I would like to thank Tor UK for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Tor UK

Published – Out Now

Price - £16.99 hardback £8.99 kindle eBook

NB  - there will be discussions for the first novel The Library of the Dead – you really should have read this but if not here is a review to tempt you! Click here!

Some secrets are meant to stay buried.

When Ropa Moyo discovered an occult underground library, she expected great things. She’s really into Edinburgh’s secret societies - but turns out they are less into her. So instead of getting paid to work magic, she’s had to accept a crummy unpaid internship. And her with bills to pay and a pet fox to feed. 

Then her friend Priya offers her a job on the side. Priya works at Our Lady of Mysterious Maladies, a very specialised hospital, where a new illness is resisting magical and medical remedies alike. The first patient was a teenage boy, Max Wu, and his healers are baffled. If Ropa can solve the case, she might earn as she learns - and impress her mentor, Sir Callander.

Her sleuthing will lead her to a lost fortune, an avenging spirit and a secret buried deep in Scotland’s past. But how are they connected? Lives are at stake and Ropa is running out of time. 

When a new fantasy or SG series starts there are questions you can only really start to get answered in the second book. What type of series will this be? Pure standalone; rotating characters a series that never changes it’s characters. Personally, I like development in character and world and also that we get the sense of the type of stories that can come (I’m even more impressed if later they surprise me on that one). In TL Huchu’s brilliant Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments we return to the near future ruined Edinburgh where magic is real and the Ghosttalker Ropa Moyo is only just starting to find out how her city and her world really works with a mystery that brilliantly expands both world and character setting up what I think is going to be a very very successful fantasy series. You need this in your life gentle readers.

To recap the story so far. Magic has been real and is pretty much ‘the second science’ sometime in the twenty-first century an event has happened that has knocked the world back significantly. Scotland tried for Independence and was beaten quite forcibly back. Life is hard especially for the poor who live in caravans and have to search every day for food. The world also has ghosts which is where old before their time Ropa Moyo came in doing messages for the dead on to the living. In the course of recent events, she uncovered a monster killing people and this involved her with the Society of Sceptical Enquirers and the powerful Sir Ian Callander. Demonstrating lots of potential for magic Ropa has been told she can be Sir Ian’s apprentice. But very quickly Ropa finds such a role isn’t finbancially beneficial especially when you have a young sister and ailing Gran to look after. Her friend Priya has a potentially lucrative case of a young teenager suffering what appears to be a very magical unexplained disease and a mysterious Canadian also thinks Ropa may have the skills to find a long-lost family fortune. Trying to do everything at once at the best of times is dangerous and this time it could also be fatal.

Oh goodness this is SUPERB! So tempting to leave it there but I suppose you need a little more information?

First up if you loved the way Ropa’s first person narration made the story come alive I’m very pleased to say this continues. Although Ropa is fifteen they are someone who has had to grow up quickly leaving school to look after her remaining family and those years mean we have someone with a lot of common sense, attitude and knows how to fight. Huchu has also provided a character with a sense of humour and fitting for this setting as a compulsive audiobook/podcast listener someone who can trade geek jokes about Doctor Who and Marvel but also knows history, science, and military tactics. But importantly they’re very much on a learning curve and this time the story is about Rops learning their current limitations. Rather than suddenly finding that our hero is amazing at everything and levels up like a game character we get someone who is about to learn there is so much more still to learn and understand. Ropa knows only one spell alongside their ability to summon and exorcise ghosts. They do not yet understand the Society, the city and in fact the wider world quite like they thought they knew. Here Ropa’s self-confidence is actually a weakness as they try to play various does off against one another; that magic isn’t always easy to control, and everyone has an agenda. It is refreshing to have a lead character who while awesome is still very much at the start of their journey and not an instant superhero. In many ways Roos is the perfect lead for a story set ina world that mixes past present and future to create such a great setting.

This character development really chimes with the subject of the worldbuilding in this story. This is a story about power and wealth and those who have it and those who don’t. Ropa is very much working class and with Society and the Library we soon realise there is a while magical infrastructure in this world of private magical schools; the wealthy and they don’t like to share. Ropa’s position is very much made by those taking an instant dislike to her an unpaid position and its noted how few here realise for Ropa simple things like food, medicine and safety are not automatic for everyone and this story is very much about exploring how all these factions work together or are in conflict. IT also starts to open up exactly why the UK has regressed into a more feudal system with a constantly mentioned powerful King. We definitely finish this book with a wider sense of the stakes at play for Edinburgh and Scotland and a sense that further moves for someone known as the One Above All who clearly has an agenda and the Society in their sights.

All of which is fleshing this world out and hinting at what is to come but I absolutely think the story here works too on its own two feet. We get fights in astral planes; murderous gardens and books made of dead people. We also get wrapped into Scotland’s history - you’ll be surprised at how the Royal Bank of Scotland got started and what it meant for the next few hundred years. Alongside the excellent Ropa we get the brilliant and brave Priya who never lets a wheelchair stop her doing anything and the young Librarian Jomo who is perhaps learning you can be a rebel. Let’s be clear here this is not YA this is more a series where you could argue the next generation is starting to see how the world works ands perhaps that needs to change – fairly standard in adult fantasy! Last but not least so glad to see Ropa’s Gran Melsie Mhondoro returns and beyond just being there to support the family we get firstly a sweet older aged romance begin but also a lot of clues that Melsie was once a lot more involved in magical circles than previously expected.

Overall If you loved Library of the Dead and I did then the good news is I found this an even better novel and cements what I hope to be a brilliant series. If you’ve still not read any of the books then trust me by every book I’ve ever tempted you with and do the right thing - go out and get started. This is the a reading experience that makes you punch the air and want more.  Go get it!