I was supposed to be debugging a procedural dungeon generator for my thesis. Instead I had Città di spettri loaded up, headphones on, pretending the Italian audiobook was 'research into narrative structure.' (Dr. Patel, if you're reading this, it absolutely was research.) Five and a half hours later, my dungeon generator was untouched and I'd taken a ghost tour of Edinburgh without leaving my desk chair.
So look — this is V.E. Schwab's City of Ghosts, but in Italian, narrated by Elisa Parmigiani. And I want to be upfront about that because it changes the calculus here. Schwab wrote this for a middle-grade audience, and even in translation, her signature clean, propulsive style comes through. The Italian readers I've seen talk about it confirm exactly that — the prose is "lineare, semplice, fluido," easy to follow even if your Italian is, let's say, aspirational like mine.
Edinburgh as a Dungeon Crawl
Here's what Schwab does really well: she treats Edinburgh like a fantasy setting. The underground vaults, the cemeteries, the wynds and closes — she's basically built a city-sized haunted dungeon and dropped a twelve-year-old necromancer into it. Cass can cross the Veil between the living and the dead because she literally drowned and came back, and her best friend Jacob is a ghost. That's your party composition right there. One living girl with spectral sight, one dead boy providing moral support. It's a two-person D&D party with no healer and I kind of love it.
The magic system — well, calling it a magic system is generous, this is middle-grade after all — but the Veil mechanics have clear rules. Cass can pull it aside. She can step through. Things on the other side can pull back. There's a cost. Schwab doesn't over-explain it, which for a book this length is the right call. At five and a half hours, there's zero fat on this story. It moves.
Parmigiani and the Ghost of What Could've Been
Here's where I have to be honest: I couldn't find much detail on Elisa Parmigiani's specific performance here, and that's a gap. No listener complaints about pacing or pronunciation issues, which for an Italian narration of a book full of Scottish place names is actually notable — Edinburgh's geography is a minefield for any narrator working in translation. But I also can't point to standout character voices or moments where the narration elevated the material. She seems competent and clean, but without the kind of performance fireworks that make you forget you're listening to one person. Steven Pacey this is not. (But then, almost nobody is.)
For a middle-grade fantasy-horror, competent narration gets the job done. The story carries itself. But if you're choosing between this Italian audio version and reading the English text — or finding the English audiobook — you're really only picking this if you want Italian language practice wrapped in a fun ghost story.
The Schwab Comparison Problem
I came to this from Schwab's adult work. The Shades of Magic trilogy, Vicious — books with serious teeth. Città di spettri is... gentler. The horror is spooky-Halloween-episode horror, not keep-the-lights-on horror. Italian reviewers nail it when they call it "perfetto da leggere ad Halloween" — perfect Halloween reading. One-sitting, good-dose-of-spooky, fun-not-traumatizing.
And that's fine! Not every book needs to be a 40-hour Stormlight Archive commitment. Sometimes you want a tight, breezy ghost adventure that knows exactly what it is. Schwab mixes fantasy, horror, humor, and genuine friendship beats — the Cass-Jacob dynamic has real warmth — and wraps it up before it overstays its welcome. My D&D group would probably call this a one-shot rather than a campaign, and that's not an insult. A Mouse Called Miika scratches a similar itch — compact, charming, knows its lane.
But if you're coming in expecting the complexity of A Darker Shade of Magic or the moral ambiguity of Vicious, recalibrate. This is YA-adjacent middle grade. The stakes are personal, not world-ending. The villain is creepy but not complex. The progression is satisfying in a popcorn-movie way.
Who Should Listen (And Who Should Skip)
Pick this up if you're an Italian learner looking for approachable listening practice with actual plot momentum, or if you want a palate cleanser between epic fantasy slogs. Skip it if you need your Schwab dark and morally gray, or if you're not interested in the language-practice angle — the English version will serve you better there.
Roll for Initiative (or Just Hit Play)
Città di spettri is a quick, fun listen that uses Edinburgh's genuinely eerie history as a playground. At 5 hours 31 minutes, it's practically a short rest between longer campaigns. The Italian translation preserves Schwab's readability, and Parmigiani delivers a clean performance even if it doesn't redefine what narration can do. I finished it in one session, didn't write a single line of thesis code, and regret nothing.
(I regret a little. Dr. Patel's email subject line just said "Timeline." One word. That's never good.)
