Chimes of a Lost Cathedral
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"A Russian fantasy for anyone who's ever dreamed of meeting their heroes, centuries be damned." --Los Angeles Times The epic journey continues... A young Russian woman comes into her own in the midst of revolution and civil war. After the loves and betrayals of The Revolution of Marina M., young poet Marina Makarova finds herself alone amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War--pregnant and adrift, forced to rely on her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child and eventually make her way back to her native city, Petrograd. After two years of revolution, the city that was once St. Petersburg is almost unrecognizable, the haunted, half-emptied, starving Capital of Once Had Been, its streets teeming with homeless children. Moved by their plight, though hardly better off herself, she takes on the challenge of caring for these orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction. Shaped by her country's ordeals and her own trials--betrayal and privation and inconceivable loss--Marina evolves as a poet and a woman of sensibility and substance hardly imaginable at the beginning of her transformative odyssey. Chimes of a Lost Cathedral is the culmination of one woman's s journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century--the epic story of an artist who discovers her full power, passion, and creativity just as her revolution reveals its true direction for the future.
Series
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2 primary booksThe Revolution of Marina M.
The Revolution of Marina M. is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2017 with contributions by Janet Fitch.
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These books are perfect adventure stories, and Marina is the wild queen, the tightrope walker, who lives and loves and crashes and burns and reinvents herself countless times in her rags and riches. Fighting through the sorrow and starvation of the Russian Revolution, losing friends and family, finding sparks and solace in lovers, and surviving through her poetry and the comradeship of the characters surrounding the House of Arts in Saint Petersburg. The book is rich in details, of history, politics and poetry, and never slow in plot. It makes you freeze in the Russian winter, ride on top of propaganda trains, and rejoice and dance at poor arthouse costume balls. Same as its predecessor it kept me up at night. After making us wait for almost the whole book for the arrival of Marina's charming fox, I'd say they got a perfect ending. Burning so hot, each one becoming what they're meant to be.I regret [b:The Revolution of Marina M. 34523120 The Revolution of Marina M. (The Revolution of Marina M. #1) Janet Fitch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498737687l/34523120.SY75.jpg 55657358] and [b:Chimes of a Lost Cathedral 42779085 Chimes of a Lost Cathedral (The Revolution of Marina M. #2) Janet Fitch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559593901l/42779085.SY75.jpg 66538295] aren't published as one giant edition, because once you finish this one, you want to return to the prologue of the first one, to complete the cycle, to search for any hints of the past in her new life.
I loved this so much. I studied Russian literature at university, including a module on Akhmatova, so I have a lot of context from which to draw. It was fascinating to see these characters' coming to life.
Amazing choice of narrator in Yelena Shmulenson.
