. Series fans will be thrilled.
