Ropa should be on cloud nine, helping organize the Society of Skeptical Enquirers’ biennial conference and hobnobbing with all the bigwigs of Scottish magic. But when she’s left scrambling to investigate a politically charged theft, she begins to wonder if the world of magic is more trouble than it’s worth.
This is the third book in the Edinburgh Nights series, which follows teenage ghostalker Ropa as she investigates magical crimes in a politically uneasy Scotland. In this book, we seem to shift from the individual mysteries we’ve seen so far into the start of an overarching plot for the series. Ropa wins some but loses plenty, and there’s some pretty big shifts in the status quo.
I continued to enjoy following Ropa and her friends on their adventures; they’re all likable yet distinctly flawed, and their blind spots make them feel real. The world-building, always intriguing, expanded in leaps and bounds here as for the first time we get a clear look at the incredibly fraught situation between Scottish and English magic, as well as how magic and politics interlace. Tension remained high throughout the story, ramped up by all the twists and turns that the author throws at us.
However, there were unfortunately some growing pains as a result of the story expanding its scope. I felt like some characterization fell a little by the wayside – Ropa says and does some things that I would have expected of her in the first book, not the third, and minor characters we met in previous books act startlingly different here. The central mystery of the missing scroll was also given short shrift through chunks of the book as the political situation is elaborated on. I wished there was a little more balance.
Still, the ambiguous ending left me on tetherhooks, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next book in the series.