12.6: ‘The Library at Hellebore’ by Cassandra Khaw

Apr 14

This is it! The last episode in for this season! Can you believe we’ve done 12 of these now? So we’re going out with a bang with some horror in the form of ‘The Library at Hellebore’.

The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously powerful: the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.

Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that's what Alessa Li is told when she's kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.

But there's more to Hellebore than meets the eye. On graduation day, the faculty go on a ravenous rampage, feasting on Alessa's class. Only Alessa and a group of her classmates escape the carnage. Trapped in the school's library, they must offer a human sacrifice every night, or else the faculty will break down the door and kill everyone.

Is it… dark academia though? Well…

In this episode we discuss:

Body horror and the effects of being a horror-first narrative
The technical delivery of the story and what we enjoyed (and how we wished it was longer!)
Academic horror, eldritch lore and folk tales, the parts that made us feel queasy (in a good way?)