Reviews with content warning for Murder - In These Hallowed Halls

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

In These Hallowed Halls by Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane

13 reviews

beanith's review against another edition

3.0

Average Rating: 3.14/5 ⭐️

I don't think the subgenre of Dark Academia easily lends itself to the format of a short story. Dark Academia seems to succeed most when a story can take it's time to establish a mood, atmosphere, cast of characters, and (usually) some type of commentary. I think this collection is fine (with a few truly great short stories) but I wouldn't recommend it to someone just starting in the genre. Stick to The Secret History or Bunny, watch Dead Poet's Society (1989) or Saltburn (2023) - and then maybe get around to this.

A few of these stories I loved but many of them were just okay, and some of them made me wonder why the editors included them? Or why the authors would think they qualify as Dark Academia?

For this reason I'll also be adding an "Is it Dark Academia" rating between 1-5.

"1000 Ships" by Kate Weinberg - 2.75/5 ⭐️

Is it Dark Academia? - 3/5 📚

This is the shortest story in the collection and it's a prequel to the author's novel, The Truants, so I was disappointed with how thin this one felt. The writing lacked the rich quality I want from the subgenre. Made feel less enthusiastic about The Truants.
I also found it hard to believe that a professor with a PhD would steal the work of a first year college student. If the main character had done anything brilliant in the story I might have bought it (or if she'd been a masters student, or getting her own PhD). But a supposed expert taking an 18 year old's work and submitting it to an academic journal? Unlikely.

“Pythia” by Olivie Blake - 3.75/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 2/5 📚

“Pythia” pushes the concept of dark academia to its very edge and steps completely into science fiction (or science fantasy, maybe). Part of me wonders if it truly belongs in this anthology. I think yes, if only to inspire others to mix genres. I had a bumpy experience reading this; some parts worked, some didn't. I didn't like the ethos either, felt a little too 'millenial, reddit philosophy' for my taste.

“Sabbatical” by James Tate Hill - 0.5/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 0/5 📚

A lot of reviews for "Sabbatical" just say 'this isn't dark academia' (true) but it actually reads more like 50s pulp. Seedy motels, corrupted people and institutions, a missing person. The main character seems to be a self-insert for the author (no comment). I think it's either a prequel or condensed version of the author's novel Academy Gothic. I didn't care for the writing at all. A total miss for the anthology.

“The Hare and the Hound” by Kelly Andrew - 4/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 4/5 📚

Loved the writing - not overwrought but still evocative during key moments. The author also managed to pack in a lot of story into 20ish pages. I think this is just in the realm of dark academia. There’s not really enough page space to allow it, but I think if the author wanted to they could expand it into a novella and have the main character study
Norse mythology
himself (instead of being delivered info by his roommate). That would fully plant this work in the subgenre.

“X House” by J. T. Ellison - 3/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 2/5 📚

This one certainly has the dark academia setting down - remote, rainy all girls school surrounded by woods and cliffs. But I think the reveal of the teacher being
a private security guard hired by one of the girls fathers
steered this almost directly out of dark academia territory. Honestly, it felt kind of goofy. The ending also felt Steven King-eque, which made the mood more like a standard horror/thriller rather than a work of Dark Academia.

"The Ravages" by Layne Fargo - 4/5⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 4/5 📚

Very different from my usual reads (sapphic revenge story is not something I’d normally pick up) but I really enjoyed this and would pick up another story by this author. I bought into every moment of the story except the resolution - I thought some of it was a bit convenient.
The other woman is a very talented immersive theater designer AND she ends up dating the main character? I dunno, wraps up a little too neatly.

"Four Funerals" by David Bell - 2/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 0/5 📚

I don’t think there was any chance for me to rate this piece highly. I can appreciate that it’s difficult to write about such a serious topic but I don’t think this really offered anything? The subject matter is inherently tragic but the way the author wrote about it didn’t move me or challenge me (which I think was what Bell was trying to do by
having the professor and the mother mourn a shooter
).

“The Unknowable Pleasures” by Susie Yang - 3.75/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 1/5 📚

I was going to give this a 5 (even though it's not very Dark Academia) but the ending really disappointed me. The main character exhibits the obsessiveness that's common in Dark Academia, but the ending doesn't commit to the insanity the rest of the story had been building up to. I also feel like this story would work better in anthology about fannish culture - the themes seem more relevant to shipping discourse of that world than to academia.

"Weekend at Bertie’s" by M. L. Rio - 4/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 3/5 📚

Having just finished If We We’re Villains a week ago I feel confident saying that I really like the way M. L. Rio writes. I also feel like, even though this piece is so much shorter, I can see how her work has gotten stronger. She’s great at crafting characters and putting them in situations and different relationship dynamics. Not exactly sure if I’d call this one dark academia, but it’s not as distant from the subgenre as other entries in this anthology.

"The Professor of Ontography" by Helen Grant - 5/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 5/5 📚

Part of me is worried that this score is a little inflated simply because there hadn't been any 5 star reads in this collection yet. But at the same time, this is such a me-coded story - truly dark academia, decent into madness,
immortality
, and horror. Love and obsession and
gross human experiments
!

"Phobos" by Tori Bovalino - 4/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 5/5 📚

This is another one that feels very dark academia - secret societies, classism and elitism, morality vs amorality. The aesthetic is there also - secret meeting houses with fireplaces and study rooms, cream stationary with wax seals. I loved the build up to the ending but not the ending itself. I could see this story getting expanded into a bigger concept for a novel or novella. I would read from this author again.

"Playing" by Phoebe Wynn - 1/5 ⭐️
Is it Dark Academia? - 0/5 📚

Really frustrated to end the anthology on a low note (music joke?). This was boring. Obsessive, yes, but lacking the flourishing atmospheric and environmental details that might sell it as dark academia.

Content Warnings

apersonfromflorida's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

celery's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

booknerdery's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Content Warnings

bookishmillennial's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

This is a great way to find new authors, especially if you're a dark academia lover.

My favorite stories were:

Pythia by Olivie Blake
The Hare and the Hound by Kelly Andrew
Phobos by Tori Bovalino
The Ravages by Layne Fargo

Content Warnings

maeverose's review against another edition

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3.0

I wanted to read this to try out dark academia as a genre. I love gothic books and academic settings, but a lot of the common tropes within dark academia don’t strongly appeal to me (murder mystery, cults, obsession, unlikable characters, etc). After reading these stories, I at least enjoyed some of them enough to be interested in trying out more of the genre.

My Ratings and content warnings for each story in order of favorite to least favorite:

• Weekend at Bertie’s by M.L. Rio - 5⭐️
I loved the writing style of this story so much. I absolutely need to read something else by M.L. Rio.

Content warnings: moderate: vomit, death, alcohol

• The Ravages by Layne Fargo - 4⭐️
Love me a sapphic gothic story
Content warnings: graphic: infidelity, moderate: self harm mention, sexual content, stalking

• The Professor of Ontography by Helen Grant - 4⭐️
Definitely more fucked up than I was expecting. This one is more of a horror story than the other ones.

Content warnings: graphic: missing person, body horror, moderate: sexual content, alcohol, gore

• Playing by Phoebe Wynne - 4⭐️
I liked how the writing style incorporated the music and how music was described in general.

Content warnings: moderate: death, murder, religious bigotry, descriptions of food and eating habits that could be triggering.

• 1000 Ships by Kate Weinberg - 3⭐️
The writing style wasn’t my favorite, but I liked the overall story and the way it ended.

Content warnings: moderate: sexual content, student/teacher relationship, romani slur, self harm, minor: infidelity, suicide, physical abuse

• X House by J.T. Ellison - 3⭐️
Loved the setting at the setup of the story, didn’t love how everything played out. I think it could’ve worked better if it were a novel or novella and had better written characters.

Content warnings: graphic: violence, murder, death, moderate: hazing, anxiety attack, gun violence, minor: gore

• Pythia by Olivie Blake - 3⭐️
Sci-fi dark academia. Took a while for me to care about it bc it was about a cult, but once I realized it had a certain sci-fi trope, I liked it a bit more.

Content warnings: mild: suicide, death, misogyny, end-of-world anxiety

• The Unknowable Pleasures by Susie Yang - 3⭐️
This was just alright for me.

The way she fetishized these two men made me so uncomfortable and gave me flashbacks to Dan and Phil shippers, but I have to admit I got reeled in to wondering if they were a couple or not and felt called out at the end when we didn’t get an answer and I realized I was slightly disappointed. If that was intentional that was smart so props for that

Content warnings: moderate: sexual content,

a straight female character fetishizes an imagined relationship between two men

• The Hare and the Hound by Kelly Andrew - 2⭐️
Unsure how I feel about this. It was a bit triggering for me. Parts didn’t make sense. It was predictable.

Content warnings: graphic: car accident, death, animal death, moderate: forced institutionalization

• Four Funerals by David Bell - 2⭐️
I don’t really understand the point of the story, if there was one.

Content warnings: moderate: school shooting, gun violence, death, vomit, anxiety, excrement, suicide

• Phobos by Tori Bovalino - 2⭐️
I don’t care about cults or murder so I was bored

Content warnings: graphic: murder, blood, moderate: sexual content

• Sabbatical by James Tate Hill - 2⭐️
I did not like the writing style and the story was very underwhelming. Certain parts didn’t make sense.

Content warnings: moderate: gun violence, mental illness, cheating, murder, minor: sexual content, abelism

Just going off of these stories, I think I can safely say I’m very bored by stories to do with cults. Obsession doesn’t bother me but I don’t particularly care for it either. The only thing I really discovered from this is I don’t necessarily mind unlikable characters as much as I thought I did. Curious to see how I feel about a full dark academia novel.

Content Warnings

bzliz's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

3.0

I took the average of my individual story ratings to get the over all rating. My biggest complaint with some were that they didn’t have anything really going on, were a prequel I had no stakes in, or didn’t fall into the Dark Academia bubble in my opinion. I prefer Dark Academia with magical/mystical elements and/or mystery elements so anything lacking that feels boring to me. My standouts were The Hare and the Hound, Phobos, and The Professor of Ontography, the last of which I liked so much that I retroactively lowered ratings of other stories that weren’t as good. My least favorite was Four Funerals which didn’t feel like Dark Academia to me and was more like a sad reflection of the reality of American schools these days.

1000 Ships - 2/5
Pythia - 4/5
Sabbatical - 2/5
The Hare and the Hound - 5/5
X House - 4/5
The Ravages - 3/5
Four Funerals - 1/5
The Unknowable Pleasures - 2/5
Weekend at Bertie’s - 2/5
The Professor of Ontography - 5/5
Phobos - 5/5
Playing - 3/5

Content Warnings

aileron's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

dixiecarroll's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

3.5

A little disappointing, but I’m not sure what I was expecting. Some of the stories were incredibly compelling and well done, but others were a little lacking. I am not sure each author was well suited for short stories, but I must say that a lot of these were so freaky to read right before bed. Worth the read for sure, but I wouldn’t get expectations too high!

Content Warnings

daydreamsofbooks's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

That being said, I had extremely high hopes for this but oh well.

• 1000 Ships by Kate Weinberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️

-A very basic student-teacher affair that has a twist of revenge. It is a prologue or first chapter, I believe, in the

author’s debut novel.

-Good, just not that special.

• Pythia by Olivie Blake ⭐️

-A very wordy sci-fi story about AI called Pythia that is unnaturally humane.

-Would be a very very trashy and boring Black Mirror episode. SO boring.

• Sabbatical by James Tate Hill ⭐️

-A professor finds himself involved in searching for another professor who’s been missing for years.

-Comically bad!

• The Hare and the Hound by Kelly Andrews ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

-Follows the mc who is haunted by a past tragic mistake and a misfortunate prophecy that involves meeting a bunny, a girl, or possibly both in one body, or is there more to it?

-For fans of surrealism; I personally loved it.

• X House by J. T. Ellison ⭐️⭐️💫

-A new professor joins a school in which murders have been occurring one after the other.

- The plot twist was good, but the story lacked depth and good build-up to the end. Lost potential..

• The Ravages by Layne Fargo ⭐️

-Sapphic relationship where one person is cheating and the other finds out and seeks revenge.

-Zero dark academia! It felt like a parody.

• Four Funerals by David Bell ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

-A professor blames himself for a school shooting that resulted in four funerals, which he attends.

-Very interesting discussion on the effect professors could have on students and the blurred lines between fiction and reality in the mind of writers.

• The Unknowable Pleasures by Susie Yang ⭐️⭐️💫

-A student is obsessed with a relationship she believes is happening between a professor and a student.

-Fun read but very anticlimactic. Again, where is the dark academia?

• Weekend at Bertie’s by M. L. Rio ⭐️

-Two people find their colleague’s body at her home and plot stealing her money.

-Horrible. Horrifying. Terrible. Bad writing, bad plot, pointless narrative, and what exactly is dark academia about this?

-M. L. Rio’s novel If We Were Villains is amazing, though.

• The Professor of Ontography ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

-Best going into this one knowing nothing. Very spooky, intriguing, and heartbreaking.

• Phobos by Tori Bovalino ⭐️⭐️⭐️

-Secret society trials that get more and more horrific.

-Reminded me of The Secret History in its depiction of pretentiousness and academic privilege.

• Playing by Phoebe Wynne ⭐️

-A church organist suspects that the church’s elder people dying of accidents are actually being murdered.

-Very predictable, monotonous, and have I asked..Where is the dark academia??

Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

Moderate: Death, Toxic relationship, Mass/school shootings, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Classism

This is a “Dark Academia Anthology” with barely any proper dark academia. Because just because a story is set in a school/college or follows a professor or a student, doesn’t make it an automatic fit into the dark academia genre. That being said, I had extremely high hopes for this but oh well. • 1000 Ships by Kate Weinberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️ -A very basic student-teacher affair that has a twist of revenge. It is a prologue or first chapter, I believe, in the author’s debut novel. -Good, just not that special. • Pythia by Olivie Blake ⭐️ -A very wordy sci-fi story about AI called Pythia that is unnaturally humane. -Would be a very very trashy and boring Black Mirror episode. SO boring. • Sabbatical by James Tate Hill ⭐️ -A professor finds himself involved in searching for another professor who’s been missing for years. -Comically bad! • The Hare and the Hound by Kelly Andrews ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -Follows the mc who is haunted by a past tragic mistake and a misfortunate prophecy that involves meeting a bunny, a girl, or possibly both in one body, or is there more to it? -For fans of surrealism; I personally loved it. • X House by J. T. Ellison ⭐️⭐️💫 -A new professor joins a school in which murders have been occurring one after the other. - The plot twist was good, but the story lacked depth and good build-up to the end. Lost potential.. • The Ravages by Layne Fargo ⭐️ -Sapphic relationship where one person is cheating and the other finds out and seeks revenge. -Zero dark academia! It felt like a parody. • Four Funerals by David Bell ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 -A professor blames himself for a school shooting that resulted in four funerals, which he attends. -Very interesting discussion on the effect professors could have on students and the blurred lines between fiction and reality in the mind of writers. • The Unknowable Pleasures by Susie Yang ⭐️⭐️💫 -A student is obsessed with a relationship she believes is happening between a professor and a student. -Fun read but very anticlimactic. Again, where is the dark academia? • Weekend at Bertie’s by M. L. Rio ⭐️ -Two people find their colleague’s body at her home and plot stealing her money. -Horrible. Horrifying. Terrible. Bad writing, bad plot, pointless narrative, and what exactly is dark academia about this? -M. L. Rio’s novel If We Were Villains is amazing, though. • The Professor of Ontography ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -Best going into this one knowing nothing. Very spooky, intriguing, and heartbreaking. • Phobos by Tori Bovalino ⭐️⭐️⭐️ -Secret society trials that get more and more horrific. -Reminded me of The Secret History in its depiction of pretentiousness and academic privilege. • Playing by Phoebe Wynne ⭐️ -A church organist suspects that the church’s elder people dying of accidents are actually being murdered. -Very predictable, monotonous, and have I asked..Where is the dark academia??

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