Nineteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working in the criminal underworld of Scion London, based at Seven Dials, employed by a man named Jaxon Hall.

[4] Shannon began writing The Bone Season while working for book agent David Godwin and attending St Anne's College, Oxford.

[6] She began using the environment of St Anne's College and the overall University of Oxford architecture and landscaping as an inspiration for the novel's Sheol I penal colony setting.

An interviewer noted that Oxford has many "impossibly neat, manicured lawns and well-tended buildings that act as a kind of tree-ring-dating window onto Britain's architectural past (and present).

[9] However Atlantic Wire reporter Arit John commented that the "steady drumbeat of press ... has led to comparisons to nearly every mainstream female fantasy and sci-fi novelist with name recognition".

[11][12][13] USA Today commented upon a similarity to the Harry Potter novels in their positive review for The Bone Season, opining that the book's premise was "awfully familiar in certain aspects" to the aforementioned series while also stating that it had "fresh ideas, excellent original concepts and, best of all, an impressive new voice for fantasy literature.

[5] The Telegraph's review also mentioned that the book was similar to The Hunger Games and commented that the plot would be familiar to fantasy readers but that Shannon "shows real skill in combining them so easily into an original and enjoyably escapist fictional world.