I forget where I came across this first in a series, but I’m glad I gave it a go. Set in a magical post-apocalyptic Edinburgh, The Library of the Dead stars Ropa, a teenaged ghosttalker: she is licensed to visit with the dead, a rare skill, and carry their messages back to the living, for a fee. She can also help (or force) ghosts to move along to “the place with long grass,” where we’re all headed once we find the peace to go. Ropa considers herself unsentimental: this is all about earning a living, which she uses to support not just herself but her younger sister Izwi and her beloved Gran, a more powerful magical practitioner but who these days is mostly reduced to knitting in their cara (caravan, or what we’d call in the US a trailer). Their existence is tenuous, which is why Ropa at first refuses when she meets a ghost who asks for her help but cannot pay.
At Gran’s insistence, Ropa eventually agrees to help Nicola (dead) solve the mystery of her missing young son Oliver (not dead, yet). As she takes a break from paying work to investigate, she’s glad to have the reluctant help of her old friend Jomo, who now works at a library that he doesn’t want to talk about. Jomo is from a better-off family: he’s been able to stay in school, for one thing. Ropa is a serious autodidact, listening to audiobooks as she makes her rounds; she is forever exclaiming that school doesn’t matter and she’s not the least bit sorry, but the reader can tell how much she feels the lack. We also observe what a clever self-study she is, however, as she repeatedly quotes Sun Tzu and summarizes and meditates upon the philosophies of magic she gains new access to…
…because Jomo’s secret new workplace is the library of the dead. When he sneaks Ropa in and they get caught, the consequences are dire – she is initially sentenced to hang from the neck until she is dead, but (in a whirlwind scene) instead gets drafted as a scholar, with the privilege of book borrowing. That, and she makes a new friend, Priya, a far more advanced student of magic. With two friends behind her now, but still very much with her own life (and livelihood) on the line, Ropa follows the cold trail of Oliver’s disappearance to some surprising and disturbing intrigues and evils.
Ropa is a certain kind of heroine: actually quite caring, although she wouldn’t want you to know it, and deeply committed to her family and friends, she rides a bicycle (when it’s not been stolen) and plays the tough, but really just wants to snuggle up on her berth with Izwi and Gran and watch some good telly. She carries a katty (or slingshot – I finally figured out that this is short for catapult!) and a dagger, has a pet fox named River, and she can take a punch. Priya is a delightful addition to her crew who I hope we’ll hear more from. Jomo is perhaps a bit bumbling, but very loyal. Their world is a bit mysterious: they have electrical power, but not running water or sewage; they have cell phones (and can talk to ghosts!) and television, but not climate control. They are ruled by a king. It sounds like there was an event that broke the world, leaving us with a before and an after, but we haven’t yet learned what that was.
The worldbuilding may be less thoroughly detailed than some in some fantasies; but maybe I just haven’t gotten there yet. At any rate, I’m engaged by the strongly-felt characters and their values, the magic, and Gran’s knitting. This is book 1 of 4 and I am ready for more.
Rating: 7 desiccated ears.
Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: dystopia, librarians, mystery, speculative fiction | 2 Comments »
Following The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle, this novel makes the fourth in Huchu’s Edinburgh Nights series. In some respects, we continue in the same vein: Ropa possesses a drive to help others, but fights it in favor of her higher priority to help her own first, meaning her little sister Izwi, their Gran, and herself. She is employed by big fancy powerful magic–in this instance, the English Sorcerer Royal, Lord Samarasinghe–who does not treat her as well as they should, but she puts up with a lot in the interest of providing for her household. She must solve mysteries and problems outside of her own personal purview, which often do come to affect her personally. In this installment, however, Ropa suffers the greatest tragedy that Huchu has put her through to date. (No spoilers, but it’s hard enough that I held it against the author for a bit.) She also gets a nudge toward some secrets about her own family history that may bear on present problems. And boy, does this one end on a drastic cliffhanger. 
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