Don't buy the hype. No seriously- I think that the hype is probably the #1 thing that will work against a lot of people when they're reading this book. Why? Because when you get past the people praising Shannon as the newest Literary Messiah ala J.K. Rowling, you ultimately have a book that's decent, but is very clearly the work of a newer author. For every one very good element about the book, there's about two that come across as needing just a little more extra work. 
 I hope that opening paragraph doesn't come across as overly harsh, as I do think that Bone Season has a lot going for it and I do think that Shannon has the potential to really live up to these lofty expectations and praise that the media has given her. It's just that she's not quite there yet and this book kind of shows that it could have used another round of edits to even out the flow and work on the romantic chemistry between two of the characters. 
 The good in this book is that the world here is pretty expansive. Shannon tries very hard to write an urban fantasy that is a little more realistic than some of its predecessors. This works both for and against her at times. In many cases it works for her because most people have a basic idea of what Oxford is supposed to look like and as such, it's easy to get a fairly clear idea of the campus/city in our heads. Why this occasionally works against her is that Shannon tries to make everything a bit more exotic by coming up with various new and exotic names for various things, which can sometimes be a little confusing to make heads or tails of. I listened to the audiobook, so I didn't really have a glossary with me at every point where I wanted a little clarification on what a specific word meant. For the most part the large and exotic vocabulary wasn't as jarring as say, Clockwork Orange, but there are a few points where the reader can't help but try to remember what something meant because they don't want to completely have to take themselves out of the story so they can flip to the glossary. 
 What I ultimately thought was the weakest link was the romance between two of the main characters, Paige and Warden. A little bit of a spoiler, but you can pretty much tell from the opening pages that it's coming so it's not an overwhelmingly spoilerific spoiler. The problem is that there's really not much chemistry between the two of them. There is some, but I just couldn't help but feel that this specific plot element could have used a little more development to pave the way for them spontaneously making out. It just felt a little too sudden, which is actually a pretty common issue for the book as a whole. The story would chug along slow but steady until you have a moment where a game changing scene is awkwardly crammed into the book, making everything feel a little off kilter. That's really the moment where you feel that the comparisons of Shannon to Rowling are a little premature, as none of Rowling's works ever felt as awkwardly crammed together as this did. Don't take this to mean that Shannon's a terrible author- she's not- but this really needed some additional editing for flow and pacing. It's this stop-and-start pacing that really made me wince. There are other parts that were like this, but the romantic development is really the best example of this. It's not that there was no chemistry, just not enough to where I felt like it really justified the about-turn-face that we had later in the book. 
 I think that ultimately this is a little too ambitious at times for its own good and if this had been released without all of the hype, I might be a bit more forgiving of some elements. However since it is being released with this hype and Shannon is practically being hailed as the female urban fantasy equivalent of Hemingway, there will be a lot of inevitable disappointment with a lot of readers. This is a decent book, but it's nowhere near what the hype promises. I really felt like this could have used a little more time stewing and developing to get all of the kinks worked out. I do think that Shannon has the makings of an amazing author and that this could eventually be developed into a truly great series, but I don't think that it or she are really there yet. It's a little more ambitious than it really should have been and this will probably be one of those books that the author winces a little when they look back at it. Even so, it is a promising start and as long as Shannon continues to develop her work and tries to work on the issues of flow, pacing, and character/romantic developments, the future novels could be a big treat. 
 On a side note, the narration for this book was excellent in its audiobook format.