The Library at Hellebore

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAY 5, 2025

Khaw (The Salt Grows Heavy) delivers a shockingly gory and not entirely successful take on dark academia set at the Hellebore Technical Institute for the Ambitiously Gifted, a school for those with magical abilities. In an alternate universe in which magic has returned to the world after disappearing during the Renaissance, the government requires anyone presenting magical abilities to be rounded up and "educated" at places like Hellebore, which is no Hogwartsesque center of wholesome magical learning. Alternating between chapters labeled "Before," in which protagonist Alessa first arrives at the school, and those that take place in the present, when the teachers have revealed themselves to be bloodthirsty monsters intent upon feeding on the students, Alessa details the callous, bloody, and confounding nature of the school. Due to this alternating timeline, as well as the incomprehensibility intrinsic to the surreal workings of Hellebore itself, it can be hard to grasp the rules, norms, and limitations guiding this world, which makes the stakes uncertain. The characters, too, are difficult to parse: Alessa is a typical rebellious, sarcastic, young-adult heroine, but her relationships with her classmates—and theirs with each other—shift uncertainly from scene to scene. The result is messy, both literally and figuratively.