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Jump to navigationJump to searchThe Library of the Dead by T L Huchu (view source)
Revision as of 08:45, 18 February 2021
, 08:45, 18 February 2021no edit summary
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Ropa Moyo is a ghostalker, using Zimbabwean magic (and a bit of Scottish pragmatism) to take messages from the dead of Edinburgh for their living relatives. Ever since she dropped out of school, she's been using it to support not only herself, but her younger sister and her aging ageing grandmother. However, there's an evil stalking the ruined streets of Edinburgh, targeting the city's children. Soon, Ropa is pulled into the search for a missing boy at the request of his dead mother. She will end up discovering an occult library and realise that the world of magic is far bigger and more dangerous than she ever could've imagined. Will she find the missing children and bring an end to this evil, or will it claim her too?
The story is told through the eyes of Ropa Moyo, a teenage girl of Zimbabwean descent, who dropped out of school and now has to do odd jobs for Edinburgh's dead in order to get by. With her dagger, slingshot and faithful pet fox River, she's not someone to be messed with. However, just because Ropa dropped out of school doesn't mean that she's stupid, she frequently quotes Sun-Tzu while on missions, listens to audiobooks (pirated, of course, because she has better things to spend her money on) on various sciences and true crime, and used to be at the top of her class before she dropped out of school. Seeing her getting really excited while reading an ancient tome of magical theory is really quite endearing. She lives in a rusty old trailer on a farmer's field in Hermiston, along with her Grandma and her younger sister Izwe. Ropa's interactions with the two of them show that, beneath the rather hard exterior, she is a kind person who wants to make sure that Izwe doesn't make the same mistakes that she did when she was younger. All in all, she's a very well-written protagonist, being blunt and quite harsh at times, but with more enough heart-warming and humanising moments to keep her from being insufferable.
