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[mesaramatiziye · other writings]
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language: English
country: Zimbabwe
year: 2021
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
series: Edinburgh Nights, #1
dates read: 5.6.22
today’s book — an unexpectedly fast read — was T.L. Huchu’s The Library of the Dead. as I already mentioned, I’m fascinated by the world-building and the bits and pieces of information we get about the alternate timeline. it is perched dangerously on the edge of urban fantasy’s ideological bankruptcy as a genre — in terms of the way it reifies the history of colonialism by treating it as an inevitability — but I’m curious enough that I’m definitely going to read the next book.
this was another book with a really strong narrative voice, with engaging present-tense narration. it’s balanced on the edge between YA and adult fiction; this book ultimately felt like adult fiction to me (despite the protagonist being only fourteen), but I notice that, unlike this one, the sequel is marked as YA on Storygraph, so that my change.
you’ll notice that the moods I tagged this book with include both “dark” and “lighthearted”, and despite the contradiction I think that’s a good description — it’s not, like, dark humor (I wouldn’t describe the book as funny, as such), but that it’s got elements of both, and I think it does a good job of balancing its darkness with its moments of lightness. Ropa’s relationships with her grandmother and her sister are a big part of what makes this possible: the fact that no matter what happens she can (try to) go home to them means that we get regular stress breaks from the quite dark main plot.
on the subject of the main plot, it was, frankly, kind of predictable: I knew basically as soon as we met [DETAIL REDACTED] where things were going. this isn’t necessarily a criticism, though: I think the plot is well-handled, so I mostly didn’t mind the lack of surprise, and the side things going on — especially the excellent vignettes of Ropa’s ghostalker work — added nice variety. (n.b., for me the mood “mysterious” is distinct from whether or not I’m necessarily surprised by the mystery. it’s about the atmosphere. in any case, especially with the world-building stuff there’s plenty of enigma to go around.)
my one complaint, I think — and it’s something I have to assume Huchu intends to deal with more in later books — was that I wanted some more resolution, or at least exploration, of the tension between “scientific” magic and chivanhu. when Ropa first arrives at the library it seems like this is going to be a running theme, but instead the chivanhu aspect is essentially dropped. I hope it’ll come to the fore in later books, but it did seem like we could have had a little more setup in this one.
anyway, ultimately I’ve given this 4.25 stars. it’s fun, if dark, and a quick, engaging read.
moods: adventurous, dark, lighthearted, mysterious