OK sooooo this is body horror and gore from beginning to end. Body horror is my least favorite kind of horror (I prefer ghost stories, hauntings, and mirror scares!) so I was nervous going into this one that I wouldn't be able to finish it. But it turns out that if the ENTIRE BOOK is one scene of gore after another you really do get desensitized to it!

Alessa and her classmates are attending Hellebore, which is basically a magic school for abominations. They don't actually learn anything except what kind of disgusting monster the others are (antichrists, locust gods, death bringers ... they all have their own way to main and kill other people). On graduation day they realize that they're not being let loose back into the world: they're going to be eaten by the faculty.

I'm honestly still not sure what the point of the book was other than scene after scene of gore. The prose was very nice, if kind of focused on internal organs, and the atmosphere of dread was palpable. I wanted just a little more plot and reasons to root for the characters. (Theyr'e really not very nice people at all and I was not upset in the least as they started dying, one after the other.)

This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novel.

Really wanted to get my hands on this since it was described as a mix of two of my favorite series, A Deadly Education and The Atlas Six. Hellebore is BRUTAL in comparison, but it definitely didn't disappoint!

We follow our narrator Alessa, who was kidnapped and enrolled at Hellebore, while she is trapped in the library with some of her classmates after a graduation gone wrong, but we also get to see her and these acquaintances interacting before graduation as well. At first I wasn't enjoying the switch between present and past, but eventually I found myself loving both aspects.

THE CHARACTERS!! I could spend forever with these characters. I want to know anything and everything about them.

If you love some good body horror, dark academia vibes, and being confused (in a good way), definitely check this books out!

This was an interesting read for sure, but I have no idea if I liked it or just couldn't look away from the horrors unfolding. When I initially picked it up it was because the description mentioned fans if Ava Reid (which I am), but I wasn't expecting the amount of gore and Eldritch horror and lack of academia. I'm not entirely sure who I would suggest this book fir, but if you like the possibility of horror suggested in some of Ava Reid's work and don't mind if it becomes more than a suggestion, you might want to give this a try. If you're a bit squeamish though, it might be better to give it a pass.

I really liked - okay, loved - this one!

I’m a huge fan of gory horror, and this one really takes the cake for that. All of the students and teachers have some type of horrid ability, and then that combined with the gruesome way they unalive others, and you’ve got an incredibly gory book on your hands.

The plot itself kept my attention throughout, as it goes back and forth between past and present timelines. This one really starts with a bang and never quite lets you go. I’m really basing my high rating off of the detailed, monstrous descriptions, and the fact I couldn’t put this down. I will definitely be thinking about this book for a while!

𝑾𝒉𝒐 𝑰'𝒅 𝑹𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐:
Lovers of horror with lots of gore and fantasy elements.

Unfortunately the storytelling just did not work for me, we were kinda just thrust into the story right from the beginning and then had those flashbacks to present POV’s which made it hard for me to keep track with what is going on at times. The dark academia is definitely nice and atmospheric but it sadly wasn't for me.

I scarcely have the words for this stupendous novel, whose visceral horror is only matched by its eloquence. (I should probably say, “elegant eloquence”, because its power comes in part from the way its gross splatter in terms of content is recounted in so artful a prose style). I have read horror fiction by Cassandra Khaw before — she is Malaysian, but currently lives in Canada; her day job is as a game designer — but she surpasses herself in this new book.

I guess you can say that Hellebore, where the novel takes place, is the anti-Hogwarts. It’s a school for young practitioners of magic, only the magic here is entirely violent, destructive, and feral. The narrator and protagonist, Alessa Li (a name with the same syllabic pattern as the name of the author), has the magical power of tearing bodies apart: a power she first discovers when she uses it in self-defense against her stepfather, who tries to molest her. But there is no innocence in the world of this novel: Alessa has no sense of being a victim, and she sees no distinction between self-protection and aggression. She claims that all the people she killed deserved it, but not that she was always defending herself. It is almost as if the novel is telling us: ‘oh, you say that there is no such thing as society, but only individuals and families? You say that the world thrives through competition, all against all? Well, I will show you what that is really like’.

We get a backstory for the novel, contemptuously dumped by the narrator in a single page, telling us how magic thrived in the older world, but was driven underground by the rationalism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. These years were characterized by people’s craving to “cut the cosmos open and see what was inside.” This led to what we know as modernity, “a revolution in human thinking. We went from soothsayers to science, gods to generating electricity. Our lifespans grew; childbirth stopped being a macabre lottery.” The narrator’s point is that this flourishing of rationality, involving the absolute rejection of an earlier world of magic, for all its benefits was itself a sadistic drive to dominate the world. Rationalism and enlightenment were as barbaric as magic itself. And so, after “these years of frenzied development, interspersed with decades of war”, by a sort of inevitable backlash the magic returned. It quickly became a problem, because “this plague of global re-enchantment led to a decimation of the workforce… Capitalism was unsustainable without bodies to feed to the machine”.

What I have just summarized is passed over quite quickly in the novel. But it seems important to me because it sets up everything that follows. Alessa is not admitted to the Hellebore Technical Institute for the Ambitiously Gifted by some owl messenger; rather, she is brutally kidnapped, and finds herself there against her will. She tries to escape, but discovers that this is impossible. The students are nasty, and continually bicker with one another; but the faculty is even worse. I think this resonates with the actual world in which I live, and in which I read the novel: what Fredric Jameson once called “the bewildering new world space of late or multinational capital” is extremely difficult to grasp in objective, cognitive terms; rather, it is experienced on the subjective, individual level in the form of neofeudalism (as Jodi Dean and many others have argued). Although social relations are, in their overall structure, highly abstract and highly mediated, we experience these relations in the most immediate, visceral, and personal or sub-personal terms, through vast hierarchies of mastery and subordination. While the social world as a whole may be governed by ineluctable and inscrutable laws, as is envisioned and explored in Kafka’s texts of a century ago, today my individual experience of these structures is a partial and extremely localized one: the power to which I am unwillingly subjected is embodied, immediate, and directly branded into my flesh.

Khaw only intimates this historical background. For the most part, The Library at Hellebore narrates body horror as it fills the register of immediate experience. Everybody at Hellebore, student or faculty, is a monster: “someone with the potential to destroy the world three times over, and still have time for a good long brunch”. Put a lot of such people together, and they will both ally with one another and brutalize one another. Everything horrific about them will be cultivated and drawn out by the faculty, intent on shaping them into their worst selves.

But there’s even more. The novel mostly takes place at a crisis point. At the end of the school year, when the students graduate, the faculty devour them in a cannibalistic orgy. Many of the novel’s chapters are marked as “Before”, and give an account of the entire year Alessa spends at Hellebore. But these sections are interspersed with chapters set in the present: a few students have escaped being consumed, and they barricade themselves in the school library, doors locked so the faculty cannot enter. (They still have to deal, within the library itself, with the Librarian, a monster with the face of a human woman, but with a long caterpillar-like body). As the students try to defend themselves, and also fight among themselves, Khaw’s glittering prose (I can only call it that) details a seemingly unending series of wounds and aggressions, spillings of blood and gore and internal organs. But these are accompanied by subtle internal, affective shifts: moments of fear, but also moments of caring and (strange as it may seem) intimacy.

The realm of fear and violence is also, subtly, a realm of affection and sensitivity, in which Alessa and her peers experience surprising moments of otherness-contact, or what the philosopher Joseph Libertson called proximity. These moments are expressed in prose that is surprisingly delicate and subtle, even as it describes sheer atrocity. For instance, at one moment Alessa describes experiencing “a vertiginous sensation half like food poisoning and half like the worst migraine ever…” Something like this is as much excitingly unfamiliar as it is excruciating; and this is the way that the prose of the novel moves us forward, although what it describes is unremittingly horrific and bleak. Even at its most caustic — as when Alessa says that “years spent around men who believed that their dicks were reliquaries taught me how to smile despite the wave of nausea rolling through me” — the novel’s language is carefully exploratory, and illuminating in its precision and lack of pretense.

This extends even to the strange intimacy and recognition that sometimes passes between Alessa and the other monsters:”Minji smiled thinly and we sat then in a new silence, aware we had, very companionably and without a shred of animosity in our hearts, declared, in fewer words than perhaps were merited, that we would eventually be at each other’s throats. Whether such a time would come to pass was irrelevant. The words couldn’t be taken back and a sliver of me would always regret our honesty in that moment.”

Such quivering sensitivity at the heart of brutality is what really makes the novel work for me. I would not want to live in the world imagined by Khaw; but the really disturbing thing about the book is how insidiously it insists that, most likely, I already do. The few vestiges of saving grace the novel offers us only make sense in the context of its overall frightening vision; this is what is most deeply disturbing about it. Monstrosity is not an intervention from the Outside (as it is, for instance, in Lovecraft’s stories), rather, it is as intimate as my relation to my neighbor, or even as intimate as my relation to myself.

This book did not keep my attention. There definitely is an audience for this book, but it is not my cup tea.

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw is a good dark academia read.
These characters were brought to life and the author’s writing and descriptions of the characters and scenery were really well written.
An extremely well written story with an intricate plot and skillfully drawn characters. it's a real page turner.

i hate to say it but i did not like this at all 😭 i am a sucker for anything dark academia but this did not hit the mark. we were thrown into the story without any explanations so already i was confused from the start and even as i read more i could not tell you what was going on. the language was VERY descriptive to the point where i had to look up definitions because so many words were so technical it took me out of the experience entirely. i could not tell you one thing about any of the characters or their relationships to each other. i also could not tell you one single thing about the school other than its incredibly weird, robot like beings in skin suits, and a spider creature thing as the librarian?? everything about this was underwhelming and im very disappointed unfortunately.

This book was pitched as "if you like Scholomance by Naomi Novik" and with all regard to Naomi (I LIKED A Deadly Education) that's about where the comparisons end. The Library at Hellebore COULD have been written as a fantasy. It was absolutely written as a horror and I'm here for it. Yes, this is a "dark academia" type book, but it does not feel YA, this is adult horror. There are things I can't un-read :D Hellebore was established to train the antichrists and ragnaroks and fallen angels and cosmic horrors to keep themselves (and everyone else) safe from their powers. Except the staff have their own secrets and may be even more dangerous than their students. Focusing on Alessa (forcibly enrolled despite the promise that nobody is there against their will) whose ability to "unravel" people (every bit as horrifying as it sounds) is one of the lesser powers at Hellebore, we land in the middle of her having just painted her entire dorm room with her roommate. I feel a little sorry for housekeeping. From this point we bounce back and forth from the current timeline to the "before" which is how we got to this point. Expertly woven, we're not only left waiting (and wanting) to find out what is GOING to happen, but also what DID happen. Let's just say Alessa is far from the most powerful resident of Hellebore and probably has the least amount of secrets, but she is stubborn as a mule, smart as a whip, and she will do anything to escape. Students and faculty, she's not locked in here with you... you're locked in here with her. Khaw is officially on my must-read list.

Bloody and gory, but hardly qualifies as a dark academia. The school as a whole and the titular library are both set dressing rather than true settings that feel lived-in and fleshed out, and could have easily been swapped for any other locked room scenario without changing anything. The characters and their relationships are all rather hollow, and the constant attempt at one-upping each other's edginess made this book a slog despite its brevity.

I don’t delve into the Dark Academia world all that often, and when I do I tend to generally enjoy it, but I want the Dark part of that label to be cranked up a little.

Pair that desire with a great writer and an author whose books I’ve liked more with each new release, and you have Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw.

This book has the “magical school” setting, but it’s darker and more corrupted than any instance I’ve encountered in the past. You have this Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted, and it’s this premier academy for the dangerous, the world-enders and eaters, those capable of inciting apocalypses .

Even so, Hellebore promises its students redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told when she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled in the school. And when that was casually dropped in there, I knew this would be much different than the other magic school stories I’ve read.

And there’s more to Hellebore than meets the eye. That becomes all too clear when on graduation day, the faculty go on a ravenous rampage, literally feasting on the graduating class.

Our main character Alessa and a group of her classmates escape the carnage and find themselves trapped in the school’s library. They realize they have to offer a human sacrifice every night, or else the faculty will break down the door and take everyone.

This isn’t snobby Ivy League dark academia, this is survival horror, body horror, and a nuanced ensemble cast that tackles their world’s issues in interesting and engaging ways. The dual timeline setup that features a past timeline gradually catching up to the very stressful present makes this book impossible to stop.

I requested this book specifically because Khaw was coming to a local bookstore, and I wanted to read it before I met them, and honestly I'm glad I did. This was my first book by Khaw (although I did go on to read two others by them), and honestly I was impressed. I think it probably would have been closer to 5 stars if there hadn't have been quite as much back and forth in the narrative time-line wise, but overall it was still quite solid. It also really seemed to be one of those books that demands you go back and do a re-read at some point, just to really make sure you didn't miss anything, but also because the language is so rich it really needs time to soak in. I loved the idea behind this one though, and our main character was great. The rage and total unapologetic monstrousness of the main character was cathartic in todays world. It was also dripping with gore, which I really appreciated. This is definitely one I don't regret reading, and I'll certainly be recommending it to people who come into the store looking for a good horror novel. I'll also be keeping an eye on Khaw's future works, because they're a master of their craft.

This had so many promising elements that unfortunately just didn't come together in a cohesive or even enjoyable whole, and ultimately the result was less than the sum of its parts. The juxtaposition of a gothic nightmare boarding school/university with mundane YA concerns like roommate troubles and crushes was jarring and took me out of the story. The purple prose also only really gelled with the former -- it felt contrived and pretentious when describing the latter. Because the world and character building were fairly superficial, relying on vignettes and broad strokes rather than anything of substance, the level of gore felt gratuitous and added for shock value, though I did enjoy the descriptions of students in their monstrous forms. I can't begin to describe how much I hated the necromancer (can't remember his name) and how relentlessly gross and cringey his dialogue was. Adding a star purely for the haunted paintings and the subplot of their artist (which includes a cannibal cult, a lesbian spider creature, and so many spooky deer).

This is one of the most horrifying and fascinating books I’ve probably read in my life. Cassandra Khaw knows how to combine dark monster energy with regular academia problems in a genius sort of way I can’t even begin to explain. This story explains how effed up a school basically is and doesn’t even have a happy ending - it’s just like rage and the relationship between people (?) and how to survive and what survival means. There’s also immense amounts of blood and gore and horrifying imagery you’ll never get out of your head but…I loved it ?? I really did I found it crazy compelling and already wanna re read it again TBH. Great for fans who love the horror yes, but also love exploring how an ensemble of characters become who they are in the darkest of ways. It’s jarring and grotesque but also reaches your heart as you realize you’ve started to love these characters without even realizing it and you’re rooting for them to ultimately graduate. -cries-

Special thanks to Tor for an advance copy of this!

Wow. WOW.

This novel bills itself as 'dark academia". It's really more "classmates running away through a windowless library while you're stalked by something that gibbers in the shadows and the threat of a knife in your back so someone else can get away" kind of novel.

If you have a particular kind of life-altering talent/curse/affliction, you may choose to enroll at Hellebore - a school that claims to be able to teach you how to control your gifts, how to become suitable for normal life.

It is, of course, a lie. It's lies all the way down.

Instead, there's violence, and fear, and the strange presence of the professors, who tell the students nothing but expect everything. There's absolutely mad body horror, and otherworldly threats, and everywhere the oppressive presence of the "normal" alongside the more direct oppression. It's a book that will keep you awake after, lying in the dark thinking about the way in which society sacrifices others, and what we would do to survive.

I'm rating this a 3.75 star. As the book went on, I became more invested in the story and the characters. They are morally gray and complex, which I appreciated. I wish there was more explanation of Hellebore and the creatures the staff were, as it came off as somewhat ambiguous as to what was happening. Overall, I enjoyed this.

This was like if dark academia chugged a Monster energy drink and dared you to keep up. Oh and everyone is fighting and being eviscerated from whatever planet this was on.

I was weirdly hooked from the start. I needed to know what happened, even if I sometimes didn’t necessarily want to pick up the book . The story throws you into the deep end of trauma, monsters, and morally questionable friendships. Alessa is a fun little feral gremlin of a narrator, and while the school setting takes a backseat, the characters carries the story big time.

The dual timeline got a little messy, and some plot points felt like they popped up out of nowhere just to vibe. The humour doesn’t always land but when it works, it works.

It’s not perfect, but it’s bold, bloody, and weirdly satisfying. I’d give it a solid 3.5, but I’m rounding up for the vibes, the rage, and so I don’t get absolutely ruined by any of these characters.

I've been reading Khaw's new books the past few years and while I've generally liked them all, this is definitely far and away my new favorite! The prose is at its lush best, and the character work is something really special. I'm impressed and pleased that Khaw leaned so far into the gory and grotesque with this dark academia book.

This book put me through th wringer. I was equal parts horrified and intrigued. Picture me holding my phone at arms length, winking one eye and squinting through a slit with the other. I was definitely not prepared for the amount of gore and body horror Khaw put in this novel. The back-and-forth through time kept me ravenous, devouring one section after the next so I could learn how the hell the two timelines intersected. The prose of this novel was lyrical, and despite a thesaurus-like vocabulary, flowed so violently I couldn't help but be swept away.

If you like weird, grotesque horror, magical creatures, learning new words, and unreliable narrators, this book is for you. It's definitely not something I would have chosen on my own but, like a carnival ride you're not convinced is going to hold up through your turn, I came out of it wishing I could go again.