The Library of the Dead had an incredibly interesting premise: a ghost-talking protagonist on a mission to find the missing children that disappeared all around her city, set in a post-apocalyptic version of Edinburgh in which ghosts, magic and fae exist.

Ropa, the protagonist is stubborn and clever, very resourceful and—despite being cynical at first glance—she deeply cares about the people she loves and those who need help. I was somewhat torn about her in the beginning, but throughout the course of the story, while getting to know more about her motivations and her past, I enjoyed following her on her journey. I also really loved the diverse cast of characters: the protagonist herself first and foremost, who is Scottish Zimbabwean, but also her best friends, one of whom is Scottish Tanzanian, and the other a Scottish Indian wheelchair user.

But the story also took some turns I didn’t expect and the world-building as a whole sometimes left me confused. Additionally, the writing style wasn't for me and I especially disliked the constant cursing, which, at times, seemed like a tool to make a young female character seem tougher or more "badass".

(Full review will be posted closer to the release date on my blog, Ink & Myths.)

Living in Edinburgh with her younger sister, Izwi, and their grandmother, Ropa has long stopped going to school. “No, sir, as long as you can plus or minus your shillings, you don’t need none of that nonsense in your noggin.” To make ends meet she uses the traditional Zimbabwean magic taught to her by her grandmother to provide her ghoststalker services to the local ghosts, billing their families for carrying messages from beyond the grave. Of course, not before reading them the kauderwelsch – the terms and conditions.
With her fox companion, River, she roams the city to find clients. One night, she comes across Nicola, a woman unable to move on until she finds her missing boy. But she can’t pay for Ropa’s services, and volunteering doesn’t pay the bills. Nevertheless, against her better judgement, she agrees to search for missing Oliver.
Soon she discovers that Oliver isn’t the only child who has gone missing and those that returned appear to be transformed with mysterious magic. With the help of her friends, Priya and Jomo, and knowledge from the library of the dead – an underground library of secret occult knowledge – Ropa searches the darkest parts of the city for an evil dwelling on her patch.
Ropa is a great heroine, fearless (for the most part) and tough as nails, she goes up against institutions and dark magic greater than herself. But beneath her nonchalant attitude and bravado, we also get to see her more vulnerable side – being the main source of income for the family and dodging greedy landlords is a lot of stress to handle and sometimes it threatens to break.
Priya and Jomo make great secondary characters, and I love the varied representation here – Jomo is a young Black boy who works in the library of the dead (with his eerily stern and strangely formal father) and Priya is a super smart South Asian girl who gets around in her wheelchair (even down stairs). It’s refreshing to see underrepresented identities in a novel where their story doesn’t focus around oppression.
I also really liked the contrast between the traditional Shona magic and the mathematic magic of the Library of the Dead. In a teaching moment, Gran tries to show Ropa how to connect with magic:
“What is magic if not the thing that connects us to the land and those who rest in it, the voices that whisper in the wind – our ancestors and their forbears? … We are made of dirt and we return to the dirt when we die. That’s why, if you want to learn magic, you must start with the earth element before all else. Now feel the earth, that’s where you draw your power from. Feel it in your fingertips. Everything we are and will ever become is drawn from the land.”
I like how her magic is based on a communing with the elements and connection to the world around them, passed down from mother to daughter: “gran says her mum taught her…without books, no school or nothing like that”. It echoes the oral cultures from which their power is drawn from.
In contrast, the magic at the Library of the Dead is catalogued, defined and wielded for power – it’s been institutionalised by gatekeepers and scholars who decide who is ‘worthy’ of magical practice. It reminds me of the words of Russell Means, in a speech he gave that illustrates how European ‘written’ knowledge sought to invalidate the knowledge of oral cultures:
“The process itself epitomizes the European concept of "legitimate" thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken … [philosophers] took a piece of the spirituality of human existence and converted it into code, an abstraction … Each of these intellectual revolutions served to abstract the European mentality even further, to remove the wonderful complexity and spirituality from the universe and replace it with a logical sequence: one, two, three. Answer!”
I am interested to see how this juxtaposition plays out in the rest of the series and I would love to see Ropa connect with the magic of her ancestors. I really enjoyed the book and can’t wait for the next instalment!
A special thank you to the team at Tor for making an ARC available on NetGalley.

A fun read for both adults and young adults who love their urban fantasy. The story's protagonist Ropa, is a smart-,mouthed and extremely confident teen of both Scottish and Zimbabwean heritage, and she is just the beginning of the hugely diverse and mixed race characters in the story. Being able to talk to ghosts has its advantages and disadvantages but as Ropa says from the beginning she is only in it for the money..But as children begin to go missing in this alternate Edinburgh, perhaps it isn't all about the money after all.

To be honest, I picked this up because I loved the title and the jacket, though the title is a little deceiving as in this first book there isn't much about the mysterious library itself, but perhaps in further books we will see more of it. I feel this would suit fans of Ben Aaronovitch and Neil Gaiman.

The Library of the dead is the first book in the series of Edinburgh nights by T. L. Huchu,
The story set in apocalyptic Edinburgh follows 14-year-old dreadlocked Ropa Moyo a ghost talker that lives with her blind grandmother and her sister Izwi in a caravan. She goes out at night and earns money delivering messages from the dead to their loved ones. Money to pay the rent keeping the landlord away from the door. When she asked by one of the dead Nicola who has recently be deceased to find her son Oliver who has been missing.
Ropa’s friend Jomo had got has got a job in The Library of the dead. He is supposed to sworn to secrecy, but he shows Ropa the library in the deep underground of the city where Ropa is introduced to Magic.
I really finding it hard to describe this book. It’s different to anything that I have read before in a good way. It’s quite mad. Ropa is a confident girl that knows her own mind. She is also family orientated and will do anything for her family. She is brave and good in what she does. I quite enjoyed this first book in the series and am curious to see how it will develop.

This book was first flagged up in a tweet from one of my favorite authors Ben Aaronovitch, and so with that recommendation as soon as it became available to request as an ARC I jumped at the opportunity.
Set in a post apocalyptic Edinburgh, where echos of the world we know now are still present in daily lives, we find Ropa, a 14 year old registered ghost talker who lives with her grandmother and sister in a caravan. The disaster which struck is unspecified but created a world without motor vehicles, where the police are bribable and money definitely talks.
Ropa is a compelling protagonist, language cadence is spot on and I just couldn't help rooting for her. Ropa is a survivor who looks out for her family and earns money by delivering messages from ghosts to their friends / family but only if they can pay. She has clear rules of dealing with the dead and you feel that she has made mistakes in the past by being too compassionate. That being said she does bend her own rules, listens to her gran and takes up the case of a ghost whose son is missing and is unable to rest until he is found. This is a thread which once pulled by Ropa keeps growing and soon she is caught up in a mystery that affects the city.
In tandem with this unravelling Ropa convinces her friend Jomo to help her by taking her to his place of work - the Library of the Dead. Needless to say this is something he is not meant to do as the Library is only for registered magic users and penalties for discovery are high.
At the library Ropa discovers she has magic talent and meets useful allies - however the story does not follow the usual path of - girl with undiscovered powers, meets mysterious mentor, develops magical skills and rises to save the day - all of which is true but not reliant on Ropas interaction with the library.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and in fact couldn't put it down! I would recommend this and my thanks to NetGalley, PanMacmillan for the opportunity to read and to Ben Aaranovitch for the inital heads up.

I was so thrilled to hear that part of the premise of this novel included Zimbabwean influences, as I so rarely see mention of my birth place in books on the European market.
Also with the title being "The Library of the Dead" was enough for me to want to pick it up.

This was a really intriguing read and had multiple original aspects, with some great character work.
Ropa's character, while not being necessarily relatable or wholly likeable for me, was still a really interesting character that I enjoyed reading from her POV.
Family was so important for her and also one of the main themes throughout this book, in my opinion.

The reader is pretty much treated as an insider to this world so you kind of figure out the lore and magic system as you go. Which alleviates the threat of it becoming too much of an "info dump" in the opening chapters.

I enjoyed the writing style, it's not usually my favourite but it had a nice flow and rhythm and included colloquial British/Scottish slang. Which added to the setting for me, but I wonder if it might be slightly harder to get into for anyone not familiar with the accent or terms of phrase.

The magic system and lore set in this world reminded me of Brandon Sanderson's work. Not in description but because it seemed to have hard set rules and a logical background.
This is definitely where I thought a lot of original ideas were included. Our main character being almost a voicemail service for the restless ghosts and that it was treated as a legitimate business.
It seemed to have a dystopic quality, there were no exact dates stated, but rather references to our modern world in a historical context.
Furthermore, I enjoyed the dark academic aspects that I sensed from the Library of the Dead itself and the scholarly order behind it. I do wish we saw a little more of this plot point but I get the feeling it'll be explored more in later books.

There was also a decent amount of setting and atmosphere I felt, I especially think you'd get a kick out of reading if you are local to Scotland with the many place names mentioned, but even if not, you got a very clear picture that this was a very grim, bleak and run down place to live.

At its core, this novel was a fantasy/mystery novel. As Ropa sets out to try and solve the mystery behind disappearing kids in the neighbourhood. But soon realises she's bitten off far more than she can chew. The reader definitely ends up rooting for the underdog.

Huchu is definitely a great writer of eerie atmosphere. There were even scenes that had me feeling very uneasy and because you cared about the characters, it amped the unease up to 11.
Particularly in the scenes of the manor house, it gives the reader such a feeling of claustrophobia and panic.
Even though the plot was quite fast paced, I think this book definitely hinged on its characters. I so wanted to just sit down with Ropa's nanna and have a cup of tea in their cosy caravan.

You could tell that this novel's conclusion was alluding to future books as there were quite a few things left unanswered, but I do wish that perhaps the villain had a little more motivation behind their actions. Or at least that we had these particular questions answered before the next instalment. As it just seemed there wasn't enough conviction there to be a realistic climax after an entire book's worth of build up.

However, I will definitely be picking up the next book in this series, however, and eager to see more from this author.

With bright green dreadlocks and black lipstick, 14 year old Ropa Moyo is no ordinary teenage girl. With a mouth on her like a sailor and a fox for a pet I straight away knew that we were going to get along nicely!

Set in Edinburgh but not the city we know and love, a city that has suffered a catastrophe that has turned it into a shadow of its former glory. Ropa lives with her grandmother and younger sister, she roams the streets at night talking to the departed. She earns her keep carrying messages from the dead to the living. This is how she meets Nicola.

Nicola is recently dead however how very much alive son Ollie has went missing, despite some initial concerns Ropa decides to help her leading her to the discovery of children with the life practically sucked out off them. Their youthful faces a husk of their former youthful selves. She may only be 14 but she is determined to get to the bottom of this but this also leads her to another strange discovery.

Her friend Jomo has a new job, a job that he is sworn to secrecy about and of course being a teenager he sneaks Ropa in. To her surprise she finds out he works in the most bonkers magical occult library hidden deep underground and she starts to discover that along with talking to ghosts her next talent could be magic.

This book is bonkers but in a good way, Ropa is the kind of friend you want, she is loyal and determined. Her journey across Edinburgh leads her from haunted houses to my absolute favourite scene. Ropa is chased along with her wheelchair bound friend Priya through the steep streets of Edinburgh by a milk float, an electric milk float helmed by a crazed milkman! Its terrific stuff and as someone who has traversed the cities steep streets it did make me laugh at the thought of this chase down some of the steepest steps in the city. It was brilliant. I also loved the joining of her Scottish ways with the more mystical Zimbabwean side of her.

The Library of the Dead has certainly set the scene for the next book in the series, there are a lot of unanswered questions such as I’d like to know more about why Edinburgh is a shadow of its former self which I hope will be answered in books to come.

I think fans of Ben Aaronovitch, Jasper Fforde and Terry Pratchett will enjoy this, it was a perfect, fantastical romp through Auld Reekie.

Thanks to Net Galley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I first heard about this book from Ben Aaronovitch and, because Rivers of London is one of my favourite series, and this sounded very much in a similar vein, of course I had to pick it up. And, really, if you like urban paranormal fantasy, then this book is going to be it for you. It is, in turns, a brilliantly compelling mystery, laugh out loud funny, and absolutely terrifying (although this last may be because I am very easily scared).

The Library of the Dead follows Ropa, a ghosttalker, who is asked to investigate the disappearance of a boy by his mother’s ghost. In doing so, she finds that someone in Edinburgh is bewitching children, for some unknown reason, and that she is the only person who cares enough to find out why.

What hooks you first off with this book is the voice of the narrator. Ropa has such a distinct and fun narration style you won’t want to put the book down. But it’s not just her voice that catches you — she is just an excellent protagonist all round. You know exactly what drives her and why, and you can’t help but sympathise with her so easily.

And that distinctness is also present in the surrounding cast, enhanced by Ropa’s — often irreverent — commentary. Each dynamic presents something new, and there are some, which you only get hints of in this book, that you just need to know more about (Ropa and Callander for one. I’m a massive fan of the reluctant mentor trope).

On top of this, you have a fast, action-packed plot (read it for the milk float chase scene!!) that twists and turns and keeps you on your toes. It is, to be honest, the perfect book for me (if a little gorier than I was anticipating). And, when it’s over, it leaves you with a burning desire to know just what happens next, because there’s still more questions to be answered.

All of which to say, of course, that if you don’t pick this book up when it comes out in 2021, you’re really going to be missing out.

I really enjoyed this funny and imaginative fantasy by Huchu. It leans towards other works of urban fantasy, the classics such as Neverwhere but with a sharp contemporary edge largely created by Ropa the 15 year old Scottish Zimbabwean narrator who is chock-full of opinions and wit. Ropa is a ghost-talker trying to keep her gran and younger sister warm and fed and sheltered in a threatening Edinburgh where the city-centre is a no-go area and the city is rife with slums, energy-shortages and gangs. Not to mention missing children, dark magic and secret societies. Ropa is brassy, bold and brilliant and her Edinburgh is both alien and recognisable in a post-catastrophe where an unwelcome? tyrannous? king is on the British throne. The question-marks are indicative of the drip-feed nature of Huchu's world-building. Exposition is minimal leaving the reader to try to piece together chance details to understand the background. It could easily be infuriating but it really just made me keen to discover more in the coming books. It's in large part due to the action-packed plot and bold characters that the mystery around the "catastrophe" remains tantalising rather than frustrating. Ropa is ably supported by a cast of supporting characters (almost) as vivdly-drawn as she is from childhood friends, to aloof mentors and ruthless enemies. I'm looking forward to more.

A very solid start to what looks to be a series of books,set in an Edinburgh,just not one quite as we know it.
Hoping that will be better explained in book 2.
It's full of interesting characters,the main one being Ropa,who can pass messages from the dead.
To be honest,she gave me artful Dodger vibes,and I could hear myself voicing her in a cockney accent.
The narration from her in bright and breezy.

I'm sold on anything with a mysterious library.

Good to get on board at the beginning.

The Library of the Dead is such a fun adventure, perfect for the autumn season with ghosts and spooky hijinks abound. We follow Ropa, a young girl with a huge personality who works as a go between for ghosts and their loved ones and insists she is only in it for the money. Ropa relucantly gets pulled into helping search for some missing children, who keep vanishing and then showing up with aged heads but normal bodies.

This book is a wild ride, the ghost aspects are really cool leading to some surprisingly wholesome moments as well as an exciting plot with the missing children as well as a mysterious drug appearing on the market.

Ropa is such an interetsing main character, she has a lot of spunk but obviously has a secret heart of gold, deeply caring about her grandmother and little sister. Her situation is also quite sad, as she is in charge of getting the money for their landlord, which I think explains why she is so out for herself and just wants the 'green' as she calls it.

Ropa also has some great friends that she teams up with, who help mae the story more enjoyable.

Overall I thought this was a decent book, I think at some places the writing was not as strong as it could have been and I think this lessened my enjoyment somewhat as well as a slightly basic/predictable plot, however it was still so much fun to read!

Unfortunately I found the writing in the book to be jarring and disjointed. The characters were unlikeable and genuinely unbelievable and there was far less of the library than I would've liked.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing a copy of this arc in exchange for an honest review.

In a post-'catastrophe' Edinburgh, Ropa, a Scottish-Zimbabwean teenager, is makes her living passing messages to the living on behalf of the dead, but she's barely scraping by. She becomes embroiled in something much bigger and darker when she starts to look into a missing boy.

I loved this, but off the bat I'll say it won't be for everyone. The writing style is very stream-of-conscious, and to me as a Scot, read as very Scottish. I imagine the writing will be off-putting to some - however, I found it very easy to engage with and enjoyable to read. The Zimbabwean and Scottish parts of Ropa's culture are interweaved nicely. I did want more details on the 'catastrophe' that has occurred, the society they live in is not dystopian but nor is it modern day Edinburgh as I expected. It probably falls more under speculative, than dystopian fiction.
There's an underground, magical library which gave me some dark academia vibes, though it isn't the focus of the book. Huchu excelled at writing the creepier elements, some of the descriptions had my skin crawling. Overall, I loved Ropa and what we got of the worldbuilding, Huchu has set up a lot of fascinating concepts to play with in the future.