History Literature / TheMimeOrder

* BlackMarket: The voyants have one in Covent Garden, which sells everything from numa to forgeries to death-related bric-a-brac.

* BilingualBonus: Paige meets another Irish voyant in Jacob's Island and tells her, ''"Éire go Brách."'' This is a popular slogan that translates to ''Ireland forever.''

''The Mime Order'' is the 2015 sequel to Samantha Shannon's ''[[Literature/TheBoneSeason The Bone Season,]]'' and the second book in a series of seven installments. Set in a {{Dystopian}}, AlternateHistory England, the story follows a young clairvoyant woman named Paige Mahoney. Since 1859, when the phenomenon of [[ISeeDeadPeople clairvoyance]] first became public knowledge, England has operated under an [[ANaziByAnyOtherName oppressive and strongly anti-voyant government]] called Scion. Paige belongs to a class of criminal voyants who use their contact with spirits and the spirit world (known as the æther) to make a living while avoiding the authorities. She is a rare kind of voyant known as a dreamwalker, capable of [[AstralProjection separating her spirit from her physical body]] and entering the æther in spirit form.

* WeWillMeetAgain: Jaxon says as much after the scrimmage.

* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning: [[spoiler: Paige gets one after beating Jaxon Hall in a ferocious duel and becoming the youngest Underqueen in the history of the syndicate. To make it even more sensational, she follows this up by exposing the Rag and Bone Man's conspiracy, introducing everyone to the Ranthen and declaring war on Scion.]]

* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning: [[spoiler: Paige gets one after beating Jaxon Hall in a ferocious duel and becoming the youngest Underqueen in the history of London. To make it even more sensational, she follows this up by exposing the Rag and Bone Man's conspiracy, introducing the Ranthen to the syndicate and declaring war on Scion.]]

* CasualDangerDialogue: Paige and [[spoiler: Jaxon]] banter while doing their level best to thrash each other in the Rose Ring. Their drama-hungry audience eats it up.

* CreatorCareerSelfDeprecation: Alfred asks to join Paige at the coffeehouse with the excuse that "it can be absolutely unbearable to be surrounded by writers every day. Ghastly lot."

* SpitefulSpit: Two of Hector's cronies do this to Paige when they ambush her in I Cohort; it being nine against one, she doesn't have much choice but to take it. The guard to Warden's cell does this too, but his spit is implied to land in her general direction rather than directly on her.

* HumanTrafficking: [[spoiler: The Abbess and the Rag and Bone Man were selling voyants to Sheol I in a venture called "the gray market." Ivy, Cutmouth and Haymarket Hector were also complicit.]]

* SymbolicMutilation: According to Warden, the Sargas family's favoured form of execution in the corporeal world is decapitation, as it symbolizes the removal of the dreamscape.

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: The basis of the scrimmage. When choosing a new syndicate leader, all contenders must fight one another in a kind of arena called the Rose Ring, mêlée-style. Last one standing gets the crown.

->''For are we not vastly superior to them, we unnaturals? For though we pick the bones of society, though we crawl in gutters and beg for our keep, we are living conduits to the world beyond. We are proof of an auxiliary existence. We are catalysts of the ultimate energy, the eternal æther. We harness Death itself. We unhorse the Reaper.''

* KillingInSelfDefense: When two of the Rag and Bone Man's underlings ambush Paige late at night, on orders to drag her off and cut her throat, she kills one with her spirit. It's implied to an irresistible, almost mechanical impulse of self-preservation. She couldn't have suppressed it if she'd tried.

->''For are we not vastly superior to them, we unnaturals? For though we pick the bones of society, though we crawl in gutters and beg for our keep, we are living conduits to the world beyond. We are proof of an auxiliary existence. We are catalysts of the ultimate energy, the eternal æther. We harness Death itself. [[BadassBoast We unhorse the Reaper.]]''

* OutOfTheFryingPan: The transition from Sheol I to Scion London is extremely perilous for the Bone Season survivors, for multiple reasons. First, they are greeted at the Tower of London by the Guard Extraordinary, who cut their numbers down by more than half; second, they are declared preternatural fugitives and made the focus of a citywide manhunt; third, the London syndicate not only won't shield them but actively hurts them. For those who don't have a mime-lord's protection or a support system to fall back on, London turns out to be just as dangerous as Oxford ever was. Paige herself remarks bitterly that she has taken them from one hell to another.

* IKnowYourTrueName: A variation. Jaxon explains to Paige that, as a binder, he can gain control of a spirit by carving their name into his own skin. [[spoiler: He tries to pull this on her during their final showdown in the scrimmage, but fortunately for Paige, he uses her anglicized middle name and not its true Irish counterpart.]] It doesn't work.

* LesCollaborateurs: [[spoiler: The Abbess, the Rag and Bone Man and Haymarket Hector -- all ringleaders of the gray market, in which the London syndicate sold voyants into slavery in Sheol I.]]

* LesCollaborateurs: [[spoiler: The Abbess, the Rag and Bone Man and Haymarket Hector -- all ringleaders of the gray market, in which the London syndicate sold voyants into slavery in Sheol I --]] turn out to be this.