The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw
“I could think of a hundred things holier than being sacrificed to something that doesn't even love you back.”
There are certain writers about whom I wonder based on little things. Khaw’s books have had interesting titles and pretty solid word of mouth. The thing that scared me off a bit was a comparison that most consider positive. A friend compared her work to Charlee Jacob, the late Splatter-poet who he was a fan of. The problem with that comparison is that I was not a fan. I tried one of Jacob's books and was not impressed. That said, having read one book of each, this book seemed more in the pocket of Clive Barker, transitioning between Gruesome horror and dark fantasy.
The Library at Hellebore is a dark fantasy that reads to me like a hellish combo of Harry Potter meets Cabal. Picture a school for monsters, but real weird, gross monsters who will decorate their school with organs. Graduate, and you will have a normal life, just one problem you gotta make it through the last day. Maybe Battle Royale meets Cabal is better I mean Fuck Harry Potter and the transphobe he rode in on. Anyways…
This novel is wild and excellently written weirdness that I loved, while I am not surprised that mainstream readers might be struggling a bit with. It is getting an average of three stars on Goodreads, and let me tell you I think it is WAY better than that.
The concept is high, the prose is excellent, the world it creates is transgressive and sticky, and the narrator is as reliable as the RFK Jr.-led CDC.
“We reside as well on a planet where the efficacy of medical science is questioned and media personalities argue whether a clot of cells has more value than a woman's life. To put it another way, these are unutterably stupid times.”
That is a quote from the book; see what I did there. This book is the complete package, doing all kinds of interesting and bizarro. Like Barker in the early days, the violent and gross is written with a velvet red-tinged beauty.
“We watched the boy die.
If the universe had any mercy in it, the swarm would have blanketed him, obscured his death from view, but it didn't. His death was a spectacle. We saw him denuded of skin, saw them burrow through the spongy tissue of his bones, and now through his heart and lung, liver and stomach. And seconds he went from boy to Swiss cheese monument, a juddering collander trestles by strings of crawling jeweled shelled insects.”
The characters are well-written. I didn’t always remember their names right away, but their motivations were clear to me. Their motivations are monstrous for sure, their place in this dark academic circle mirrors the relationship between students, but through a monster’s lens.
“Died?” I supplied. After several months together, I felt safe in saying I loathed her. unused to dislike I guess, Joanna had all but waged war on my dislike of her, ambushing me with presence, besieging me with compliments; It was a surgical effort, beautiful and its thoroughness. It did Jack to improve my opinion, which unfortunately just exacerbated Joanna's need for approval. Hell wasn't just other people, hell was living with them.”
The Library a Helleborne is a beautifully designed book by Tor Nightfire with its blue pages, detailed interiors, and all those with the magical prose make it a book really worth having as well as just reading. I mean, get it at your library if you have to, but it is a book worth having on the shelf.
I will leave with my favorite sample of the writing if that doesn’t sell you, we have different tastes.
“Cracked apart at her shoulders, the knobs of her wrist bones, the long stem of her throat. Through them I could see wet muscle and a myriad of tongues, coiled in the shadows like worms for a bulge of intestines. Stefina Raised one corner of her lips and a snarl, her dark eyes very nearly black in the evening light. “We can see how much chill you get if I take off a limb.”
“Oh, please. We're in hellebore. You're not scary.”
