T L Huchu. Pan Macmillan. (336p) ISBN: 9781529039474. Fantasy, read 19/03/26, Paperback ★★★★☆

The Library of the Dead

This is another book I’ve had for ages and finally got around to with my current “Read The Bloody Books You’ve Got” project.

Set in an alternative Edinburgh after some form of catastrophe (the nature of which is slowly revealed throughout the book, but not fully so that is still to come in the next books)

We meet Ropa who is a medium and delivers messages from the dead to their living relatives… for a fee of course, she is also 14 and a wee bit of an autodidact, learning quickly and continually through podcasts and audiobooks.

She lives with her Gran and younger sister in a caravan on the outskirts of this devastated city having to scratch a living dealing with the dead, until she comes across a deado who can’t pay but drags her into a dastardly evil conspiracy involving missing children.

The first few chapters do a really good job of setting this all up without dragging too much and without too much exposition.

I loved the mix of Zimbabwean and Scottish mythology and cultures, and still expecting more of this in future books where here magics mix and grow.

Well fleshed-out characters (except for the ghosts of course), the house she was trapped in was so tense, and the baddie at the end was who I thought it was but wasn’t the Big Bad, that is yet to come.

Nice little scooby gang building up with different powers and knowledge, and older mentor who’s a bit of a grump really ticks a few tropes but does it well so you don’t really mind.

This was a quick and enjoyable read, especially since I knew Edinburgh as I grew up in the late 60s, 70s, and early 80s there and walked many of the same routes Ropa followed and could picture exactly where they were.

Oh she also has a companion fox called River, not sure what the scarf is called.