An interesting bit of publishing news has been getting around today. That’s no surprise when a debut author is being called “the next J.K. Rowling” and lands a six-figure book deal with the same people who published the uber-successful Harry Potter series. The author is 20 year old Samantha Shannon, who is currently studying English at St. Anne’s College in Oxford, England. She landed the huge deal with Bloomsbury for her first novel, The Bone Season, and two sequels.
She has mapped out her story to be spread over seven books, just like Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series, following the adventures of Paige, a 19-year-old clairvoyant who escapes from life in a criminal underworld.
“The Bone Season” is set in 2059 where Paige is captured by the repressive government, Scion, and sent to Oxford, a town which has been kept secret, where she meets Warden, who becomes her “keeper.”
Bloomsbury plans on publishing the first book in September 2013, so that means you have to wait quite a while to see why Bloomsbury snatched up this story so quickly and for a big price. In a way, it’s not surprising that they were eager to get this story. From it’s brief description, it seems a bit Hunger Games-esque and we’ve seen just how huge that ended up being. However, are we going to be tired of the whole dystopian schtick by 2013? I can name over 20 books off the top of my head that are set in dystopian worlds. In fact, this past month I’ve read 4 dystopian stories consecutively. Hence, let’s just say that this will have to be a pretty unique and exceptional story to earn praise from me.
Source: NY Post
What do you think? Does this sound like a book you’d want to read?
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