Hello blog friends! How are you today? Good, I hope. Oh, how am I? Ecstatic! I finished the pamphlet I received from Bloomsbury Publishing for preordering the book on Amazon! Thank you Bloomsbury!

I was fortunate enough to preorder the book during a time when they were having this promotion of preordering The Mime Order and sending my receipt to get a real, physical copy of the pamphlet that is constantly talked about in the series: On The Merits Of Unnaturalness.

In the series, the author, Samantha Shannon, uses the pamphlet, written by “An Obscure Writer” AKA Jaxon Hall – the leading mime lord of the Seven Dials – to illustrate the different types of clairvoyants and their sort of “hierarchy” within their entire underground community.

The pamphlet itself is absolutely spectacular. It’s a rare treat to have an author produce something small to pique the reader’s interest and get them excited about the story. The only author to date that I’ve read who did something like this and was extremely successful was J.K. Rowling with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. It’s very difficult for an author to captivate the reader with something so small and trivial – something technical, even – but Shannon does it perfectly.

Anyone who reads her books will instantly want to know more about the different Voyants she talks about, or even just mentions in passing. I remember reading about Rhabdomancers in the book and thinking, “oh that sounds pretty cool.” But reading about them in the pamphlet gave life to them. It made the characters seem that much more real. That even if Shannon didn’t go into a backstory or talk about them for more than two sentences, now they had a story. Now these characters had a reason for being there, for being significant even during something so insignificant in the scheme of things.

Overall, I just thought this was spectacular. I loved every second of it, and I’m so excited to keep it in my bookshelf between The Bone Season and The Mime Order for years to come.

Now hurry up on the next books Samantha Shannon!!!

Thank you again to Bloomsbury Publishing for truly making a book series I absolutely love come extremely real with just 36 pages. Glad I made it within 500 people. I’m number 261! I’ll wear it with pride.

Rachel