If you've ever felt othered, on the outside, weird, different, or unwelcome, this book will resonate with you. A school of misfits, dangerous to the last, is being trained here at Hellebore to be "helpful" and "worthy" of returning to the 'normal' world. Strange classmates, stranger teachers, in a labyrinth building of weird, our motley crew of characters faces one impossible challenge after another. Alessa Li is a rarity at Hellebore, not chosen from a bed of desperate applicants, but kidnapped and forced into attendance. The classes are weird and often non-sensical, the people are mostly unlike anyone she's ever known, and the staff? The staff is hungry.

By the end of this book, I was broken. My heart hurt so much for those we lost, and my anger at the treatment of these people, and Alessa in particular, went from burning hot to apocalyptic. I can't give a more solid recommendation than if you're ready to lay all your emotions bare and have them played like a violin, this is it folks, this is where the pantheon of feeling lives and in some cases, dies. Absolutely 10/10 stars, perfection.

Every single book that I've read of Cassandra Khaw's has immediately become one of my favorite books of all time and The Library at Hellebore is no exception. Their horror is funny and tragic and gross in the most perfect way and utterly enthralling. I loved the way they played with time, teasing both the tragic beginnings of our main character at Hellebore and the gauntlet that the survivors ran through after graduation. It was interwoven perfectly and kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I would read another ten books about the residents of Hellebore and their school tribulations. I absolutely ate this book.

This books was interesting for me. I am an avid fan of dark academia and I loved the atmosphere of this book. The prose was beautiful and I found the characters and the story interesting. I do feel like a lot of the violence was put in as a shock factor vs to drive the story. It is enjoyable, but I don’t feel the descriptors prepared me for the level of graphic intensity in this book compared to others with the same descriptors.

As the valedictorian of the Hellebore Institute for the Gifted is about to give his graduation speech, the school's faculty morphs into a hive-minded flesh monster and eats him. Alessa Li, a student who was kidnapped by the institute and has no love for it, finds herself holed up in the school's library with seven other students. With the flesh mass of faculty waiting for the dead students to be thrown out of the room and the monstrous librarian about to wake up from a food coma, the students find themselves killing each other for any chance of escape.

This is my third encounter with Cassandra Khaw's writing, and unfortunately it was my least favorite offering of theirs. I'll start with the good--their prose is in excellent form here. Lush descriptions of guts and viscera that will make you writhe and gag abound, and I mean this as a compliment. Khaw's prose is purple, and while it might not be everyone's cup of tea, I think it adds a welcome depth to the horror. There's a character who can soothsay by digging around in his intestines, and each time it's described vividly and even grosser than the last. Unfortunately, as much as I love their prose, the dialogue leaves more to be desired. In my favorite piece of work by them so far, 'The Salt Grows Heavy', the setting was nebulously medieval fantasy, and the dialogue worked out. The second thing I read by them was 'The Dead Take the A Train', which was a collaboration piece, but had modern dialogue that seemed a bit too snappy and action-movie for my tastes,. 'The Library at Hellebore' unfortunately keeps with the snappy dialogue trend, which does little to endear me to the characters saying it. One character, in particular, ended up having dialogue so annoying that I was actively cheering for his death.

Rowan is a deathworker, a rare magic-user whose life is agonizing due to everything they touch dying, He wears thick leather gloves to prevent any accidental deaths (though, students dying is the norm at Hellebore), and becomes uneasy friends with Alessa due to their mutual history of accidentally killing people (Alessa's powers let her rend flesh and muscle and bone with her mind). Alessa's character is pretty cagey and uninterested in befriending anyone at Hellebore, so a character who is more outgoing is a good foil to her. The problem? Rowan is like Carlos from 'The Magic School Bus' after learning what a sex joke is. He makes jokes about vore after hearing about fig pollination. He can't help but make little 'that's what she said' remarks when he's third wheeling serious conversations. It's... really annoying to read, and I could not understand any fondness Alessa had for him. Especially with how cold she is towards characters like Johanna and Gracelynn. The best thing I can say about Rowan is that he's familiar with the first Silent Hill game, so at least he's not a SH2-only kind of guy.

The story is in media res, beginning with Alessa having just killed her roommate before graduation and flipping between the current situation in the library and Alessa's year at Hellebore. While this helped to reveal some things in interesting ways, it fell flat in other ways. For example, Johanna has a great moment of telling Alessa that she's not the only person at this school who has suffered towards the end of the book, which has chronologically happened before the meat of the story. Because of this, it takes Alessa a shockingly long time to digest this information, which is sad because it's a slap to the face she really needed.

Overall, I can't recommend it, but it helped me to narrow down what does and doesn't work for me in Khaw's writing. I'll keep my fingers crossed for something as weird and wonderful as 'The Salt Grows Heavy' again!

I don’t think this book was for me! It seemed needlessly violent. The confusion one feels when starting a brand new fantasy book does not go away with this one and there are way too many characters thrown into the action too quickly so I was always confused about who was who. It’s for someone though!

This book feels like A Deadly Education meets Gideon the Ninth with a dash of The Magicians (the show), and I am HERE for it! It's going to be a beautiful physical book and I cannot wait to reread it during spooky season already!

I think this book would likely be best for horror readers rather than fantasy readers. While I enjoyed the dark academia elements I was a little overwhelmed by the visceral descriptions of body horror as I wasn’t expecting it in this particular book. That being said I also found the prologue a little long to be jarring, once the initial shock of what Anessa had done had worn off I found that the rest of the prologue served little purpose.

This is… okay, so I DNF this. I read the first 15% then skimmed to about the 68% mark and then had to call it quits.

My 2 cents: if you like weird fic, body horror, carnage and monsters and extreme violence and a horror novel about all the ways dark academia could be much, much, MUCH darker: you should check this out. The magic and monsters were quite interesting and I was fascinated despite myself re: why the students were really there, what the institute’s purpose really was, who would survive, etc. Hence my rating 3 stars despite not finishing.

But OMG the endless gore. When everyone is a monster, there’s not really any such thing as gratuitous violence, and wow did that come through in this. I’m not the ideal audience for this title, so while I didn’t enjoy this, I can see that folks who do, probably will be delighted by it. It’s dark and original and kinda funny and exceedingly monstrously violent. It’s also queer and features characters (monsters?) of colour.

My one request to the publishers: change the damn cover. Is it beautiful? Yes. Is the right audience going to find this book based on the cover? No. It looks like romantasy and it’s the furthest thing from, so you’re both falsely luring in an audience who will hate this book and also repelling the horror lovers who will adore it. Why?

Okay, wow, the voice - THE VOICE. I went into this book with such high expectations and it met at every turn.

Ok, wow. I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did. I haven’t read any of this authors books before but I’m definitely changing that asap because this book was so freaking good!

The Library at Hellebore is a fast paced dark academia horror novel that will hook you from the very beginning. I don’t know what it says about me that I fell in love with these morally grey characters and was rooting for them, but that’s what happened. This story is gory and bleak and emotional. I loved it.

I’m torn on how I feel about this one. On the positive side, Alessa is a compelling main character who draws you into the story, and the subtle, layered mysteries surrounding Hellebore kept me intrigued until the very end. However, I was left feeling baffled by the lack of clarity about Hellebore’s actual purpose, the unresolved Portia subplot, and the bizarre dynamics with the faculty. By the time I finished, it felt like a big “WTF” moment rather than a satisfying conclusion.

It seemed like the book was aiming for a gory, darker take on A Deadly Education, but the technicalities of the world-building and the relationships just didn’t hit the mark for me. While the ambition was there, the execution left a lot to be desired.

I know that many people are going to eat this book up, but for me, it just wasn't my cup of tea.