As part of her internship, Ropa finds herself playing host to a bunch of hoity-toity magicians at Dunvegan Castle. She’s not getting paid so she plans on liberating a little bit of something for her efforts. Before she can get her hands on anything shiny, the entire event turns into a locked room mystery: magic edition.
‘Everyone is a suspect.’
I absolutely adore Ropa. She has a distinctive voice, her education is pretty much courtesy of the school of hard knocks and she’s currently sporting orange dreadlocks and black lipstick.
One of the things I love about this series is Ropa’s relationships with her Gran and younger sister, Izwi. While both were mentioned in this book, neither had page time and I really missed their interactions. I also missed River, Ropa’s vulpine companion. Thankfully, Ropa’s friends, Priya and Jomo, are Under the Dome with her, as are the Hamster Squad, who we met in the second book.
They’re the admin gophers where I work.
Ropa is a ghostalker. She puts food on the table by delivering messages from ghosts to their loved ones. There was less ghostalking in this book than the previous ones.
Whenever there’s a list of who’s who in the zoo before you get to the first chapter, a part of my brain shuts down. I assume that if there are so many people I need to know about that I need a list to help me, I’m never going to be able to remember them all. This then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I’m pretty sure I ignored the lists in the previous books and didn’t have a problem. Here, there were details of the principal magical institutions, places and characters. I read them all carefully. My brain then went into panic mode and never recovered.
There was a lot of discussion about the history of magic, which I found interesting, and I learned of the existence of the biblioparadise, where I’ll be spending my afterlife.
A realm within the astral plane where every book written and unwritten sits on shelves high enough to touch the sky.
This book felt like a bridge between what we already knew about Ropa’s world and something big that’s on the horizon. Ropa seemed to tread water a bit in this book and as a result I wasn’t as invested as I usually am in this series. I am absolutely ready for what’s coming, though, and am really looking forward to the next book.
Favourite no context quote:
Thing about kangaroo courts is, the conclusion’s baked in before the dough’s in the oven.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, for the opportunity to read this book.
Once Upon a Blurb
Ropa Moyo is no stranger to magic or mysteries. But she’s still stuck in an irksomely unpaid internship. So she’s thrilled to attend a magical convention at Dunvegan Castle, on the Isle of Skye, where she’ll rub elbows with eminent magicians.
For Ropa, it’s the perfect opportunity to finally prove her worth. Then a librarian is murdered and a precious scroll stolen. Suddenly, every magician is a suspect, and Ropa and her allies investigate. Trapped in a castle, with suspicions mounting, Ropa must contend with corruption, skulduggery and power plays. Time to ask for a raise?
Schizanthus Nerd 