The Grimoire of Grave Fates builds on its incredible premise to showcase the immense talent of its contributors.

This has such a phenomenal premise—a Dark Academia fantasy murder mystery anthology set in a school of magic? Sign me up immediately! I just fell in love with the idea of an interlocking fantasy and murder mystery anthology, making such a unique collection of stories. The way this collection is set out is also really interesting, placing characters against the clock to discover the truth of what happened.

The Galileo Academy is a magical campus that has recently changed its focus to be more inclusive and reflective of its contemporary reality. Septimus Dropwork, a professor and embodiment of many forms of hatred, did not welcome this and when he turns up dead, there are plenty of suspects to follow. That interplay of inclusion, diversity and the respective discussions around it (often nonsensical and bigoted) mixed with the murder mystery thread is endlessly fascinating.

It is also really important to highlight the sheer amount of diversity in this collection. As always, seeing more of this and more normalised representation is incredible. Diversity should be the standard, rather than the exception. Just seeing so much BIPOC, disability, queer, and mental health representation brings light to my heart. The running thread throughout these stories is facing and sometimes overcoming adversity with the hatred and bigotry faced being truly sickening. You get a sense of a rotten heart at the centre of this institution, which is only exposed more as the collection continues.

We get all of these differing voices, all of whom have at least a glimmer of what happened or a seed of a potential motivation. It is also really interesting how the expansive setting of a school celebrating many forms of magic allowed for each writer to put their own stamp on a magic system and sprawling setting. In addition to this, I thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend time with all of these incredible characters, particularly as they started to interweave. They all really burst off the page and were three-dimensional. The way the authors managed to condense these complex, interesting and sometimes challenging character arcs and twists into such a short form is nothing but commendable.

While all the stories were brilliant, some did shine a little more for me. In particular, 2: A.M.: Wren Willemson by Marieke Nijkamp; 5:00 A.M.: Taya Winter by Darcie Little Badger; 9:00 A.M: Irene Seaver by Kayla Whaley; 5:00 P.M.: Jamie Ellison by Victoria Lee; and 8:00 P.M.: Lupita Augratricis by Natasha Díaz all snuck into my heart and really remained in my head after finishing the book. However, every section had such distinctive character voices and covered a lot of material in a very short space. These are stories that cover a lot of ground, giving you time with their respective protagonist, while also moving the machinations of the over-arching plot along. In that sense, every story is an awe-inspiring piece of art and an intriguing piece of the puzzle. There was no story that did not totally captivate me. I sped through this collection, wanting to race the clock like the characters. The pacing and tension was very high and I just needed to know who and whydunnit.

Spell-binding in every way, The Grimoire of Grave Fates is an anthology like no other!

This was an ambitious project with the 18 characters each getting just one POV chapter, but I think the authors all pulled it off well. It was pretty fun and enjoyed this brief snapshot into all the lives of these students at Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary.

i loved bits and pieces of this but the constant changing writing styles due to the different authors just isn't for me. thanks to the publisher for the arc!

This book was more fantasy than I expected but it was really thrilling from the start. Magic, necromancy, gargoyles, and that's just the beginning. If you like fantasy with mystery, this is a good one.

If you follow my reviews, you’ll notice that there is a pattern. While I would like to pride myself on reading everything and anything, I do have a fascination with the murder mystery genres. An anthology would be right up my alley.

Grimoire of Grave Fates follows the investigation of the murder of Professor Septimius Dropwort, who is clearly hated by just about everyone. Which makes sense because Dropwort is obviously prejudiced. Each chapter is told from a different student’s perspective. Each student is so diverse in their personal ways but connected in one: they are all Chosen Ones.

While this novel is Young Adult, I would caution that there are quite a few content/trigger warnings. Examples are abuse, racism, discrimination, graphic injuries, thievery, premature birth, drugs, mental health disorders, and more. And while I agree that all of these topics SHOULD be talked about openly, I would advise that there are plenty of adults that the young adult feels comfortable talking to.

There are many good things about the book. Each diverse character, their backgrounds, the subtexts of their struggles. I also enjoyed the structure of each chapter being written by a different author and told from a different perspective. I would have liked to know Harry Potter from his classmates’ POV at times. However, 18 different students become a bit much. I wanted to hear more from some students and didn’t understand the point of others. It also led to the pacing being slow for me, because if the students overlapped then I found myself going back through to remember who was who. Maybe if there were half the number of students and each was given two chapters?

Overall, I rate this novel 3 out of 5 stars, but found new authors to follow.

The moment I heard about this book I knew I needed to read it. Such a creative approach to writing a mystery and it absolutely pays off. Each chapter features a unique voice and it was so fun to unravel what happened alongside the authors. If you're looking for a book that will entertain you, this is absolutely the book.

I received a free copy of this book; all opinions are my own.

I love the idea of this book so much, and love almost all of the individual stories (I found the chapter about Sydney for some unfathomable reason my brain simply refused to engage, and so I ended up having to skip over the majority of it to continue on). So many of the characters were fascinating for so many reasons, and there is such a beautifully wide range of different types of magic presented that I wish there WAS a series about this school, and these kids. Unfortunately, the disjointed nature of each chapter left me feeling a bit forlorn, as I wanted to know how many of the students' stories continued in the future. The ending, also, felt a little unsatisfying; while it did wrap up the murder mystery, it left me hanging on the things I truly wanted to know more about, like the relationships between the various teens and the school itself. I feel like this book was a tantalizing taste of something deeply appealing, but it stops short of being fulfilling of the desire it creates. Frankly, I would love a series of novels based on these characters and their experiences, written by each of these authors, but I don't know if that will ever be a possibility.

An intriguing and original concept, I loved the way that each author brought a different perspective to The Grimoire of Grave Fates which wove together to create a cohesive whole.

There’s been a murder! The Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary is a travelling magic school in the most illustrious sense you can imagine. Although in recent years they have attempted to diversify their student body and faculty, some of the staff aren’t happy about it, and the most loathed of them all is Professor Dropwort… who also happens to be the murder victim. How do you solve a murder in a magic school when just about every student had motive to kill the victim? Guess we’re about to find out.

I was continuously amazed as I read the book how each perspective wove together to create a sense of ‘it all coming together’ for the reader when we only got each character’s perspective once. The way that the different sections were brought together was truly impressive, and I loved the way it allowed us to discover so many different clues, characters, and motives in such a small amount of time - something that would have been almost impossible with just one or two main characters considering the breadth and depth of the mystery.

Somehow simultaneously a collection of short stories and also one overarching story, I enjoyed The Grimoire of Grave Fates and would be interested to read other books of the same format in the future.

Honestly, I requested this book before I even knew what it was about. I saw that list of contributors - with some of my favorite auto-buy authors - and knew I had to read it. But then I found out what it was about and I became fully obsessed. The Grimoire of Grave Fates is an ambitious undertaking of character scope, world building, and pacing.

oh my god this book literally took my breath away in the best way possible. I love when authors come together to work on stuff - especially when it's a group of all of my favorites!!

Seeing the mystery story play out with all these different POV"s was so cool too - I found myself wanting more and more of each character as the story went on. I will say I did unfortunately guess the ending but it was still extremely good.

This was such a fun way of telling a story! There were eighteen authors who each wrote a different character and tied in with the overall murder mystery at a magical boarding school. I enjoyed the unique takes each one had and that the characters were all so different. There was ALL the representation, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ and I lived for it.

The little ways each story intertwined with the others were pretty cool and it set up the whole picture of what was happening and how each character played a role. Because there were so many points of view, it did get a bit difficult to remember everyone. I also wish we'd seen some characters again, because their parts felt unfinished.

There were a couple things that didn't get completely resolved at the end and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to assume everything was taken care of off page, but I would have liked to see things tidied up a bit more.

I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. All opinions are my own. Thank you to Delacorte Press and NetGalley.

DNF at ~50%
I'm not doing a full review because I didn't read the full book, but basically: I adore Margaret Owen and a couple of the short story authors, but I just could not get into this one and wasn't enjoying it. I might come back to it later, but I'm not feeling it.

These always make me want full fledged stories when I read these things. This one I think would be great for higher grades in middle school or lower grades of high school. This was still pretty interesting to read but it always leaves me wanting more.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book. I found this book would be great for younger readers who may be struggling to find their identity in their world. Or readers might identify if they are struggling with pushing down and hiding their identity while the process is hurtful and all-encompassing. Despite the horror and mystery elements, this book has a taste of “coming-of-age” that some younger readers might find relatable and enjoyable.

This is a great book for diverse reads, and I really loved the representation in this. A school of magic, a murder, and each story is a different classmate finding clues!

I enjoyed this. It's a bit young YA, if you know what I mean? So, I had a harder time connecting with every character. But overall, I think this concept is so unique, and I really feel like it has been executed well.

It's a fun book to pick up and read through!

Out June 6, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

Thoughts

I wanted to love this book so much, and I do so love the concept here. But the execution... it just didn't come together. The natural diversity, the abundance of magic, and the myriad of voices that come with working with so many great authors makes this great. But the story wasn't there, and the story is what counts at the end of the day.

Pros
Casual Diversity: The beautiful thing about having so many authors come together is that the authenticity of their experiences shine through. These authors are all so incredibly different, and their characters represent that well. Passions, identities, cultures come together into one big, messy experience, and that diversity of thought and identity feels so natural, so effortless. These thoughts and ideas clash and comingle in a way that feels both real and hopeful, something that could happen and should happen (as much as anything could and should happen in a realm of magic). It was a pleasure to sink into a world where anybody and everybody can be what they want. So much magic exudes from these pages, magics familiar and not, and that's beautiful.

Text Chains: This is a school. People talk. Teens talk, and that happens here. Behind the scenes, text chains are blowing up, a thousand voices and secrets and conspiracies being shared between students. And we get to be privy to these text convos as well between each "chapter." These text chains not only add a bit of levity and humor to the text but they act as a throughline, connecting characters and places as we hop from one person to the next in this long investigation. That's a great device to employ, and it's employed well.

Ending: It all comes together in the end, believe it or not. So many authors, so many characters, so many types of magic... and all the loose threads get knotted up into a great reveal, a classic villain-spilling-secrets scene, and a messy (in a good way) conclusion. I wish the journey to this end was as smooth as the ending itself, but at least I found myself somewhat satisfied when I closed this book at the end.


Cons
Anthology Blah: This familiar anthology woe is, unfortunately, only accentuated in this book. Some of these stories are great, enticing snippets of vivid life and characters. Others are not quite as great. Because these stories come back to back to back to complete one overall landscape of plot, this big picture comes out somewhat blah. These stories and these styles are all unique and different, but they don't come together to form a particularly compelling picture. The concept is great, but the execution is, unfortunately, predictable (i.e. predictably bad).

Forgettable Figures: I found it very hard to remember who was who and what was what in this book. Each chapter is told by a different author and in a different perspective. Though descriptions of characters are consistent throughout, what each author chose to emphasize about personality, outer appearance, and overall importance meant that it was hard to remember characters. Name alone, in a world this full of characters, doesn't really do. It's not a fun reading experience to have to wrack your brain to remember who So-And-So was again. The format here means you never really get your footing in this world, and the characters are an unfortunate casualty of that.

Lost Plot: This book starts strong and ends strong. Don't get me wrong on that. It does come full circle. But the in-between part is where this book is particularly taxing. There are too many plots happening in only little snippets. The overall plot gets lost in the tangents, and that made me sad. Because I absolutely adored this world, and I absolutely adored some of these stories. Instead of creating one big picture, I wish this collaborative effort was used as a springboard for a whole bunch of stories, authors all working together to create a series of individual books wrapped up in character and culture in this great, multicultural world of magic. As it was, the individuals and their personal woes meant that the book dragged, the storyline forgotten, and that made me so, so sad. Because what's the point of a book that isn't going to dig into characters and isn't going to provide a compelling plot? There really is none.


Rating
⭐⭐⭐
3/10

Erstwhile fans of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series might like dipping their toes into this new magic school. Fans of Janice Hallett's The Appeal will love sitting in the investigator's shoes once again in this murder mystery.

3.5⭐️

The concept of this book was *so* cool. I loved the incorporation of different perspectives as well as different media types. Galieo academy was also so fun to read about and I would love to read more books set at this school that discuss the different kinds of magic. The representation in this book was also phenomenal, and I am so happy to see a book with so many different experiences being represented.

Definitely check this book out!

Thank you the publisher and NetGalley for an e-arc in exchange for me review.

**I was provided an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.**

Margaret Owen and Hanna Alkaf edit 18 authors through whose powers combine into The Grimoire of Grave Fates. Readers follow various characters, each penned by a different author, as they investigate a murder mystery at a magical school. Professor Dropwort was not well loved by students or staff and there seems to be no shortage of potential motives for his death. Readers learn more hour by hour as the investigation unfolds and the diverse students most alienated by Dropwort take center stage.

This project was undeniably ambitious. To have 18 authors working together in one world and producing a single coherent story from the perspectives of 18 different characters sounds like a lot because it simply is. To highlight cultural, racial, gender, and sexual identity diversity in a book with such a complex make-up is even more admirable. For me, personally, the project seemed just a little over-ambitious. Even as a lover of fantasy, I almost wish that the authors had kept to being solely a murder mystery in order to eliminate one extra aspect of complexity. However, I realize this would remove some of the amazing cultural components through the various magic types highlighted, so it leaves me torn.

All of the authors were cohesive enough that the mystery was easily solvable by the reader, which is good for the intended age demographic. For me, I was left with a middle-of-the-road feeling. The concept of this project was so utterly amazing and the execution was adequate. Good. But I was left wanting more. I wasn't motivated to pick up the book between reading sessions and this book took me far longer than a typically formatted novel would take me.

Overall, I absolutely appreciate what was done with this project and would recommend it to the target age demographic. To older readers. I invite them to share in the fun of the experience rather than seek out a new masterpiece here.

I absolutely LOVED this anthology! All the stories within were amazing, and I just wanted more from all of them! Absolutely will recommend, and I can't wait to give a re-read around spooky season!!

Everyone is the hero of their own story. This is a written as a round robin story, where each other gets one chapter with their own lead character. You'll see the characters from the other chapters pop up occasionally, but each chapter is rooted in the knowledge that for this chapter, this one hour, this is the most important character to the tale. They are each the hero, each vital. It's a very complicated structural thing to pull off, and luckily the group of authors here are all incredibly skilled. Incredibly fun, readable, and empowering. After you finish, you'll want to go track down the books of authors who you maybe hadn't picked up before.