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Reviews tagging 'Mass/school shootings'
In These Hallowed Halls by Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane
10 reviews
geooo's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
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
Graphic: Mental illness
Moderate: Mass/school shootings and Blood
Minor: Sexism and Sexual content
maeverose's review against another edition
3.0
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.
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.
I liked how the writing style incorporated the music and how music was described in general.
• 1000 Ships by Kate Weinberg - 3⭐️
The writing style wasn’t my favorite, but I liked the overall story and the way it ended.
• 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.
• 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.
• The Unknowable Pleasures by Susie Yang - 3⭐️
This was just alright for me.
• 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.
• Four Funerals by David Bell - 2⭐️
I don’t really understand the point of the story, if there was one.
• Phobos by Tori Bovalino - 2⭐️
I don’t care about cults or murder so I was bored
• 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.
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.
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Sexual content, Car accident, Death, Infidelity, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Blood, Panic attacks/disorders, Excrement, Gore, Mental illness, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Mass/school shootings, Alcoholism, Bullying, Self harm, Vomit, Racial slurs, and Religious bigotry
Minor: Eating disorder, Body shaming, Misogyny, Ableism, and Stalking
Student/teacher relationship, missing personadorotich's review
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
Graphic: Mass/school shootings
bzliz's review against another edition
3.0
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
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Murder, Death, and Animal death
Moderate: Gun violence, Mass/school shootings, and Alcohol
Minor: Mental illness and Infidelity
brosca's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
X House by J.T. Ellison 4⭐️
The Unknowable Pleasures by Susie Yang 4.25⭐️
Phobos by Tori Bovalino 5⭐️
Moderate: Mass/school shootings
aileron's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Mass/school shootings, Death, Blood, and Murder
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Infidelity, Suicide, Car accident, Child death, Panic attacks/disorders, Body horror, and Mental illness
Minor: Bullying, Ableism, Classism, Miscarriage, and Gun violence
dixiecarroll's review against another edition
3.5
Graphic: Bullying, Car accident, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Gaslighting, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Animal death, Gun violence, Blood, Gore, and Toxic friendship
daydreamsofbooks's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Murder
Moderate: Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Mass/school shootings, and Death
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??chronicacademia's review against another edition
Graphic: Mass/school shootings and Suicide
Moderate: Infidelity, Sexual content, Ableism, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Animal cruelty, Blood, Murder, Animal death, and Death
tinybluepixel's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Mass/school shootings
Well. As short story collections go, this was, as usual, a mixed bag. The biggest draws for the average reader are probably Olivie Blake and M.L. Rio, with me personally liking Rio's story the best, actually (we love victimless crimes in this house!), while I thought that while Blake's story was good, it wasn't necessarily dark academia (it was an examination of AI and the relationships people had with it, leaning more towards Science Fiction than anything else, with the fact that it takes place in a university probably being the only thing "dark acacemia" about it). Where this collection does fail is in disclosing the massive trigger in the middle of the book. Called "Four Funerals" and written by David Bell, this story takes some of the most notorious school shooters in history, puts them in a blender to make "Tyler", and then tries to show from a perspective of a teacher how horrible school shootings are. I get it. I get the point they were trying to make. I was in a school shooting. Inspired by the Columbine shooters' essays on massacres that teacher's actually DID read and graded and gave back without "alerting the authorities" (because Columbine was the blueprint.), "Four Funerals" is about a teacher and the shooter's mother struggling with survivor's guilt in the aftermath of the shooting while visiting the funerals of the murdered students. Nothing prepared me for this. And because of the very nature of short stories, you are tossed into the story without preparation or exposition and suddenly I'm back in that classroom, and all the phones are ringing because of parents trying to reach us, and we are huddling in the corner trying to get away from doors and windows - You get it. I was blindsided. I really, really enjoyed this book - until "Four Funerals." I don't really know what to say. Thanks for the ARC? It's time to put trigger warnings in books.