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The Graceview Patient by Caitlin Starling

Margaret lives with a rare autoimmune condition that has destroyed her life, leaving her isolated. It has no cure, but she’s making do as best she can—until she’s offered a fully paid-for spot in an experimental medical trial at Graceview Memorial. The conditions are simple, if grueling: she will live at the hospital as a full-time patient, subjecting herself to the near-total destruction of her immune system and its subsequent regeneration. The trial will essentially kill most of, but not all of her. But as the treatment progresses and her body begins to fail, she stumbles upon something sinister living and spreading within the hospital. Unsure of what's real and what is just medication-induced delusion, Margaret struggles to find a way out as her body and mind succumb further to the darkness lurking throughout Graceview's halls. PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Press YEAR: 2025 LENGTH: 320 pages AGE: Adult GENRE: Horror RECOMMENDED: Highly Queer Rep Summary: No canon queer rep. *I...

The Pale Dreamer by Samantha Shannon (The Bone Season, #0.5)

In the perilous heart of Scion London, a dangerous and valuable poltergeist is on the loose – and it must be caught before chaos erupts on the streets of the capital. Here, the clairvoyant underworld plays by its own rules, and 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 the city. He thinks she is hiding a powerful gift, but it refuses to surface. Maybe this is the opportunity she needs to secure her position in his gang, the Seven Seals…

TITLE: The Pale Dreamer
AUTHOR: Samantha Shannon
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury USA
YEAR: 2016
LENGTH: 69 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Fantasy
RECOMMENDED: Highly

This novella is included with some editions of THE BONE SEASON.

Queer Rep Summary: Gay/Achillean Secondary Character(s).

THE PALE DREAMER is a nice prequel to THE BONE SEASON, showing Paige's early days with The Seven Seals. I recommend reading this after THE BONE SEASON, it's not the kind of prequel that stands on its own well, but I enjoyed reading immediately afterwards as a way to see Paige as she was before the events of the main story. 

CW for blood, violence, child abuse (backstory), child death (backstory), murder (backstory), death (backstory).

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