As with all anthologies, not every story will work for every reader, but there are a lot of stories here and a wide variety of authors to enjoy. There should be something for every reader to enjoy. I enjoyed the academic/college setting of the anthology. However, the anthology is quite dark, so please go in expecting this.

-- This review is several years past the release date due to the many issues of 2020, but a huge thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early copy of the book.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started reading this book of stories. There are so many different places that this book could have went. After reading it, I really wished that the topic would have been narrowed down some for the writers. There were a couple of stories that I could just not get into, but the last was extremely memorable. I think that this was a good average compilation, but I felt it could have been better with a narrower range of subject choices, or if the stories would have been more related. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

Lawrence Block has done it again! He has gathered a gang of authors together, gave them all a topic, in this case crime on campus, and turned them loose to write. Each one interpenetrated the theme in their own fashion. And as with any anthology, certain tales will appeal to the reader, while others are just so so. My personal top three stories are Alt-Ac by Warren Moore, Einstein's Sabbath by David Levien, and Goon #4 by Tod Goldberg. Seanan McGuire's Foundational Education and Peter Lovesey's Bertie and the Boat Race make up a good second tier of stories. But when you read this collection, you are likely to find others may fit your palette better. So do take the time to pick up this book and enjoy!

I have many reasons for reading anthologies.
I get to read stories written by some of my favorite authors who are flexing their skills into different topics
I get to read stories written by many authors new to me in hopes of finding new favorites
The length of these stories condenses the reading experience, allowing me to fill in short blocks of time
The length of these stories forces the reader...me...to think and follow their reasoning
and many, many more reasons....
This book fulfilled all of my expectations of a book bearing Lawrence Block's name. I enjoyed them all, some more than others, but that's what an anthology is about. A great compilation of stories all set into the back story of college experiences. 5 stars the easy way.

These are short, mostly dark stories involving the academic world. It is a mixed bag, with some stories more memorable than others.

The few I didn't enjoy focused mainly on the "terrible" state of today's higher learning. While there is some validity of the complaints, it didn't make for compelling reading .

I received a free ARC. I am leaving my honest review.

This is a great collection of stories. As always, there are some better than others, but this one is worth purchasing.

I never pass up anything edited by Larry Block, but this set of short stories by 16 of his fellow writers isn't a particularly good one. The quality of the entries various wildly, and tying them together by the theme - they all take place on tivy-covered campuses - doesn't make for especially interesting, lively or engaging stories it's as if the editor had asked his contributors to dig up something that was meeting in their desk drawers, and the result has a musty aroma.

Thank you to NetGalley and Subterranean Press for the unproofed ebook version of this collection of stories in exchange for an honest review.
The Darkling Halls of Ivy is a collection of short stories that take place in around universities. Written by modern horror authors, including Joe R. Lansdale and Owen King, these short stories run the gamut, from an historical fiction involving Albert Einstein post-WWII to Death in the form of a Shakespeare-loving auditor. Any horror/thriller/crime fiction fan will find something to love in this collection of 17 new and one reprinted stories.
The Darkling Halls of Ivy published on May 31, 2020, and can be purchased anywhere you buy books.

Grandmaster Lawrence Block never fails to deliver when he produces an anthology (and he keeps churning them out year after year — a testament to his popularity with fellow writers). As always, Block's excellent introduction leads into a series of can't-miss tales. Really, there's not a miscue here. And as for the theme of academia ... there's literally nothing out there like this right now. Always a treat to see how the individual writers tackle Block's (very loose) directive. ...

This was an engaging collection of short stories set in or around university campuses. As Block noted in his forward, all of the stories shared a darkness that tied them together but also took something away in terms of diversity or relief. Ultimately, while I enjoyed almost every story in this collection, I felt that it was a little inconsistent. Some stories were very good and very polished, while others felt a bit like something an author threw together after dinner on the day of their deadline. That said -- it was a stronger anthology than many I've read, and some of the stories within it were really truly excellent. I especially enjoyed McGuire's "Foundational Education," Goldberg's "Goon #4", and Hamilton's "Writing Maeve Dubinsky". Reader beware: there is a fairly upsetting rape scene in "Why She Didn't Tell". Overall, this is a good addition to an adult library collection, especially for those who enjoy speculative fiction.

This is an interesting mix of stories set in higher education (colleges) and features some of my favorite authors as well as some that I hadn't read before. My favorite was “The Degree” by Joe R. Lansdale, and "That Golden Way” by Owen King. It's a nice collection and I recommend it.

I must say that I did have a difficult time reading this on the Kindle. The formatting was screwed up in places. For example, the title of the book would randomly appear in the middle of paragraphs on every other page. I think something went amiss in the conversion from PDF to Kindle format. I've seen that a few times with books from this publisher and I hope they can correct it in future titles because they're one of my favorite publishers!

This collection of tales associated with higher learning had to be good. With authors like Joe R. Lansdale and Owen King it was supposed to be on the “darker end of the spectrum”. These stories were anything from professors trying to keep tenure to freshman just trying to figure how things work.
Unfortunately I found most of the tales immediately forgettable and only 7 out of 18 did I give 4 stars or higher out of 5.
Goon #4 by Tod Goldberg was my only 5 star because it was fun, the characters were enjoyable and it had a great pace.

The Darkling Halls of Ivy is dark academia in short story form. The collection features eighteen stories all set in the world of college applications, lectures, libraries, and residence halls.

All the stories are good, some are outstanding. My personal favorites were Ian Rankin’s ‘The Reasoners’ which deals with secret societies and their secret crimes, Owen King’s ‘That Golden Way’ which provides a sort of out of body experience with someone’s life hanging in the balance, and Seanan McGuire’s ‘Foundational Education’ which shows us the lengths some people will go to in order to ensure a good college experience.

There were no bad stories in this collection, although a few were not particularly my style. Joe R. Lansdale’s ‘The Degree’ is a weird sort of alternative racism at its worst, John Lescroart’s ‘Why She Didn’t Tell’ involves a rape and its aftermath, and Xu Xi’s ‘Monkey in Residence’ stepped completely off the map of reality and got good and weird.

If you like dark academia and don’t mind a few murders, then pick up The Darkling Halls of Ivy, edited and with a foreword by Lawrence Block, published by Subterranean Press and releasing May 31, 2020.

I received a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This review was posted to NetGalley, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram , and my personal blog.

An eclectic mix of stories set in colleges or universities with a cast of authors known and unknown to me. While I enjoyed every story, some stories seemed to end abruptly. My favorites from this anthology were “Einstein’s Sabbath” by David Levien,“The Degree” by Joe R. Lansdale,“That Golden Way” by Owen King and “Goon #4” by Tod Goldberg.

"In recent years, colleges and universities have become known for their “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” - but as the 18 authors who penned stories for this powerful new anthology can tell you, there's plenty of danger still lurking behind the stolid stonework, leather-bound volumes, and thickets of ivy. Award-winning editor Lawrence Block has assembled a Who's Who of literary luminaries and turned them loose on the world of academia, where petty rivalries and grand betrayals inflame relations between professors and students, deans and donors. From Ian Rankin to Joe Lansdale, Seanan McGuire to David Morrell, each author reveals the dark truths and buried secrets that make institutions of higher learning such a hotbed of controversy. You'll encounter plagiarism, sexual misconduct, and brutal competition - not to mention secret societies, cover-ups of murder, and one near-future course of study that makes The Handmaid's Tale look like Mother Goose. So: collect your supplies, plan your schedule, and prepare to pull an all-nighter, because The Darkling Halls of Ivy is required reading."

Hopefully this will deliver the collegiate thrills and chills I expected from The Ninth House. With this lineup of authors it's bound to!

I loved the idea of this book. Short mysteries/thrillers set at Ivy League schools. Some of the first stories were slow getting through. They didn't make sense and didn't grab my attention. However, there were several stories that I enjoyed that redeemed this book for me.

I received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.

Lawrence Block has gone back to school. Just like Rodney Dangerfield only there is no Triple-Lindy.

Block’s introduction explains how despite him being a college dropout he somehow ended up as writer-in-residence teaching at a college which then led to him compiling this anthology of stories with an academic theme. Unfortunately, that’s the only LB writing we get in this collection, and while there are some good stories in it there aren’t really any great ones, and there a few I found to be outright duds.

Sticking with the positive side of things – The first story Requiem for a Homecoming by David Morrell has an instructing structure in which a screenwriter is a guest of honor at his old college, and he has an interest in an old murder that occurred when he was a student. Joe R. Lansdale provides a futuristic sci-fi tale that takes a horrifically funny look at what the college experience could be in the future. Goon #4 by Tod Goldberg was my favorite story about a guy who retire from international security/thug work to go back to school and finds himself applying some of his skills and philosophy to college life. It’s got a great sense of deadpan black humor that takes a nice twist in the end.

There’s some skippable stories, but enough quality to make it worth a look.

As with any anthology there are some that really stand out as great and some that are bad, and a bunch that are somewhere in the middle. The general vibe I got was that many of these writers are annoyed with the way students are treated today and this was their way to write about some of their frustrations and be able to have them turn more violent and deadly… which I enjoyed.

The ones that I really enjoyed were; Requiem for a Homecoming by David Morrell (it had a murder mystery movie feel to it with a twist at the end), An Even Three by Reed Farrel Coleman (a woman is sick of the men’s club in academia and takes it to the extreme), The Reasoners by Ian Rankin (a mystery involving secret societies), and Goon #4 by Tod Goldbert (an assassin trying to find his joy).

The ones that I really didn’t care for… but as with any opinion, others may really like, were; Alt-AC by Warren Moore (almost the entire story was the main character complaining how bad the education system is when it comes to seniority and new teachers… while I completely agreed with it all, I didn’t enjoy an entire story complaining about it.), Monkey in Residence by Xu Xi (it dealt with the politics of today and was weird and was just not something I enjoyed), and Why She Didn’t Tell by John Lescroart (this story was about rape… a man writing about a woman getting raped… I would need to have a face to face discussion to talk about this more in depth, and it just didn’t feel like it fit with the rest of the stories.)

The others were middle of the road for me, some better than others. If you’re involved in higher education, like anthologies, or want to read one of the stories because you really like the author then you should definitely pick this one up.

A collection of 18 short stories - all with the common theme of college/universities. Like many collections - some are outstanding and quite a few weren't great.

This is a book that could just be called "trigger warning' because people will likely complain about the content.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

These 18 short stories all centered around academia and mostly on college campuses are quite enjoyable as each can all be read easily in just a short time. This anthology is edited by Lawrence Block (please bring back Keller).
There is a little something here for everyone.