The Bell At Sealey Head by Patricia McKillip

[meganbmoore]

Every night, a bell at Sealey Head that no one can find rings. Judd Cauley’s family inn used to be the only one around, but he has few guests now that there are other options. Despite this, a traveler and fellow bookworm named Ridley Dow rents a room from him. Ridley has an interest in Aislinn house, where the aged Lady Eglantyne lays dying, and her heir has been summoned. Inside Aislinn house, however, there seems to be another world, one where a woman named Ysabo is being forced to marry a knight she doesn’t even know the name of. Meanwhile, in the village, Gwyneth, a merchant’s daughter, is being courted by a nearby aristocrat, but is far more interested in writing stories, and wondering what’s going on at Sealey Head.

I kind of love the way half the characters are major bookworms, are there are things like Judd realizing that Ridley has been in the rain for hours and hours, and his strongest reaction is to the fact that Ridley was carrying around books in the rain, and they could be wet, or how he goes scouring the inn for a new bookshelf, and when he finds one, he realizes that the reason it’s empty is that he already moved all the books to his room. Or when another character is supposed to remain hidden lest Dire Things occur, but completely forgets about it because there’s a mysterious book in the room.

I also loved the stories the different characters told, though I kept wanting them to impact the main story in a way they never did, but that may have been me trying to make the book more like Alphabet of Thorn than it really was. I also loved how McKillip got so into the daily lives of the various residents of the town, though, ultimately, I think there were too many characters with their own stories for a book that isn’t quite 300 pages long, though McKillip brought them together well.

In the end, it’s not my favorite McKillip, but I liked it a lot.