Review by asurasantosha - The Library at Hellebore

asurasantosha 's review for:

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

2.0

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: N/A

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This book was really not for me. I'm giving it two stars because I think there might be an audience for this book out there., but I'm really not it. My main complaint is that this book feel like its 80% gore; every other sentence is a description of gruesome ways people are being murdered/dismembered. How she managed to fill so much of the book with this despite the limited number of characters is kind of an accomplishment.

Despite that complaint, I think this book could have still earned 3 stars from me, because the concept had potential, but I don't think it succeeded in achieving it.

Plot was confusing with all the time jumps. Namely, we don't get to hear about the beginning of the storyline until nearly the end of the book which made the pacing feel awkward. This also made getting to know and connect with the characters kind of confusing because we first hear about many of the characters in the "present" and they aren't really introduced so much as just suddenly there making us question if we missed something. In reality, we just haven't met them in the past yet.

And speaking of problems with the characters, most of them feel like they should be interesting but for some reason, they aren't. Maybe its because too much of the actual prose is so focused on the gore, that the bits where we do get to see some of the character's backstories, motivations, connections with one another pass too quickly and don't quite go deep enough. I also think that nearly all the characters having a callousness towards violence and death makes it harder for the reader to connect with any of them.

The world building also had potential but fell flat from where it could have been. The whole story seems to take place in actual the Hell version of Hogwarts. The magic system isn't explained well. I assumed at first that character's powers were sort of innate. Like each person is a demon who doesn't necessarily control what they do or controls their powers sort of as an extension of themselves the way we humans control our arms for example. But then at one point the author mentions the MC "sending a tendril of magic" whose affect seemed like an ability she didn't possess before.

But then, she also seems to have the ability to take other people's powers based on a random philosophical musing that one character mentioned that was then somehow turned into science-magic/magic-science.

It's possible, I'm just not intelligent enough to understand the magic system and world building that was introduced in this story, but I'm more inclined to think that it just wasn't fully developed.

My last small complaint: I don't quite understand the weird second person bit at the end. It seems like this was a message for one of the faculty but its not clear who particularly since the end

sort of implies that all the faculty died.

This is such a minor part, that its not really that big of a deal, but it again makes me wonder if I missed something, if something went over my head, or if the author is just leaning way too hard into the "mysterious atmosphere" she's trying to create.

I would hesitantly recommend this book only to the most hard-core gore fans. I'd say otherwise, skip it.

Content Warnings