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 specialized 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.

IN A NUTSHELL
Fun but flawed. Good ideas, Interesting people. Loved being in Ropa’s head. The storytelling meandered a bit around an overly complex plot. Energetic and original but not focused enough. I recommend the text rather than the audibook version of the novel.

‘Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments‘ (2022) carries straight on from the events of ‘The Library of the Dead‘ 2021. I recommend reading this series in order, as the world-building and information about magic systems are cumulative, and the developing relationships between the characters are key. 

I enjoyed getting a deeper understanding of the alternative Edinburgh that this story is set in. I also finally got a (very scary and deeply intriguing) explanation of what the Library of the Dead is. It gave me a new and nightmarish view onwhat the word Book might come to mean.

I enjoyed being inside Ropa’s head. I like how she thinks. Her curiosity is as inexhaustible as her commitment to her family is unshakeable. She’s a scrappy underdog who I hope will one day be top of the heap while still managing to stay true to herself. Ropa’s observations and her interactions with her friends and enemies made the book for me. 

The plot was interesting and moved the overall story arc of the series forward, but it was a little too long in the telling.There were lots of action scenes and all of them were well done, but I’d have liked the pacing of the story to be tighter.’Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments’ ran about forty pages longer than ‘The Library of the Dead‘. I think it would have been a better book if it had been edited down to the same length. 

I listened to the audiobook version of ‘Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments’ . In future, I’ll be sticking to the text version for future books. The narrator, Kimberly Mandindoe, does well enough with the dialogue in the book. I like her interior voice for Ropa and I love her voice for Ropa’s nan, but she seems to have trouble matching the cadence of the non-dialogue sentences. Her accent is right, but her stresses sound off sometimes.

I’m still looking forward to reading the rest of the series (the fifth and final book will be published this year). I want to know how things work out for Ropa and what impact she has on the magicians of Edinburgh.