“All the Murmuring Bones” by A.G. Slatter

This was a very atmospheric, very dark (but not grimdark) book. It reminded me a lot of the feel of Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy, though were those books had a very cold feeling, the feel of these books was very …. There’s not really a good word. Wet? Damp? Moist? Soggy? These books felt like a remote, cold coastline. Not a sunny beach; more like the coast of Labrador or Scotland. Cold and windy, with the taste of salt in the air, and hardy sea grasses clinging between the rocks.

Miren O’Malley is one of the last scions of the once-numerous-and-powerful O’Malley clan. It’s been reduced to her and her elderly grandparents, living in the decaying near-ruins of their family manor, and some more distant cousins that aren’t true O’Malleys. The book begins with the funeral of her grandfather, and with her grandmother’s determination to return the family to glory.

The foundation of the family’s power was a dark bargain the founder of the house had made with the merfolk of the sea: one child of the family per generation offered as a sacrifice, and prosperity and wealth for the O’Malley clan and safety for their ships. But with their numbers dwindling (Miren’s parents died when she was a baby) this bargain can’t be fulfilled and the family has suffered. The meat of the book is Miren’s flight from the marriage to one of her distant cousins that her grandmother intends to force her into, and towards the secrets of the O’Malley past and her own parents. Along the way she encounters riselka, kepies, selkies - all sorts of mythological oceanic creatures, in other words - as well as assorted ghosts and undead.

Interspersed throughout are small tales from the O’Malley collection of family stories. How factual they are is a matter of some debate, but by universal consensus there’s truth in all of them.

I’m always a sucker for a well-done journey of self-discovery, and that’s what this book is. Miren coming to learn of her family’s past, and her own; how she’s been shaped by her grandmother and her parents’ absence; and what she wants and does not want for her future. Mostly what she wants, what we all want, is agency: the freedom to choose her own path and not have one forced upon her.

Strongly recommended.