Reviews - In These Hallowed Halls

610 reviews for:

In These Hallowed Halls

Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane

3.4 AVERAGE

joshc504's review against another edition

5.0

dark mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

laurareadsdaily's review against another edition

3.25

dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

geooo's review against another edition

2.0

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

1000 ships - 2.75/5
Phytia - 2/5
Sabbatical - 1/5
The Hare and the Hound - 2.5/5
X House - 1/5
The Ravages - 2.5/5
Four Funerals - 1.5/5
The Unknowable Pleasures - 2/5
Weekend at Bertie's - dnf
The Professor of Ontography - 2/5
Phobos - 3/5
Playing - 1.75/5

Content Warnings

tominzay's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: N/A

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: N/A

dorian_gray02's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

maeverose's review against another edition

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

courtneymminor's review against another edition

3.0

dark mysterious

Story quality is a bit mixed, which is a common issue with anthologies—and of course some authors and styles just don’t click with me. Reading a bunch of dark academia stories in a row also really highlights the limited number of tropes within the genre, and makes them feel a tiny bit repetitive. (So many DA books just feel like a tweaked version of something that already exists, and that feeling continues here at times.)

That being said, I only skipped (“DNFed”) 1 or 2 stories, and really liked quite a few of them. If you do like DA, it’s a pretty fun collection for just some quick entertainment.

My favorites stories:

The Professor of Ontography by Helen Grant

The Unknowable Pleasures by Susie Yang

Phobos by Tori Bovalino

Weekend at Bertie’s by M.L. Rio

whoislina's review against another edition

4.25

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

baileylizhi's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

felowpeoples's review against another edition

2.75

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Some of the stories were fun, but overall they just weren't good. They were either too short or too weird, and some just made no sense at all. Maybe I just don't like dark academia, but this book wasn't worth any of my time.

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