In These Hallowed Halls - Marie O'Regan & Paul Kane (editors)
In my ongoing quest to read as much dark academia as possible in the run-up to writing Blood In The Margins, this is my second anthology of dark academia-themed short fiction - the first being The Darkling Halls of Ivy back in January.
This one, I'm pleased to say, was much a much better read. There were no stories here that I particularly disliked, and a few that stood out to me as being really good. There's a nice mixture here of crime and 'magic school', and even the more fantasy-based stories have, for the most part, the heart of thrillers. It's an anthology full of morally grey characters who know what they want and aren't afraid to reach out and take it in their constant pursuit of power and knowledge, and it really feels like it gets to the core of what this genre is about.
Particular favourites:
- 1000 Ships by Kate Weinberg is a prequel to her novel The Truants, which was already on my reading list but will definitely be being prioritised after this. It follows one of the characters of that novel as an undergraduate, showing us an incident from her younger life that - I assume - made her the character we'll find her to be many years later in The Truants. Well written, gripping, and very satisfying.
- The Hard And The Hounds by Kelly Andrew was possibly my favourite story in the collection, blending folklore and magic realism into a really tightly-plotted revenge story. It's fun and fast and I want to read more by Andrew. I hadn't heard of her novel The Whispering Dark before but I'm putting it on my list now.
- The Professor of Ontography by Helen Grant steps sideways into B-movie horror, though we don't know that's what it is at first. It takes its time building up a really compelling mystery, and I was really invested in it but also very prepared to never get any answers, as it really feels like the kind of story that wants to lurk in ambiguity (in a good way). That's not the case, though. When the ending comes it's very silly but it also feels earned, and I liked it a lot.
Overall this is a solid collection.