Book Review: ‘The Library at Hellebore’ by Cassandra Khaw

The final book that we read for Season 12 of the podcast (The Dark Academicals) took us somewhere dark, danger, and full of entrails. It was definitely a season finale to remember!

Cosmic horror meets dark academia? It was time we tackled proper horror on the podcast.

At the Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted, the monsters of the world can go to class among their peers, and keep the rest of the world away from their destruction. Hellebore promises a place to learn, adapt and prepare for life in the normal world, but there are dark secrets at the heart of the school.

When Alessa is kidnapped and wakes up at Hellebore, she quickly finds out that life at Hellebore is a fight for survival with graduation day bringing on a feast for the faculty; a feast on the graduating class…

Within the first few pages of ‘The Library at Hellebore’ I was all in. The writing style immediately drew me in and I was completely on board, but I did quickly come unstuck on the dual timeline as they felt very similar and close together. It was something that I struggled with throughout: I didn’t 100% know when and where I was when reading, but I also didn’t really care because I was having so much fun with this novel.

It is a properly gross horror novel, however. There’s an abundance of entrails, blood and bodily fluids on nearly every page, with a whole lot of violence to accompany it. ‘The Library at Hellebore’ is most definitely a novel to check the content warnings for as it really is a true horror novel. I’m a big fan of literary horror that leans towards feminist body horror and social criticism, so cosmic horror at this level was a little more than I’m used to, though not in a bad way. I enjoyed how it pushed the limits and the visceral reaction of trying to read this while eating my lunch was…something.

Along with the cosmic horror (or Eldritch horror) comes a whole lot of mythology and it was a bit lacking in depth for my preferences. This is a short novel at around 270 pages and I would happily have read another 100-150 pages that delved deeper into the characters and the mythologies that make up Hellebore and it’s residents.

‘The Library at Hellebore’ was an incredibly fun, and very gory, end to this season of the podcast and has opened up a new realm of horror reading for me to explore this summer.