The Library of the Dead

The Library of the Dead is the October #SFFBookClub pick. Overall, this was just ok for me.

Ropa is a scrappy fourteen year old dropout who is supporting her family as best she can by charging for passing messages from the dead to the living with her necromantic telepathy. She ends up taking on a pro bono case to find the child of a ghost at the behest of her Gran. I think my favorite part of the novel is that Ropa's got a frenetic teenage voice that goes a long way to carry the novel.

One element that didn't work for me is that this novel is clearly the first book in a series. It's laying out a lot of threads to pick up later. The Tall Man. The Library of the Dead itself. Gran and her magic. Sir Callander's motives and relationship with Ropa's Gran. Gran herself. The everyThere. This near future Edinburgh that's had a catastrophe of some sort and is decaying and flooded. The authoritarian King that gets invoked at every turn.

But the end result of all of these threads is that this book feels a bit haphazard and the plot feels loose. Some of the threads tie up to resolve the mystery that Ropa is chasing down, but a large part of the book's work feels unresolved and preparing for the rest of the series rather than furthering the main plot of the moment.

If anything, the titular Library of the Dead feels like an optional side quest that's not quite as relevant to the plot as the title might imply. Sure, Ropa gets some magical defense and offense there incidentally but I was surprised by how little the plot hinged on this. This is not a book about the library or about learning magic. (In the end, I'm not even sure I understand why this magical library was a library "of the Dead" either.)

Ropa’s voice is one of the best things about this book, she’s a little punk with a heard of solid gold and from the top where it seems like we’re going to have a fairly straightforward “medium helps a ghost” story through when it gets much darker and stranger, it’s her humor and thoughtfulness that keeps you mindful of the stakes. Really enjoyed this, I can’t wait to see how she tackles her next set of problems.