The Marrow Bell

Short and sharp: this book nails mood. The line about Saint Marrow pointing as if keeping count of gulls made me smile in a small, sad way. Elin’s voice is steady — you feel the weight of her father’s absence in ordinary things like tide calendars and ink-stained nails. The image of the bell’s aftertaste of mint is so odd and specific I can’t stop thinking about it. Loved the lamplighter scenes and the brass vigil-moth — such a cool, eerie detail. A few plot beats felt familiar, but the execution and atmosphere carried me through. Definitely worth a read. 🙂

I read this in one breath and then spent the next hour listening to the creak of my own floorboards, convinced some old mouth was hungry. The Marrow Bell is the kind of dark fantasy that smells of salt and ink: Elin’s bruised-blue nails and that line about the bell’s voice having an aftertaste of mint stuck with me. I loved the small, concrete details — Jorren’s lemon-oiled lamps, the tarred rope, the gulls hopping like they owned the cobbles — that make Gharrow feel lived-in and dangerous. Elin is a quietly fierce protagonist; her grief over her father (the water taking him, the coil of rope left behind) is handled with restraint but never flattened. Scenes of the bellfounder and the brass vigil-moth are gorgeously strange — I could almost hear the bell needing to be re-tuned. The book’s stakes are clear: retune the bell, expose the corrupt Warden, bind the old mouth beneath the choir — and the story delivers on each in ways that surprised me emotionally. Atmosphere-heavy, character-forward, and occasionally gruesome in the best way. If you like seaside dread and slow-burning revelations, don’t miss this one.

I wanted to love this — the premise is juicy: a bell that holds back the tide’s hunger, a corrupt Warden, a blind bellfounder — but it faltered for me in execution. The atmosphere is excellent (fog, tarred rope, fish scales underfoot) and the opening pages shimmer, but by the midpoint I kept predicting who would betray whom and how the retuning would go. The Warden’s corruption felt telegraphed rather than earned, and the reveal lacked the sting it should have had. Character-wise, Elin is sympathetic, especially with the understated grief over her father, yet secondary figures (the bellfounder, the lamplighter Jorren) are sketched too thinly for the emotional beats they’re supposed to carry. The book also glosses over practicalities of the bellwork — the ritual of re-tuning feels more like a plot device than a developed craft, which disappointed me because the idea of a blind bellfounder is fascinating and underused here. Still, there are lovely lines and moments — the bell’s aftertaste of mint, the statue of Saint Marrow — and readers who favor mood over tight plotting will find pleasures. I just wanted more grit and less predictability.

As a long-time fan of urban dark fantasy, I appreciated how The Marrow Bell balances mythic stakes with municipal texture. The opening vignette — fog snagging on masts, scales glittering where fishmongers worked, Elin hitching her satchel — is economy of scene at its best. The narrator trusts the reader with small sensory notes (the ink-stained nails, the bell’s ghost-of-mint aftertaste) that accumulate into a tangible sense of place. Structurally, the novel is tight: Elin’s quest to re-tune the bell provides a clear MacGuffin while the subplot of exposing the Warden offers political teeth. The inclusion of a blind bellfounder and the brass vigil-moth smartly expands the lore without bogging the narrative in exposition. There are places where the reveal could have been foreshadowed more delicately — a couple of scene breaks telegraph the Warden’s corruption — but overall pacing keeps the momentum. Jorren’s lamplighting and Mother Kees’ tide calendars add a lived-in civic bureaucracy that I found delightfully believable. The prose favors texture over flourish, which suits the salty, claustrophobic city. Recommended for readers who like their fantasy damp, creaking, and full of clever civic rituals.

I went into The Marrow Bell expecting a soggy seaside mystery and came out pleasantly soaked. The book’s dark humor sneaks in under the fog: Jorren wiping his lampglass with lemon oil while the tide leaves its ‘teeth’ on the market — brilliant, little touches that say a lot without thudding exposition. The author has a knack for naming things that make you grin and shiver at once (Saint Marrow, brass vigil-moth — which, by the way, is one of the coolest side characters I didn’t realize I needed). Elin is not your shouty, overdramatic heroine; she’s practical, bruised, and stubborn in a way that feels earned. The narrative’s sardonic edge — especially when skewering civic pomp or the Warden’s self-important corruption — kept me invested. If you like your fantasy soaked in brine, with a bell that might swallow the city whole, this is your late-night read. Not perfect, but charmingly grim and smart.