The Library of the Dead feels like a novella that’s been expanded into a full-length novel. Even if her journey takes her to a strange, magical library and an even stranger, dangerous house. Something is attacking the children of Edinburgh and Ropa is going to figure out what is happening, and why. She’s rather concerned since his friend, who disappeared alongside him, was returned to his family as no more than a husk of his former self, devoid of joy, strength, and youth. One ghost, however, convinces Ropa to look into the disappearance of her son. Ropa is a ghostalker-she can see and speak with ghosts and will deliver messages to the loved ones of the recently deceased. For Edinburgh hides a wealth of secrets, and Ropa’s gonna hunt them all down. She’ll dice with death (not part of her life plan…), discovering an occult library and a taste for hidden magic. But what she learns will change her world. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone’s bewitching children–leaving them husks, empty of joy and life. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Now she speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living. Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker. This review will be as spoiler free as possible, though may contain very light spoilers. NOTE: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Tor Books. All of the elements are there, but the plot, itself, feels a bit like an afterthought. It just tries to be too many different things at once and comes off as unfocused instead of compelling. It’s not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination.

The Library of the Dead falls into the latter camp, suffering from a pretty chronic case of first-book-in-a-series syndrome. Some books get the balancing act between all of these perfectly right. And they try to tell their own self-contained, satisfying narratives. They spend a lot of time expanding the series’ universe, sowing the seeds for future books. Often, the first books of a series try to be too many things all at once. There’s a pretty common problem that many first books in a series suffer from.

The library of the dead tl huchu