My thanks to Macmillan Audio for a review copy via NetGalley of the unabridged audiobook edition of ‘The Library of the Dead’ by T. L. Huchu (Tendai Huchu) in exchange for an honest review. He has previously won awards for his short fiction, including a Nommo Award for African SF/F. The audiobook is narrated by Tinashe Warikandwa with a running time of 8 hours, 9 minutes at 1x speed.

This is the first in his Edinburgh Nights series set in a post-apocalyptic Edinburgh. Its narrator is fourteen-year-old Ropafadzo (Ropa) Moyo, who has dropped out of school to become a ghostalker. She now speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living.

Ropa lives with her younger sister, Izwi, and her blind grandmother, Melsie Mhondoro, herself well known as a ghostalker. Now that her grandmother is housebound, Ropa feels responsible for supporting their family in a society in which there is no longer social services or the NHS!

Nicola Stuart, a new ghost, implores Ropa to find her son, Ollie, who went missing before she died. Ropa isn’t keen, especially as Nicola won’t be able to pay. Yet when Ropa learns that other children have mysteriously vanished she agrees to search for not only Ollie but to discover their fates.

In the process Ropa is introduced by her former schoolmate, Jomo, to a secret occult library and there makes new allies that clearly will feature in future books in the series.

This was great fun and Ropa a delight. Huchu has introduced a cast of interesting supporting characters including the Fagin-like Rooster (Red) Rob, Priyanka (Priya) Kapoor, a healer and herbologist, who due to a spinal injury is in a wheelchair, and Sir Callander, a senior member of the Library of the Dead with a wide knowledge of magic. As Ropa observes he had “somehow been expecting me”.

With respect to the audiobook, this appears to be Tinashe Warikandwa’s first audiobook. She is a dancer, actor, and singer though no dancing skills were required in narrating the book. I felt that she brought a lightness of tone to her narration, which is appropriate given Ropa’s age, yet she still conveyed a sense of seriousness where appropriate and also conveyed Ropa’s enthusiasm and energy. Tinashe Warikandwa lives in Edinburgh and her accent was very lyrical and easy to understand. Hopefully she will be available to continue narrating future audiobooks in the series.

I enjoyed this book very much and it’s a very promising start to this series that peppers its urban fantasy-horror with wry humour. It was also interesting to have Zimbabwean magical traditions presented alongside Western occultism in a dystopian Scottish setting. I can hardly wait to read the next in this series.

A super fun start to a new series starring Ropa, a spunky teen Ghostalker (medium) who can see & talk to ghosts and helps them with their unresolved business for a profit. Ropa lives with her Zimbabwean grandmother and sister and has dropped out of school so she can help pay the rent. Set in a reimagined Edinburgh, Ropa stumbles upon a hidden magic library and a mystery involving missing children. Full of diverse characters and a lot of heart this is sure to please fantasy fans and those who loved The shadow of the wind, Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series or Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series. Thanks to NetGalley for my advanced listening copy out today! I’m excited to see where this series goes!

I really enjoyed the strong voice in the writing, but For me personally, it felt like it could have been a lot shorter.

Overall it was a lot of fun. I recommend it to fans of The Left-Handed Booksellers of London!

This book was a page turner from beginning to end. Very captivating with amazing character development. Think Harry Potter with a twist of some death and disturbance. This book is a page. Turner! I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Ropa is a ghost talker. She delivers messages from the dead to their living family members in Edinburgh for a fee. If the ghost can't pay the fee, she delivers the message and collects the fee from the living. It's a living....and she does her best to avoid shakedowns from police and other common problems when dealing the dark, magical underbelly of Edinburgh. But then she learns that something evil is harming children, leaving them broken, empty and drained. Ropa will have to gather her wits and all of the magical knowledge her grandmother has imparted to her to figure out what is going on and prevent becoming a victim herself.

I love Ropa as a main character! She is scrappy and very street smart. Her grandmother is also an amazing character. Those two really make this book something special! The mix of magic, different cultures, and the supernatural really held my interest from start to finish!

I had an ARC ebook and a review copy of the audio book. I read portions, listened to others, and at times did both at the same time. Tinashe Warikandwa narrates the audio book. She does a superb job! The audio is just over 8 hours long, so a nice listening length. Not too short....not too long. The narrator did an excellent job bringing all the characters to life, especially Ropa. Very entertaining listen!

This is the first book by T. L. Huchu that I've read. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more by this author.

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book (and listened to a review audio book) from Tor and Macmillan Audio. All opinions expressed are entirely my own**

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, with an intriguing premise that just didn't deliver for me. There were times that I enjoyed the first-person narration, but by the end of the book I found it grating. There's some amazing specificity in the novel, but I found some of the world-building weak. It's clear that this is meant to be the first book in an ongoing series, and I will keep my eye out for it going forward since there are things here I liked, but overall I felt the book fell short.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I went into this book not knowing what it was about and really enjoyed the creative storyline. The book follows Ropa, a young girl that could talk to with the dead and created a business of it by delivering messages for them. It is then she finds out about kids being taken and she decides to investigate it. No spoilers! I will be watching out for the next book in this series. Thanks to #NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

THE LIBRARY OF THE DEAD has everything I love in a novel. A wholly original world, a plucky young girl as intermediary with the dead, secret societies, a making of one's own home. The writing style is crisp and evocative, very immediate and active.

The narration is flawless, believable and evocative.

But, I just didn't really engage. I think it was the pacing and the type of interior thought.

I believe this will be well loved by many, it just didn't burrow into my soul.

This is a story about a girl among the ghosts.

This was such a fun romp through Scotland. It was atmospheric, unsettling and so much fun! I’m very much hoping for a sequel.

Thank you so much Netgalley & Macmillan Audio for this Alrc!

Cute story in which a young woman can communicate with ghosts through an instrument tuned to the right frequency. I found this a bit confusing at the beginning and often found my attention wandering. In the end, the story came around, but I don't know that it's enough to want to read more of the series.

I really like the concept and the general execution, but Huchu's characters never managed to make me actually care about them. I was in it for the story, but not for who was telling it.
Ropa starts out way too world-weary and secretive for my taste even though she has a background that would usually make her a very empathetic character. I enjoyed the slight development of the rest of the characters and the glimpses of everything that has happened to Ropa made me want to care about her story, yet I was never convinced to follow the story because of her.
What makes this super interesting is all the questions I had about how the world changed so much and all the magic that is apparently a normal part of everyday life. It made an interesting juxtaposition to see that people view magic as an everyday occurrence but never consider it might be the reason behind all the children disappearing. Huchu created a world that I have many questions about and would love to find out more about. This is what kept me reading.
Narrator Tinashe Warikandwa does a great job of infusing the scenes with the right amount of lightness or darkness as needed. I particularly enjoyed her accent and how easy it is to understand if you're not used to an Edinburgh accent.
Overall, I can see this being a popular realistic fantasy read, but it was unfortunately not for me.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the early listen!

Not my book, I need to make sure I don’t get caught up in titles anymore. This one just wasn’t for me

As soon as I was done reading/listening to this book, I immediately had to check that it was, in fact, the beginning of a series. Ropa is a wonderfully fun main character - flawed, but with a good heart, and always acting in character. Supporting characters really fill out the story but Huchu leaves some nuggets throughout that I'm hoping he plans to get back to in future novels. A fun mix of fantasy, ghost stories, and magic, this novel is a refreshing and unique read.

I listened to the audiobook version of this and was very happy with the narrator. Her Scottish accent really helps to place the setting in my mind and I appreciated her voices for some of the supporting characters as well.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an audiobook ARC through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

A delightfully precocious protagonist, and a fascinating magical-realistic world set in Edinburgh keep this novel engaging from beginning to end.

I loved the protagonist and the seeing in near-future Edinburgh. This would be a great recommendation for frame fans of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London.

I really enjoyed the dialect of this book. Scotland has so many interesting words and I love learning about them! I also enjoyed the story but it sure took awhile to get to the point. All completely worth it in the end.

Ropa speaks to the dead of Edinburgh, charging the living for messages from the dead. It’s not the most glamorous job, but she gets by. When one of the dead starts bewitching children, stealing their essence, their joy, Ropa feels honor bound to investigate, but what she discovers might change everything. She’ll have to use her Scottish pragmatism and Zimbabwean magic to track down the culprit. While hunting clues, she discovers an occult library and finds some helpful allies in the process.

I jumped back and forth between the print and audio version of this book, and it was a decent way to spend the afternoon. I love ghost stuff, and Ropa’s adventure was a nice distracting from my boring day at work. It moves lightning quick and is written in casual, common language imitating how you’d relay a story to your best friend, which made me more comfortable with and endeared to Ropa.

I’m always up for some occult exploration and I enjoyed the concept of ghost talking. Though not the most compelling book I’ve read this year, I still recommend it for some creepy and atmospheric fun.

2.5 Stars

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an alc of this book.

Ropa can talk to ghosts, and she uses this ability for her job relaying messages between ghosts and their living family and friends. But a lot more is going on behind the veil in this alternative universe Scotland, and Ropa will have to use all her knowledge of magic to help save the day.

I have to admit, I really struggled with this book. I had trouble following what was happening in the audio, whether that was because of the narrator's accent, or something else, I'm unsure, but I know that it was extremely difficult for me to follow the story. It seems like such an interesting concept to me, and I was really excited to read it, but it just fell kind of flat and never ended up drawing me in enough. I could see potentially enjoying this book more if I were reading a physical copy, and might give it another chance one day!

Pub date: June 1, 2021
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, and Kidnapping

This book is the first in a new series about a teenage girl who speaks with ghosts and carries messages from them to the living. I enjoyed this book, but maybe not as much as I expected to. It moved a bit slow for me through the first half, but I understand much of that was world building and character development. The world building here was excellent and I do appreciate the character growth through this book. The narrator was phenomenal! Overall, I think this was a pretty decent start to a new series and I would be interested to see where it goes.

Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for an AudioARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Library of the Dead is the first in a new series which follows Roper, a 14(ALMOST 15, since that sounds better) year-old girl who is a licensed Ghost Talker. She uses an instrument to tune into the ghosts and delivers messages to loved ones at a price. When children begin to go missing will Roper be able to gather enough clues from the dead to keep anyone else from going missing?

The Library of the Dead honestly has quite the misleading title. For a book that has over 350 pages there is very little of the Library....or the Dead. Roper did alot of rambling on that was intended to make her charming, which it did, but there wasn't enough story saturation to keep me wanting to come back for another chapter. The dead were few and far between, and the Library itself felt more like an afterthought rather than a key plot component. In my opinion, this should have been a short story or novella to introduce us into the world. It would have packed alot more punch and been successful in it's execution.

If you want a mystery that barely begins until halfway through the book, gets put on the back burner, then solved immediately this one is for you. There could have also been a bit of a language barrier for me that kept the pacing off, but usually I can push through. 12+ for the age rating from me as there's nothing overly scary or graphic.