The Library of the Dead

This book is such an usual book, and I love it for how strange and unexpected it is.

The story takes place in a near-future Edinburgh, where the world has dramatically changed due to an undefined apocalyptic event but has more of a gothic sensibility than a post-apocalyptic one.

There’s magic, history, and an extremely likable narrator wrapped in an almost-crime-novel package. 

I loved this book from the first page. The voice of teenaged Ropa is fiery and laugh-out-loud funny.

A paranormal medium, Ropa becomes a detective for cash, and the humans who want answers from ghosts are her clients. The relationships with her grandmother and sister are sweet and the story is fast-paced and a lot of fun.

Ropa is rough around the edges, to say the least, and was forced to drop out of high school to support her family in post-dystopian Edinburgh. She uses her gift of ghostalking to earn a living passing on messages from the dead. Pragmatic, yes, until a ghost tells her of evil being done to children. There’s no money in it for her, yet she makes the decision to help them, and almost loses her own life on the way. A delightful story, wonderfully written – you can’t help but love this unlikable heroine.

So, this is a little bit of a cheat, as it’s got a good dollop of dystopian sci-fi in with the urban fantasy, but it’s too good a book to leave off. And it’s not the sort of dystopia we usually think of – no aftermath of nuclear war or ravening zombies. But water is scarce, and the city centres are mostly abandoned, and Ropa has dropped out of school to become a ghost-talker to support her family. Plus there is, of course, a kind-of magical library, which is an automatic win for any book. Ropa is an interesting character… show more.