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wdianasheppard 's review for:
In These Hallowed Halls
by Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane
I've loved dark academia as an aesthetic since the first moodboard I saw on Tumblr, but the actual execution of it in literature can be dodgy. Sometimes, novels that call themselves "dark academia" try too hard to be The Secret History, and sometimes they just ape the trends of the genre without any of the literary substance; ie, "this takes place at a boarding school, so it's dark academia". No, no.
Luckily, "In These Hallowed Halls" as a short story collection has more hits than misses. Part of that is due to the care with which the authors were selected: ML Rio, Layne Fargo, Olivie Blake, and Phoebe Wynne are all greats in the genre who know what they're doing. Consequently, their stories linger longer than others - there's a good marriage there of aesthetic and substance. Some of the authors unfamiliar to me also did great work - I can't wait to read Susie Yang's White Ivy now that I've read her short story.
As with any collection, some works just don't land. For the most part, though, this collection is a good representation of the 'dark academia' genre with a solid more-than-half of the selections being worth reading.
Luckily, "In These Hallowed Halls" as a short story collection has more hits than misses. Part of that is due to the care with which the authors were selected: ML Rio, Layne Fargo, Olivie Blake, and Phoebe Wynne are all greats in the genre who know what they're doing. Consequently, their stories linger longer than others - there's a good marriage there of aesthetic and substance. Some of the authors unfamiliar to me also did great work - I can't wait to read Susie Yang's White Ivy now that I've read her short story.
As with any collection, some works just don't land. For the most part, though, this collection is a good representation of the 'dark academia' genre with a solid more-than-half of the selections being worth reading.