The Library at Hellebore
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 22 Jul 2025
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- HUF3,990.00
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- Pre-Order
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- HUF3,990.00
Publisher Description
Dark academia meets cosmic horror in this murderous tale of betrayal and broken hearts at an elite academy for the gods and monsters of the world, perfect for fans of The Atlas Six, If We Were Villains and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
