What if the real threat to universities wasn’t defunding or fascism, but…demons? That’s the tongue-in-cheek set-up of many a dark academia this year, although the works in the list run the gamut between defending the hallowed halls or storming the ivory tower. There’s also a wide variety of inspiration when it comes to magical systems, many based in indigenous or folkloric traditions, and each well fleshed-out via intricate world-building.
No matter the set-up, these works all feature a helluva lot of battle magic, which is a nice plus for those always looking to scratch that itch left by She Who Shall Not Be Named. Or for those who really loved the first three seasons of The Magicians (but not the fourth. Never the fourth). And one last fun coincidence to point out: there are two titles on the list in which tattoos play an important role. If you comment with the right answer, you…won’t get a prize, okay, but you’ll earn my eternal admiration!
Joe Hill, King Sorrow
(William Morrow)
This epic fever-dream of a novel reads like if RF Kuang had written The Once and Future King, or if the denizens of The Secret History preferred Beowulf to bacchanals. In King Sorrow, a close group of friends in an isolated Maine college town summon a dangerous entity to get them out of a tight spot. As one benevolent elder warns early on in the text, once you invite the supernatural into your home, it may decide to stick around—and their one-time savior quickly becomes a burdensome curse. Also, there are lots of old books, including one text bound in human skin. What’s not to like?
Emily Tesh, The Incandescent
(Tor)
Bisexual love triangles, battle magic, and school board politics combine for a classic Emily Tesh story: as difficult to describe as it is easy to read. Fiendishly crafted and compulsively enjoyable, The Incandescent follows a weary professor at a venerable (and decaying) institute of magic, where she valiantly holds back the tides of hungry demons desperate to enter our realm. From risk-taking students, to departmental shenanigans, to potential romances, she’s got her hands full even before the demons start attacking.
Molly O’Sullivan, The Book of Autumn
(Kensington)
Southwestern dark academia! A professor of magic at a university highly shaped by the New Mexico setting encounters a perilous threat to her gifted students and their hard-won safe haven. It totally makes sense that the author of this one has a background in cybersecurity, given the nature of the back-and-forth between attempted infiltrators and the university’s defenders.
Cassandra Khaw, The Library at Hellebore
(Tor)
Dark academia comes to its most logical, brutal conclusion in Cassandra Khaw’s splatterpunk take on college in the underworld. Are the professors there to teach, or do they have more disturbing plans for their students? Find out in the bloodiest graduation ceremony since the third season of Buffy.
Kamilah Cole, An Arcane Inheritance
The best use of deja vu since the Matrix! After delaying college to care for her aunt, Ellory Morgan receives a surprise scholarship to a prestigious university, one which guarantees success and entrance into the American elite. Ellory finds the campus strangely familiar, a familiarity that grows each day. If she can access the memories behind her haunting sense of deja vu, she might be able to stop something terrible, something deeply embedded in university culture, where secret societies have preyed on the potential of BIPOC students for centuries in order to achieve their own wicked goals.
