The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra KhawMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Horror is currently in the midst of a resurgence, for what should be obvious reasons. Especially for those of us living in the US, the real-life horrors in the news each day require some sort of escape, I think. A chance to face down the monster, in a simple black and white world where they are evil and we are good, and send said monster whimpering back to its lair, never to be seen again.
Of course, that sort of thing can easily be twisted to make a monster out of something or someone that isn't monstrous at all (as is also happening in real life). People are far too easily categorized as "the Other," Not One of Us and therefore suspect, and when that happens, it calls into question exactly who is the monster. That's one of the themes this story tackles. This book is also part of a recent subgenre that could be called "dark acadamia" and/or "boarding school horror." There are several books I have read that are part of this category: Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy, R.F. Kuang's Katabasis and Babel, and Emily Tesh's The Incandescence (with the latter two being sterling examples and fantastic books you should absolutely pick up).
The Library at Hellebore is both of these, but it falls much further into the "dark" and "horror" end of the genre. In fact, it reminds me of a book I doubt many people remember nowadays: The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins. I read this book ten years ago, and to my knowledge there's never been a sequel to it. I don't know if Cassandra Khaw was inspired by that book, but hers is similar in a lot of ways.
Including, to be blunt, the sheer scale of the horrors within. This is one of the most gruesome books I have ever read, full of death and blood and guts and gore. If you have any aversion to full-on body horror, do not touch this with a ten-foot pole. At the same time, said death/blood/guts/gore is so beautifully, poetically written that I could not bring myself to abandon it, even as I was wincing and squinting my way through it (and had to take it in small doses with deep breaths after, which is why it took me several days to finish it).
This sounds like an oxymoron. I assure you it is not. Just a few examples of the prose (spoilers for delicate stomachs):
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER (also, do not eat while reading this, or the entire book for that matter)
This was neither the first time I'd come to with a body at my feet, nor was it even the first time I had returned to consciousness in a room transformed into a literal abattoir, but it was the first time I woke up relieved to be in a mess. The walls were soaked in effluvium. Every piece of linen on our beds was at least moderately pink with gore. The floor was a soup of viscera, intestines like ribbons unstrung over the scuffed wood; it'd been a deep gorgeous ebony once, but now, like the rest of our room, it was just red. (from p. 1)
The word hirsute didn't begin to describe Ford's abundance of beard and curls and overgrown brow, dark and sleek; he was a bear of a man, a figure cut straight from the annals of Viking history, a fact he recognized and celebrated, I think. No one else on campus swanned through the winters swaddled in a bearskin coat with the poor animal's head for a marching, still-attached-t0-the-body-by-a-strip-of-neck-fur toque, and if Ford wasn't quite so massive, so oppressively jacked, he'd have looked like any white trust-fund kid with a costume budget.
While there was no official route out, Hellebore wasn't inescapable. At least not if you were inventive. There was a canopied bend of road that curled behind the school's greenhouse, a monstrosity of plated glass and cast iron pained white. A behemoth disrobed of its meat, green where its lungs should have been, green along the carved ribs of its roof. Condensation slicked the glass like sweat: it seemed to pant some nights, heaving with life. Most of the time, Professor Fleur marched us past its front door when leading us to class. But on this day, we had to make use of the more circuitous route--a failed ritual had left a thin lamina of living godbrain over the usual path. If I hadn't already been looking, if I wasn't so desperate to get out of Hellebore, I might have missed it.
The titular Library is where kids are taken, kids who abruptly awaken with deadly magic that can kill and overthrow governments. Many of them, like the protagonist Alessa Li, are girls who discover their powers under stress, such as when they are threatened with rape by their stepfathers. (Let's just say that in Alessa's case, the stepfather begged her to kill him.) She is told she will graduate in a year, once she has learned to control her powers, but she soon learns that won't be the case. It's likely neither she nor her fellow students will even be alive in a year. As she discovers, the faculty are not human at all, but eldritch horrors straight from the depths of Lovecraft who will kill and consume the students one by one over the course of three days, until only one is remaining.
This is the story of how Alessa fights, kills, and ultimately survives. It is told in a somewhat non-linear fashion, flashing back and forth between times Before and Days One, Two and Three of the trial (all helpfully noted in chapter headings). It is a bit of work to remember what's happened and keep up with the narrative, but I appreciated that the author didn't condescend to her audience, trusting that they could follow along. Over the course of those three days, and amidst much gore-soaked death, Alessa discovers how to defeat the faculty. The ending is a bit ambiguous, I think, as it implies that not only did she survive the bloody climax, she is now some kind of avenging spirit, coming for all those who would capture and use kids like her. She has learned how to be a monster, and she is good at it.
This is definitely not a book for the squeamish, but if you can handle it it has a lot to say about power, authority, and monstrosity. In its way, it is the perfect book for our times.
View all my reviews
This was neither the first time I'd come to with a body at my feet, nor was it even the first time I had returned to consciousness in a room transformed into a literal abattoir, but it was the first time I woke up relieved to be in a mess. The walls were soaked in effluvium. Every piece of linen on our beds was at least moderately pink with gore. The floor was a soup of viscera, intestines like ribbons unstrung over the scuffed wood; it'd been a deep gorgeous ebony once, but now, like the rest of our room, it was just red. (from p. 1)
The word hirsute didn't begin to describe Ford's abundance of beard and curls and overgrown brow, dark and sleek; he was a bear of a man, a figure cut straight from the annals of Viking history, a fact he recognized and celebrated, I think. No one else on campus swanned through the winters swaddled in a bearskin coat with the poor animal's head for a marching, still-attached-t0-the-body-by-a-strip-of-neck-fur toque, and if Ford wasn't quite so massive, so oppressively jacked, he'd have looked like any white trust-fund kid with a costume budget.
While there was no official route out, Hellebore wasn't inescapable. At least not if you were inventive. There was a canopied bend of road that curled behind the school's greenhouse, a monstrosity of plated glass and cast iron pained white. A behemoth disrobed of its meat, green where its lungs should have been, green along the carved ribs of its roof. Condensation slicked the glass like sweat: it seemed to pant some nights, heaving with life. Most of the time, Professor Fleur marched us past its front door when leading us to class. But on this day, we had to make use of the more circuitous route--a failed ritual had left a thin lamina of living godbrain over the usual path. If I hadn't already been looking, if I wasn't so desperate to get out of Hellebore, I might have missed it.
The titular Library is where kids are taken, kids who abruptly awaken with deadly magic that can kill and overthrow governments. Many of them, like the protagonist Alessa Li, are girls who discover their powers under stress, such as when they are threatened with rape by their stepfathers. (Let's just say that in Alessa's case, the stepfather begged her to kill him.) She is told she will graduate in a year, once she has learned to control her powers, but she soon learns that won't be the case. It's likely neither she nor her fellow students will even be alive in a year. As she discovers, the faculty are not human at all, but eldritch horrors straight from the depths of Lovecraft who will kill and consume the students one by one over the course of three days, until only one is remaining.
This is the story of how Alessa fights, kills, and ultimately survives. It is told in a somewhat non-linear fashion, flashing back and forth between times Before and Days One, Two and Three of the trial (all helpfully noted in chapter headings). It is a bit of work to remember what's happened and keep up with the narrative, but I appreciated that the author didn't condescend to her audience, trusting that they could follow along. Over the course of those three days, and amidst much gore-soaked death, Alessa discovers how to defeat the faculty. The ending is a bit ambiguous, I think, as it implies that not only did she survive the bloody climax, she is now some kind of avenging spirit, coming for all those who would capture and use kids like her. She has learned how to be a monster, and she is good at it.
This is definitely not a book for the squeamish, but if you can handle it it has a lot to say about power, authority, and monstrosity. In its way, it is the perfect book for our times.
View all my reviews
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