Publishers Weekly
★ 01/25/2021
Set in a fantasy world reminiscent of 19th-century Ireland, this stunning gothic adventure from Slatter (Sourdough and Other Stories) shimmers with fairy tale enchantment. Miren O’Malley has lived her 18 years under the thumb of her overbearing grandmother, Aoife, the matriarch of the once powerful O’Malley dynasty, now paupers in a crumbling coastal mansion. Miren grew up with stories of her family sacrificing children to the sea-queen in return for their prosperity. But their line has been diluted—Miren’s mother married an outsider and had only one child, leaving none to be sacrificed. To revive the family wealth, Aoife plans to marry Miren off to her rich and brutal cousin. But when Miren learns that her mother was a witch and that her supposedly long-dead parents are still alive, she finally takes control of her life and sets out to find them. While navigating the greed and arrogance of man and the magic of kelpies and merfolk, Miren vows to right her family’s generations of wrongs. In lyrical prose, Slatter evokes the decay and dread that surround her strong characters. Anyone who likes gutsy heroines, beautiful language, and well-wrought worlds won’t want to miss this. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
PRAISE FOR ALL THE MURMURING BONES
A rich and satisfying novel about a young woman, born to be the last hope of a once powerful family, who resists an arranged marriage and won’t stop at murder or magic to survive in a world of abusive men and dangerous, supernatural creatures. Shifting between scenes of wonder and horror, a complex plot is gradually revealed, as well paced and gripping as a thriller. - The Guardian
"Stunning gothic adventure...Anyone who likes gutsy heroines, beautiful language, and well-wrought worlds won’t want to miss this." - Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"This is a magnificently written, smashingly good read...Slatter’s prose is as lustrous as jet beads against black silk. Readers will savor every word."- Locus Magazine
‘A. G. Slatter is a born storyteller. Her work is as beautiful and dangerous as the best fairy tales and All the Murmuring Bones is entirely enchanting. A magical read!’ Alison Littlewood, author of A Cold Season
‘A beautiful gothic monstrosity (monstrosity being a good thing), one of those rare books you don’t just want to read but want to live inside of.’ Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy
‘Like J.R.R. Tolkien, Slatter’s taken her personal invented mythos and crafted a world around it that is at once familiar and deeply strange. Lush and chilling, eerie and exquisite, brutal and elegant… I defy anyone to stop turning pages until they’ve come to the end.’ Ellen Kushner, author of The Privilege of the Sword
‘Harrowing and beautiful, this is the grim, fairy-tale gothic you’ve been waiting for. All the Murmuring Bones is Slatter at her darkest—and finest. Don’t miss it!' Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Ararat and Red Hands
‘All the Murmuring Bones is fairy-tale gothic at its finest and then some. Luscious, richly infused with Slatter’s gift for creating place; this is a world that invites travel along all of its dark roads and secret paths. Long after you’re done with the book, you’ll sit there drenched still in its magic, wondering how you might find your way back.’ Cassandra Khaw, author of Hammers on Bone
‘A story as gorgeously gothic as its title. This is a novel of blood and bones, of salt and silver, of an absolutely haunting richness. I was compelled from the very beginning and held rapt to the end.’ Kat Howard, author of An Unkindness of Magicians
‘Like the sea at its heart, Slatter’s haunting story is treacherous and lovely in all its dark depths.’ Heather Kassner, author of The Bone Garden
‘Two uncanny houses, Hob’s Hallow and Blackwater, bookend Angela Slatter’s new novel like grim sentinels. Whether they are cursed or enchanted, majestic or moldering, refuge or prison, only reading to the end will tell. Meanwhile, the landscape stretching between these gothic structures abounds with corpsewights, kelpies, ghosts, rusalki, werewolves, clockwork mechanicals, and—most alarmingly—actors. And across this treacherous terrain walks Miren O’Malley, scarred, furious, and growing in power. All the Murmuring Bones is brutal and beautiful throughout, with moments of tenderness hard-won and harder-kept, and, pervading all, an atmosphere of inescapable threat like the taste of salt wind and the sound of silver bells ringing in the deep.’ C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Bone Swans: Stories
"The [gothic] fantasy worlds of Angela Slatter are among the fullest, most vividly realised of our time. The primal ore of folk and fairytale runs glittering through the dark layers of their history and geology, and Slatter mines them for all they're worth. She brings them to the light cut and polished in ways that will make you gasp. In the furnace of her imagination what she produces is tantamount to a sword from out the stone. Her prose is molten metal. Hail the Once and Future Queen!" Neil Snowdon
‘Gorgeous, atmospheric gothic fantasy’ - Buzzfeed
‘Twists and turns and weaves Grimm-like fairytales into a dark tale that gets darker the further you read’ 5* - She Reeds By The Sea
