You may not have heard of it before, but dark academia is a genre that’s growing in popularity, and has been in recent years. It was certainly news to my ears, though I should have noted all of the dark fantasy novels taking place in scholarly confines.
When I was asked to review In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology, which was edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane, my interest became piqued. I decided to give it a chance, and read something new to me. Having now finished the collection, I’m glad that I did.
In These Hallowed Halls is a collection of twelve different stories based in Dark Academia. You surely grasped this already, but we’re mostly talking about the darker sides of school, including college, university and private school. It’s an interesting mix, with only one bad story; that being the odd and out of place second one.
These tales have been written by authors like M.L. Rio, Susie Yang, J.T. Ellison, Olive Blake and David Bell. They cover a gamut of topics, too, including:
- A troubled professor who was spared during a school shooting, and wishes to attend all four resulting funerals.
- A strange door in a quiet wing of a university, bearing the name Onthology.
- A woman who’s sleeping with a professor who has a thing for taking pictures.
- A shadowy organization that makes its members do nasty things in the way of initiation
- A strange group that worships some sort of all seeing computer program or AI. By far the worst of the bunch.
- Two college students who discover that the professor they work for has suffered an accident and died at home
- A man who killed a young woman while driving ends up finding a strange white rabbit and meeting a very unusual young woman at the school library
- An organist strives to be her best self as she performs at funerals for a number of recently deceased old folks
- A private school where unexpected deaths are occurring
…and more.
I honestly can’t say much more about the stories themselves, otherwise I’ll risk spoiling them.
As new as this book and genre were to me, so too were the authors who took part in this project. I’d never read anything by them, but had heard of two or more of them before. Overall, though, this is a nicely and well written anthology full of almost entirely interesting and quality stories apart from one dud. It’s a quality result for an interesting project, as well.
If you’re looking to expand your horizons, or happen to be interested in the darker sides of academia — at least in terms of fiction — this book could very well be for you. I know that I’m glad I decided to read Titan Books’ In These Hallowed Halls.
This review is based on a copy of the book which we were provided with.