Finished reading: In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia anthology edited by Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane 📚

Probably the best piece in the collection was Tori Bovalino’s “Phobos”. Wow, excellent writing, dark as fuck, character development, cool idea. Wow.

I got this book primarily to read M.L. Rio’s short story. I loved her book If We Were Villians. I read her novella Graveyard Shift and liked it a lot as well. But, and I never say this, Graveyard Shift needed to be longer to more fully develop the story. Rio’s short story here, “Weekend at Berties”, falls into that same trap. It’s good writing but it was too quick and not enough development. I despise tomes, but this needed a little more space.

In that same vein, I think “Four Funerals” by David Bell needed a bit more space to develop. Not much, maybe 10-20 more pages? Still, a great idea and nice writing.

Kelly Andrew’s “The Hare and the Hound” was great writing, although I’m not much into the fantastical. I still enjoyed it. I also liked the story telling in “The Professor of Ontography”, by Helen Grant. A little kooky at the end but up to there it was a good read.