You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

kendallm21's profile picture

kendallm21 's review for:

In These Hallowed Halls by Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane
4.0
dark mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: N/A
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A

This book is a series of short stories so I rated each one individually and took the average for my overall rating, which ended up being a 3.8 so I rounded up based on my enjoyment while reading. Here are my individual ratings for each story:

1000 ships - 3.5
Pythia - 5
Sabbatical - 1
The Hare and the Hound - 5
X House - 4
The Ravages - 4.5
Four Funerals - 3.5
The Unknowable Pleasures - 3.5
Weekend at Bertie's - 4
The Professor of Ontography - 5
Phobos - 4
Playing - 2.5

I really enjoyed most of these stories and while this book is classified as a dark academia anthology I don't think it is. The dark academia vibes were there but I was hoping for more, and many of the stories had connections to school/academia but were missing some of the very important aspects. however, I do think that the dark academia genre is complicated and cannot be fully captured in the form of a short story. Also, some of these stories ended on frustrating cliff hangers where I was left wanting more such as "The Unknowable Pleasures", which I really enjoyed until I got to the end. Lastly, I think this book is great if you're looking for new authors that write mysterious, moody, and dark academia based stories; I will definitely be checking out some of these authors and their other works.