When I was picking some plane reading, I remembered I had this book in a series set in Edinburgh. Sure, it’s an alternate history Edinburgh with magic, after some sort of catastrophe that’s set back the lives of a lot of the citizens, but it’s Edinburgh! (And fairly accurate from what I could tell after arriving.)
This is the second book in this series, and Ropa thinks she’s got a pretty good thing going being inducted into membership in the city’s magical library, but there’s a wide gulf between a girl who lives in the slums, and the other magic users in the city. So she takes a job to try and track down why a young man has ended up comatose in her friend’s hospital. Naturally, things get complicated.
I love the framing of this book, and how it’s very much about our real world, and the problems we have, with a fantastical frame. Ropa is a such a great protagonist – she’s so incredibly real in this world that could go completely over the top with how fancy it could be. I’ve very interested to see what’s building.