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A review by awesomebrandi
The Library of the Dead by T.L. Huchu
5.0
The Library of the Dead is a dark fantasy novel with a scrappy, teenage heroine who happens to communicate with ghosts. I really enjoyed this book, and I feel like the character development is absolutely top notch. I felt a lot of connection with Ropa, as a poor, autodidact who cares for her family. The linguistics in this are a word nerd's dream, because of the great combo of African (Zimbabwe) and Scottish dialects and slang. While Ropa is a little rough around the edges, as you expect a scrappy street wise young person to be - she also has amazing heart and drive. She is a big fan of learning and growing, even though she quit school because she wanted to focus on her responsibilities and freedoms.
Ropa uses music and magic to talk with spirits of the dead, to help the communicate with their family members. She gets approached by a spirit, who's living son is missing, and ends up going on an adventure to help find him and solve a plot. This definitely had some unexpected twists and turns in it, but they just kept the action nice and high.
It was nice to see a prominent disabled character in the book, who wasn't painfully cliche - outside of them being a wheelchair user, which is a little bit of low hanging fruit, but I thought the character was written well. There were only a couple of issues I had, when it comes to disability visibility in this book - one, still plenty of use of ableist slang like 'idiot' and related. And, then, the part that really made me cringe was when the Ropa's sister's teacher talked about being gifted and saying it was different than those with 'special needs' and that whole thing just rubbed me the wrong way. It had no real bearing or addition to the story (we can assume Ropa's sister was very capable, based on her sister's behavior) - and it contributes to dangerous stereotypes that being 'gifted' and being disabled are two different things, when they commonly overlap.
Otherwise, I really, really enjoyed this book. I look forward to reading more. Such a great, unique voice and wonderful story development.
Ropa uses music and magic to talk with spirits of the dead, to help the communicate with their family members. She gets approached by a spirit, who's living son is missing, and ends up going on an adventure to help find him and solve a plot. This definitely had some unexpected twists and turns in it, but they just kept the action nice and high.
It was nice to see a prominent disabled character in the book, who wasn't painfully cliche - outside of them being a wheelchair user, which is a little bit of low hanging fruit, but I thought the character was written well. There were only a couple of issues I had, when it comes to disability visibility in this book - one, still plenty of use of ableist slang like 'idiot' and related. And, then, the part that really made me cringe was when the Ropa's sister's teacher talked about being gifted and saying it was different than those with 'special needs' and that whole thing just rubbed me the wrong way. It had no real bearing or addition to the story (we can assume Ropa's sister was very capable, based on her sister's behavior) - and it contributes to dangerous stereotypes that being 'gifted' and being disabled are two different things, when they commonly overlap.
Otherwise, I really, really enjoyed this book. I look forward to reading more. Such a great, unique voice and wonderful story development.