The Bone Season revisited

Sitting down to read the first couple of pages of Samantha Shannon's The Mime Order, I realised my grasp of the events of its predecessor, The Bone Season, was sketchy at best and a re-read was probably called for if I was to make any sense of the sequel. Re-reading, I was struck by the unevenness of the opening, the pacing problems, and the frequent and dense info-dumps. On finishing, I checked to see whether I'd written it up after my first reading and discovered that I'd already picked up on the same problems which suggests that whether I'm right or wrong in my opinions, I am at least, starting to show a bit of consistency...