All the Murmuring Bones by AG Slatter

Making an effort to post a review every Friday!

I cannot tell you the last time I enjoyed a main character for their brutality. The protagonist of All The Murmuring Bones has such a refreshing, pragmatic, bordering amoral sensibility. Perhaps that’s the best word: sensible. There is little sentimentality in this story, which, so often authors attempt to convey coldness in a character but fail to then make the character likeable. Miren is likeable.

Initially her characterization is a bit flat, she complains, I worried that I had started in on another book in the vein of Young Adult novels that I’m suggested where plucky-whoever does dramatic-what-have-you and earns their place in an adventure.

This isn’t an adventure—well. Maybe, technically, it is. In form. In spirit, it is reminiscent for me of Susanna Clarke rather than stock adventure formats.  There’s a great gothic sensibility to All the Murmuring Bones, lifting its fantasy from mariner tales and Irish folklore, and its dry delivery straight out of Shirley Jackson.

It is the first fantasy novel I’ve really connected to in months and I enjoyed the world building, the storytelling and mirroring of themes that lends just enough dramatic irony that you have to flinch guessing at what will happen next. I adored having a female protagonist who doesn’t wilt or linger on relationships or sentiment. The no nonsense, surrounded by nonsense and violence, nature of the narrative is addictive.