Chimes of a Lost Cathedral by Janet Fitch

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this release from 

the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Spending time with the main character of this book was like reuniting and spending time with an old friend...a lot of time. Because at 730 pages, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral took me forever to finish, just like its predecessor, 2017's The Revolution of Marina M (which was 816 pages). It's hard not to use words like "sweeping epic" to describe this tome spanning from the spring of 1919 to the fall of 1921, during the Russian Civil War. The stories, relationships, and Marina's persistence kept me reading but I will be honest that a lot of the political clashes and beliefs were hard for me to decipher. If you've read The Revolution of Marina M., you will also understand that Fitch will gut you with her descriptions of humanity's darkness, so much so that I needed to step away from the story and have a drink after a devastating event that occurred just before the book's halfway point.⁠
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The novel opens with 19-year-old pregnant Marina Makarova traveling through the Russian countryside searching for a place to give birth to her child and follows her on her return to Petrograd, which is mostly deserted yet teeming with orphans. "Now fully a woman, she takes on the challenge of caring for these Civil War orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction. But despite the ordeal of war and revolution, betrayal and privation and unimaginable loss, Marina at last emerges as the poet she was always meant to be."⁠
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I would recommend this novel (and The Revolution of Marina M) to lovers of Russian history, the Romanov family, and Cherise Wolas' novel The Resurrection of Joan Ashby.⁠