The Pale Dreamer

The Pale Dreamer is a short prequel novella to Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series, first published by Bloomsbury in 2016. Set roughly three years before the events of The Bone Season, it returns to Scion London — a dystopian version of the capital where clairvoyance is a crime and an underworld of voyant gangs operates by its own rules.

A dangerous and valuable poltergeist is on the loose in the heart of the city, and it has to be caught before chaos spills onto the streets. Rival gangs will stop at nothing to win such a magnificent prize. Sixteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working for Jaxon Hall, the most notorious mime-lord in London. He is convinced she is hiding a powerful gift that has so far refused to surface, and the hunt may be the opportunity she needs to prove him right and secure her position in his gang, the Seven Seals.

At 78 pages it is a self-contained entry point rather than a required instalment: Shannon presents it as a standalone prequel that can be read at any point in the series, and it works both as an introduction to the world for new readers and as an origin story for the Seven Seals for those who already know it.