THE LABYRINTH OF SOULS

A very special girl finds Death in a maze.

Ix Tatterfall befriends Nightmares, which sets her apart in her strange little town of Brittlewick. She can easily access the spiritual realm of the Labyrinth of Souls just by closing her eyes and willing it, while most humans who find themselves there are dead, lost souls, or members of the Candle Corps, a policelike force dedicated to order and safety. When the 12-year-old gets recruited to join their ranks on account of her special skills, the plot becomes a standard chosen-kid-in-magic-school story, with a rude legacy student, an affable ally, and a lot of broken rules. The story is chock-full of fanciful details, with ominous capitalized letters referring to many aspects of the world, like the Crystal Sleep, the Waking World, Dreamlight, and the Labyrinth itself. Chaos, Terror, Misery, Greed, and other Sorrows are intriguingly personified, but an endless array of Nightmare creatures and plants—Bupkis Birds, the Creak-o-dile, Snot Moss, Warty Hornswaggles, and many, many others—begin to feel like filler. Early infodumps followed by a zippy plot come at the expense of character development and satisfying worldbuilding, with the entirety of the magic system, history, and cultures given surface-level treatment. Characters are referred to as varying shades of pale, tan, and brown, and there’s a normalized same-sex marriage. Final art not seen.

A mildly inventive fantasy.