Book Review: Marrow

 

They say The Colony Carnivale appears without warning—rolling into forgotten towns under blood-red skies, offering laughter, lights, and salvation for the bored and broken. But beneath the painted tents, hides a different sin, each act a different obsession. Lust. Power. Revenge. Fear. The Carnivale feeds on it all—and so do the souls trapped inside..
The games are rigged, the prizes are cursed, and the performers aren’t quite human. So buy your ticket, brave the insanity, and pray the lights go out after you do. Because once you enter, the show owns you.
Welcome to The Colony Carnivale—where the fun never dies, it just screams louder.Calvera Bloodwright was born to dance.
The Carnivale taught her how to break.

By day, she is a contortionist ballerina, folding herself into elegance for a world that prefers not to look too closely.
By night, beneath the black-licorice haze of Delirium, she becomes the Marrowmaker—an artist who reshapes living bodies, harvesting bone, blood, and soul to feed a sentient Carnivale that breathes, watches, and remembers.

Calvera does not kill for pleasure.
She creates masterpieces.

But the Carnivale is always hungry, and so are the men who orbit her ruin. Jude offers silk and reverence. Gideon offers leather and heat. Both love her with a devotion that rots them from the inside out. Neither can give her what she no longer possesses.

As ghosts from her past claw their way back into the light—and the Showmaster tightens his grip—Calvera must confront the truth she has spent her life avoiding:

She is not broken.
She is hollow.
And she is still performing.

MARROW is a dark, erotic descent into body horror, coercive devotion, and intimacy used as anesthesia. There is no salvation here. Only sincerity. Only sacrifice. Only the beautiful, irreversible damage of a girl shaped into art by something that will never let her go.

Step into the tent.
The Carnivale is waiting for your bones.

My Review

Calvera is a very interesting person. Her story is intriguing. It was nice to see Judy and Gid again. It was like I got to see another side of these two guys as well. A softer/caring side. 

This story is not as gory as books one and two, yet this is why I loved it so much. There is something about the subtle elements of gory that made the story. Calvera's story made me think of The Black Swan. Dark but beautiful.