The Library at Hellebore, by Cassandra Khaw

Book 32 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there. I bought Cassandra Khaw’s The Library at Hellebore (2026) at the recent Belmont Literary Festival, where I was able to meet the author and get the book signed. She noted, almost as a warning, that the book has a lot of gore. She was not exaggerating; someone explodes on page one of the novel! This is a book of dark academia, set at a school of magic where things have gone horribly, horribly wrong. It is one of the more unrelentingly nightmarish books I’ve read in a long time… and I loved every minute of it. In our modern age, magic has returned, along with gods and demons. Many children are born with magical powers, some of them with enough power to eventually bring about an actual end of the world. The governments of the world have responded as expected, with strict regulation and academies to teach those…