Laurel M. Stevens's Blog, page 2

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 19

“I’ve spent my whole life reading beautiful books and watching beautiful movies, dreaming that there was some real place out there where I would fit and be beautiful, too.”

An unreliable narrator, an isolated college in the woods, and a student who feels like she’s on her last chance – Catherine House is candy for those who like atmospheric Gothic. In my favorite alliteration, this is ephemeral and existential.

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 18

“We are the gods of our own universes, aren’t we? Destructive ones.”

The Atlas Six is the first in the series, and it started as a self-published work before it gained massive momentum online and was picked up for traditional publishing. Six students are selected by the mysterious Alexandrian Society, but the catch is that all of them can’t be accepted – only some. It’s a cutthroat magical higher education indeed, and I recommend it to those who are fans of character based stories.

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 17

When you’re growing up, you don’t ask whether your family’s good, do you? Especially if you don’t know anything else. They’re just your family.

Two estranged half-sisters tasked with guarding their family’s library of magical books must work together to unravel a deadly secret at the heart of their collection—a tale of familial loyalty and betrayal, and the pursuit of magic and power. This is a book about books, and it uses said books to look at access to knowledge and the power it gives along with beginning to question who has this access and why.

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 15 & Day 16

“The most important thing you can do in this world, the most necessary thing, is to survive it. You can’t do anything for anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself first.” – Legendborn

Grief, power, and inheritance all play important roles in this series, and I am ridiculously stoked for book 3 to come out in March. I love what Deonn has done with Arthurian lore. The way it melds with the modern-day college setting is nothing short of phenomenal.

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 14

“Don’t find yourself regretting this. You’re much too young to haunt your own life.”

The dual narratives, the gothic vibes, the queer characters, the parallel use of an existing text, the dicey and turbulent friendships and relationships that form in Plain Bad Heroines – all stunning. However, this novel does take patience as it invests in atmosphere and set-up quite a bit. If you enjoy breakneck pace stories this one will take you longer to get through (absolutely worth it though). Quirky and creepy I enjoyed the modern Hollywood storyline and the 1902 school and relationship intrigue. Plain Bad Heroines immersed me in its stories, and I loved it.

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 13

If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang covers power, privilege, and classism as we follow Alice Sun through her discovery that she can actually turn invisible just as she also finds out that her parents can no longer afford her private schooling gees only one semester away from graduation. While still dark academia, this falls on the lighter end of the spectrum with no dead bodies turning up (mild spoilers lol), but with some very real consequences that look into the question of who exactly bears the burden of blame when things go wrong.

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 12

Babel by R. F. Kuang made quite the splash in the book world when it was published in 2022. Taking place in 1800’s Oxford, not only are words literal magic in Kuang’s alternate history, but those words and their translations are what are granting Britain so much of its power. Of course, that means that people wielding those words and making those translations have to ask themselves difficult questions about who is benefiting from their work. Not only is the story compelling, but the interrogation of power structures fierce, and the sources – as often in Kuang’s case – are impeccable.

“That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 11

Anthologies are the sampler platter of the bookish world in my opinion. They are perfect for both readers potentially interested in a theme or genre and for readers who know they love it!

In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane contains the following short stories:
1000 Ships by Kate Weinberg
Pythia by Olivie Blake
Sabbatical by James Tate Hill
The Hare and the Hound by Kelly Andrew
X House by J.T. Ellison
The Ravages by Layne Fargo
Four Funerals by David Bell
The Unknowable Pleasures by Susie Yang
Weekend at Bertie’s by M.L. Rio
The Professor of Ontography by Helen Grant
Phobos by Tori Bovalino
Playing by Phoebe Wynne

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 10

“Nobody can be held responsible for the pranks of destiny.”

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay as a whole is haunting, as any mystery without a solution seems to be. The language itself can be flowery, but the occurrences that happen in the school and with the characters after the mysterious disappearance are believably sensationalized.

31 Days of Dark Academia: Day 8 & Day 9

Is doing two in one day cheating? Arguably, but I thought about doing separate posts for these two before deciding that the series should stick together.

“When no one understands, that’s usually a good sign that you’re wrong.” – Vicious

Vicious & Vengeful by V. E. Schwab both are driven by the questions of power: does power corrupt? who should have power? is power what you do to others? what is done to you?

The series starts with Victor and Eli working on questionable experiments while at school to prove the hypothesis that powers can be triggered in human beings by near-death experiences. Surprises of all surprises – things go wrong. Vengeful may not continue with the scholastic setting, but it brings in the same exact questions Schwab is asking readers in Vicious. Eli and Victor’s experiments, and the fallout from them, is still sending ripples throughout the world around them.

“It was just so easy.
As if everything had wanted to come apart.
There was probably some law about that.
Order giving way to chaos.” – Vengeful