The Library of the Dead ( Edinburgh Nights, #1) By T.L. Huchu ~ 4.0 Stars

Tags

Diversity, Edinburgh, Humor, Mystery, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Supernatural Fiction, Suspense, Urban Fantasy, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: June 1st, 2021

336 Pages

Synopsis: “Sixth Sense” meets “Stranger Things” in T.L. Huchu’s “The Library of the Dead,” a sharp, contemporary fantasy, following a precocious and cynical teen as she explores the shadowy, magical underside of modern Edinburgh.

When a child goes missing in Edinburgh’s darkest streets, young Ropa investigates. She’ll need to call on Zimbabwean magic as well as her Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. But as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunter?

When ghosts talk, she will listen…

Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker. Now she speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper someone’s bewitching children—leaving them husks, empty of joy and life. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. But what she learns will change her world.

She’ll dice with death (not part of her life plan…), discovering an occult library and a taste for hidden magic. She’ll also experience dark times. For Edinburgh hides a wealth of secrets, and Ropa’s gonna hunt them all down. (Goodreads)

The Library of the Dead didn’t succeed in hooking me until I was almost 100 pages in, but once I passed that point, I couldn’t stop reading.

There’s a lot going on in this post-apocalyptic Edinburgh, that I think is slightly in the future. The exact time period is never really made clear, but given the technology and references to the not too distant past, I’m guessing it’s not that many years ahead of 2021. There’s been an unknown “Catastrophe” which has definitely made a huge impact, but it’s never explained what happened. And characters keep referring to the “King” which likewise remained a mystery throughout the story. I’m assuming more information will be given in subsequent books.

This first book’s focus is on fifteen-year-old Ropa, with her green dreadlocks, black lipstick, and um, extremely colorful language. Ropa is also half Zimbabwean and half Scottish, which is an intriguing mix. She’s smart, sarcastic, has a pet fox and can outswear a sailor, sometimes to hilarious effect. Outwardly, she’s a tough cookie and is stubborn as well as courageous. She determinedly takes care of her Nan, who is blind and has diabetes, and makes sure her younger sister goes to school. Once she’s introduced into the world of the Library, by her friend Jomo, she opens her heart more and lets in new friends. The secondary characters are interesting and include Priya, a young herbologist and healer who is confined to a wheelchair due to a spinal injury.

The world building is intriguing, but as I said, incomplete. Thankfully, knowing that this is the beginning of a series, ultimately made this more tantalizing than annoying for the most part. I loved the blend of magic, science, and supernatural, which added to my eagerness for more. Except for the first 1/3 of the book, the rest is extremely fast-paced and the ending wrapped up the mystery neatly.

The Library of the Dead is a promising beginning to Huchu’s Edinburgh Nights series. It’s a unique urban fantasy that stands out from other books of the genre, with a colorful heroine I guarantee readers will love. While Ropa is only fifteen, because of some of the darker imagery and at times sexually risqué language, I’d recommend this for older teens and adults. Otherwise, it’s a highly entertaining read, and I can’t wait for the next book!

Strange Weather, by Joe Hill ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Horror Fiction, LGBT, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Science Fiction, Social Issues

Thanks to Edelweiss and William Morrow for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: October 24th, 2017

448 Pages

Synopsis: A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.

“Snapshot” is the story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories snap by snap.

A young man man takes to the skies to experience his firs parachute jump…and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems to have a mind of its own in “Aloft”.

On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. “Rain” explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.

In “Loaded”, a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for his gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning.

Strange Weather is an eclectic collection of four tales which only has one theme connecting them, the weather. And this really only plays a major role in the last story, but it honestly doesn’t matter because Joe Hill’s writing is so brilliant.

Snapshot features a monstrous villain known as The Phoenician who stalks his victims with an instant camera which extracts their memories. The only one who can stop him is an eleven-year-old misfit. It’s a vintage horror story and somewhat reminiscent of Hill’s NOS4A2. I would say that out of the four stories, this was my favorite because I have a fondness for underdog kids battling evil. I give this 5 Stars.

Loaded tackles the horror of gun violence, and it a story that Hill has been mulling over in his mind since the Newtown massacre. Here, the shooter, Randall Kelloway, is a mall cop who’s been rejected numerous times from the police force because he’s psychologically unfit. He’s a gun fanatic who illegally carries one to work, which results in tragedy. Aisha is a reporter who has her own tragic history with gun violence. She’s suspicious of Randall’s account of what happened, and is determined to discover the truth. It’s a tough story to read and the ending ripped my heart out. Rather than being supernatural in nature, instead the story focuses on the real life monsters among us. I did think this went on a little too long which is why I’m giving this 4.5 Stars.

Aloft is quite different from Hill’s usual writing. It focuses on twenty-something Aubrey Griffin, who along with a small group are completing things on their friend June’s bucket list, that she was unable to do before her death from cancer. The first is a parachute jump, and Aubrey is panic-stricken, but he’s trying to impress his friend Harriet. Once they’re in the plane though, he finds he just can’t go through with it. That is until, the plane starts to lose power and everyone is forced to jump. Aubrey lands on this strange looking cloud. And of course this is not your average cloud. This isn’t a horror story per se, but instead, a quirky, poignant and thoughtful exploration of unrequited love and the question of whether it’s truly possible to have everything you want. There are some questions as to who and what the cloud is, and where did it come from, so I’m giving this 4.5 Stars.

Rain is the last story and is very reminiscent of some of Hill’s more post-apocalyptic fiction. The rain arrives in the form of crystalline needles that are capable of penetrating both objects and bodies. The heroine here is the kick-ass Honeysuckle Speck, and the journey follows her as she tries to get from Boulder to Denver to tell the father of her girlfriend and his wife’s deaths. In addition to trying to avoid further deadly outbreaks of rain, Honeysuckle also has a murderous doomsday cult after her. It’s a well-written story and the perfect way to end this anthology. I give this 5 Stars.

Strange Weather confirms why I’m such a fan of Joe Hill. Every story has characters that readers will connect with. Diverging from his more epic horror like last year’s The Fireman, this is more in keeping with his other short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts. I believe this quite literally has something for everyone and I HIGHLY recommend it to both long-time fans of Hill’s as well as new readers.