Dark academia gets a 21st-century makeover in Kamilah Cole's brilliant An Arcane Inheritance, complete with a fictitious Ivy college, whispered ghost stories, a powerful Black female lead and incisive reflections on the intersections of class, race, and power in higher education and beyond.

Ellory Morgan was sent by her Jamaican parents to live with an aunt in the U.S. at a young age, cloaked with the expectations of success and financial freedom. "Every second Ellory spent in this country was devoted to building a future that seemed further out of reach the closer she supposedly got," emphasized by her inability to get any kind of scholarship or financial aid to support her parents' dreams of higher education. She is forced to defer enrollment until she can save up enough to begin classes, so when an unsolicited offer of a full ride arrives from Warren University, she leaps on the opportunity to attend as a Godwin Scholar. At the predominantly white, exceptionally wealthy Ivy League school, Ellory feels out of her depth as soon as classes begin, despite having "like most Black women... a lifetime of microaggressions to prepare her for Warren University." Her sense of worry and vague apprehension grow as the early weeks of the semester prove stranger and stranger: "déjà vu had become a presence as constant as her shadow. And every time she tried to rationalize it, to ignore it, it returned more insidiously than before."

Warren's history contextualizes Ellory's experiences there, which begin to feel increasingly inexplicable and otherworldly as Cole builds the premise of An Arcane Inheritance with great care. The school was founded in 1954 by former members of the New England Society for Psychic Research as the School for the Unseen Arts, a name that lasted just a month before being changed to the blander and more palatable "Warren University." Unsurprising, then, that the school is marked with tales of ghosts and specters, occultism and witchcraft, further fueled by the number of missing students amassed over the school's history: "the Lost Eight."

Ellory, meanwhile, has had a touch of the mystical in her life since childhood, though her family discouraged her talk of spirits: "She stifled any magical potential to pursue a concrete future, proving her worth with grades and certificates, ribbons and trophies." But something at Warren seems to be re-awakening that part of her, a fact only too clear when she finds a tattoo on her neck that she has absolutely no memory of receiving. Then the ink disappears.

With her mind a seemingly "unreliable thing, an Etch a Sketch that shook itself clean at random," Ellory tries to figure out what's happening, opening herself up to the possibility of magical forces at play. What she finds in the process is a complex web of secrets and cover-ups, deeply rooted in racism and classism and perpetual power grabs--both figuratively and literally.

What if the power within such institutions was not purely metaphorical, but literal, magical power? "If you knew magic existed--if you could manipulate it to change the world--would you stop? Would you ever stop?" That kind of greed and desperation, Ellory reckons, reveals how people might act when no one is watching. "For most, this answer is shameful. And for those who have never before known what it is to want, this answer is downright chilling."

Cole uses this premise to great effect in An Arcane Inheritance, drawing on the secret societies, occult activities, and magical realism often seen in dark academia and twisting them to offer a sharp analysis of the many structural inequities at play within American institutes. As the forces behind Warren University's unusual success become more apparent to Ellory (and to readers), Cole probes the question of how those forces manifest for different students--with noticeably worse outcomes for students of color.

Any fantasy reader knows magic cannot exist without limitations; in the world Cole builds,that limitation comes in the price paid every time magic is wielded. ("For magic to live, something must die.... The world requires balance, and magic collects its debt in sacrifice.") But who makes that sacrifice, and who benefits from it, reveals layer upon layer of prejudice and injustice baked into the very foundations of Warren. While the school itself is fictional, it's not hard to extend this analysis to institutions of higher education in 21st-century headlines, making An Arcane Inheritance the best kind of fantastical reading: a novel that pulls you into a world where fiction and reality aren't quite as distinct as we like to believe. Smart, well-plotted, challenging, and often funny, An Arcane Inheritance is an irresistible story of ghosts, magic, and education combined to great, and horrific, effect. --Kerry McHugh

Kamilah Cole (photo: Dasha G)

Kamilah Cole is a Jamaican-born, U.S.-raised author. Her first two novels were a young adult duology retelling the story of Joan of Arc. An Arcane Inheritance (Poisoned Pen Press, December 30, 2025) is her first book for adults, a dark academia novel exploring themes of classism, racism, and elitism in institutions of higher education--but with a magical bent. A graduate of NYU, Cole now lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she works in publishing.

Would you classify An Arcane Inheritance as dark academia?

It is also a fantasy, it has romantic elements, it has thriller elements, mystery elements, but yes, it's dark academia. I love the genre. Give me a creepy school and I am all over it. But I felt there was a dearth of stories really talking about how difficult and confusing it can be to navigate higher education when you weren't born in America. The immigrant experience is a constant sense of non-belonging. That can be as scary; no matter where you go, what you do, and how hard you try, you're always different.

The core of An Arcane Inheritance is finding out that the only way that you can belong is to accept the parts of you that are you, that are different, and let the world fall in place after that. That's the journey Ellory takes, through magic and memory, and college parties and dating and ghosts, all of that. She has a more speculative journey to acceptance than most immigrants do, but at the end of the day, An Arcane Inheritance is a dark academia immigrant story. It is about disappearance and belonging, memory and knowledge, hidden tattoos, snarky rival men, and it's a commentary on elitism, classism, racism.

What draws you to this genre, as both a writer and a reader?

Education is such a big part of our life. And it's interesting to me as a writer to explore how no two people go through life the same way. Your socioeconomic place in this world really affects how easy or difficult things are, how hard you have to work, what opportunities open up to you, and I feel like nowhere is that inequality shown more than in school. We are told that education is an equalizer, that if you work hard enough, get good enough grades, you will get all the same opportunities. Then you graduate, and you still can't get a job because your father doesn't own a multimillion-dollar company. There are all these conversations about equality, but what is really needed is equity. The acknowledgement that not everybody starts at the same place, and to reach the same things, they need different kinds of help.

Could you talk a bit more about that distinction between equality and equity?

When first starting this book, even beyond the worldbuilding, I wanted to look at power on an individual level through various characters. I wanted to examine the fact that no matter what you give up for power, at the end of the day, there are some things that nothing but connections can get you. And that's part of the equity conversation.

I wanted to study how unexamined systems can perpetuate harm, not just for people outside of them but also for people inside of them. How actively choosing to uphold such a system hurts everyone, including yourself. You can't skirt close to white supremacy and expect it not to burn you as well. Then there are people who are born wealthy, and I wanted to explore the idea that it is not just required, but almost a calling to use that privilege--to create equity, to help other people, to be a kinder, better person, and create a kinder, better world.

At the end of the day, I think we've all got power. We all want control. We all want to be happy and successful and content, but we really need to look at not only the sacrifices that we are forced to make, but the sacrifices that we ask others to make, whether they can consent to that sacrifice or not. It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the ends justify the means, but that's not the case.

In all of my books, but especially in An Arcane Inheritance, I introduce a lot of big themes, questions that I'm grappling with, but I try never to give a definitive answer. I just want people to think about these things. I don't want to tell them what to think. These are questions that we need to keep in mind, because the moment that we stop thinking about these things is the moment that people get hurt.

As someone who also works in publishing, have you found anything shocking from the author side of the process?

Yes! It's actually shocking to me how much I didn't know about the writer's side. I don't know when I'll hear about cover design, or how often deadlines shift, and how easily. I didn't know anything about how to be edited, from theme edits to line edits to copy edits, to cast pages, to proofreading and sensitivity reading. I had to learn all those steps.

It's also shocking how much writers don't know about publishing. I also get to be in spaces with other writers, and I try to give back by telling them things I do know about publishing. Again, it goes back to equity. If I have information that you don't have, I want to share it with you so we can all have that same access. But yeah, I'm still surprised sometimes by how much I don't actually know about publishing.

An Arcane Inheritance is your first book for adults. What felt different here after writing YA for your first two novels?

YA is often marketed as coming of age. But you come of age many more times in your life. So the difference for me was not in the kind of story that I was telling, but in the emotional beat of the story. There's an immediacy of emotion that happens as a teenager; everything feels so big and so awful, or so wonderful. But Ellory is older when she starts college, and instead of immediate emotions, she will feel something, and then she will take a beat before choosing how to express how she is feeling. That's not even to say that one reaction is better than another--repressing your emotions is not healthy! I really admire teens for being so, so themselves, in a way it feels like you can't be as an adult. You are no longer thinking about needing to find your place in the world, and more like, This is the world, and I need to fit into it.

What was most important to you when setting out to write An Arcane Inheritance?

I wanted to make this book as queer and as Jamaican as possible. I have a lot of critiques of higher education, but it is because of the people that I met in college and the people that I know now that I became a person who's so proud of my Jamaican heritage, and a person who is able to navigate queer spaces without questioning myself. So I think of An Arcane Inheritance as a love letter to Jamaicans, and to Jamaican Americans, and to queer people everywhere in a time when immigrants and queer people and queer books are under attack. I will always, always, always stand up for us. I will always continue to put my work out into the world and hope that people find it--and find themselves--within the pages. --Kerry McHugh