Library at Hellebore

I have read other Cassandra Khaw, and this story continues in their writing vein of being bloody and extremely visceral (literally and metaphorically). It's less body horror and more horror horror; it's the fiction version of the last twenty minutes of The Substance where everything turns monstrous and there's a firehose of blood and gore.

This is another "dark academia book", where magic children who have apocalyptic abilities are sent (or taken) to keep them safe from the rest of the world. Obviously where there's power, there's abuse of power and this is fundamentally a revenge story from a traumatized woman who likes her bodily autonomy.

The story is told from the main character's perspective in both the present and the past, with the past narrative catching up to the present eventually to help explain some of the in medias res. I do really like this technique when it's done well, and I feel like it helps flash back to backstory for characters and create some level of doubt about the main character's motivations. The present is mostly action, and so it makes for satisfying pacing to have interleaved backstory and tension.

I think this book is best viewed as a classic horror story--it feels very much like a movie where parts of the cast are slowly being killed off. It's about establishing characters rather than a strong sense of place. Still, it's interesting to compare some of the world building of Scholomance to here. Despite the fact that both contain the classic trope of a school that constantly rearranges itself, the Scholomance has a map and a sense of threat about being in a lower room or getting lost. Here, the physical school itself is mostly just a side detail and I don't really have a sense of space or tension.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy this book, but in comparison to other adjacent dark academia genre books I think it just doesn't quite stand out. The worldbuilding and deadly graduation ceremony was much more thin than in the Scholomance. I found the characters in Emily Tesh's The Incandescent to be much stronger and more interesting. Even Khaw's previous Little Mermaid retelling The Salt Grows Heavy sticks with me much more than the moments in this book.

I wonder if this will land better for folks who are more into horror than I am.