The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw
Kidnapping, Cannibalism, and Dark Academia
In The Library at Hellebore, Alessa Li, a young woman with supernatural powers, is abducted and forced to enroll at a mysterious school called (you guessed it!) Hellebore. Like her, the other pupils have a variety of fearsome abilities.
On graduation day, the students find out the shocking truth: the faculty plan to devour them all. Alessa and some other students take refuge in the library. Alliances form, battles occur, and decisions are made about who should be sacrificed.
Yup, this is another one of those “school for folks with magical powers” stories. Sure, we’ve seen it before (in X-Men and Sabrina and Wednesday and American Horror Story etc. etc. etc.), but have we seen it with a protagonist narrator who is in her early twenties but somehow has the vocabulary of a tenured humanities professor? I think not!
Believe me, you’ll get tired of needing to consult a dictionary several times per chapter. Alessa’s favorite word is effluvium, which essentially means a bad smell. Of course, there are numerous well-known words that Khaw could have used instead. That wouldn’t have been literary enough, I guess.
The Library at Hellebore is filled with this type of pretentious silliness, and it doesn’t help that the story’s timeline jolts back and forth in a way that seems deliberately designed to be as disorienting as possible.
More Effort Than It’s Worth
Still, all of that could have been forgiven if it wasn’t for this novel’s fatal flaw: a total lack of compelling characters. Alessa is the big zero at the center of the story. She’s one of the most worthless protagonists I’ve ever read.
This girl has the charisma of a wax figure and the intelligence of a decapitated chicken. I’d rather stick my head in a blender than read another story narrated by this vapid idiot.
The novel’s second-most important character, Rowan, is just as insufferable. His entire personality consists of saying “that’s hot” whenever any female character does literally anything. Is this supposed to be charming or funny? Give me a break.
The world building is flimsy. We only get vague, fragmentary answers about these people and the environment they inhabit. It’s difficult to picture the school or the characters. There’s little character development and the dialogue is mostly just the same stuff repeated over and over again.
I’m not even clear about the specific nature of Alessa’s abilities. There are indications that she’s an unreliable narrator, but I never cared about her story, so it didn’t matter to me if she was telling the truth or not. Maybe her superpower is boring people to death.
There are some positive aspects to the novel. Khaw’s writing style has a certain elegance to it. They are adept at describing grotesque material in graphic detail – a positive attribute for a horror writer. The book has many colorful, detailed descriptions of gore, although the numerous deaths in the story feel rather empty, since there’s no emotional resonance.
I liked some of the snarky dark humor as well. The cover is beautiful and there’s some stylish illustrations in my hardcover edition.
This book is asking a lot from its readers. Both the vocabulary and chronology are challenging. If you’re going to make your novel this difficult to read, you need at least one truly great character.
Let’s consider, as an alternative example, My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones, which I reviewed back in the early days of this site. That book is also challenging – in fact, I’d say that it’s even more difficult to read than Hellebore.
The difference is that Chainsaw has Jade, who is a fascinating and brilliant character. Nobody in The Library at Hellebore is even 1% as compelling as her.
Rating
The Library at Hellebore starts off with a solid premise, but flimsy world building and a lack of compelling characters keep it from reaching its potential. Instead of delivering an interesting story, it devolves into 300-plus pages of pretentious boring drivel.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 4
