In their first full-length novel, Cassandra Khaw (The Salt Grows Heavy; Hammers on Bone) goes to the deepest levels of horror, subverting dark academia tropes of the allure of privilege in this carnival of gore. The Library at Hellebore finds Alessa Li forcibly conscripted at the titular school, a magical institute for the dangerously magical. It quickly becomes clear that the so-called school isn't all it seems and is even more dangerous than anyone could have imagined.
Alessa is a trust-no-one loner whose acidic tongue hides the occasional tender inclination she'd rather no one knew about. She's been on the wrong side of the powers that be since using her magic to kill her abusive stepfather, after which she was on her own. That is, until she gets trapped at Hellebore, sparring with the literal children of gods and demons until the faculty show their true colors and the situation devolves to battle-royale levels of chaos.
Khaw's language is fabulous--inventive and delightfully gross. They render Hellebore with such decayed-elegance detail that their novel would be worth reading just to spend time in rooms with ceilings "frescoed with dead men swaying from nooses of their own intestines" and "black-haired, blank-faced women who had the eyes and wings of wasps."
The Library at Hellebore takes readers to a thoroughly imagined setting of dark magic that sinks its many teeth into themes of gender violence and female rage. Khaw has a talent for creating subversive female characters, and Alessa is another intriguingly layered personality persevering through impossible circumstances. --Carol Caley, writer