The Dark Academicals

Back in the summer, we were offered the opportunity to read ‘Immortal Consequences’ and an early copy of ‘Ruinous Ends’ by IV Marie and also interview her for The Dark Academicals!

We loved our time at Blackwood Academy so we had a lot of questions for her: about how she juggles writing a novel of 6 POVs, her thoughts and feelings on dark academia, and the perils of an academic setting…

And so we find ourselves at the end of another season. And what a cracker of a book we finish with!

“In the summer of 1993, broke student Alex Lane joins a team clearing out Solace House, a Victorian mansion bequeathed to the university by a reclusive hoarder called Flayne. The other students are a mixed bunch, but Alex quickly falls into a close friendship with the lively, redheaded Ella.

When the crew begins sorting through piles of junk, they stumble upon Flayne's journals, in which he details his obsession with his missing mother, his discovery of a place called Bewise, and - most mysteriously - his belief in another realm lying parallel to ours, along with coded instructions as to how it might be reached.

As the students delve deeper into the house's secrets, one of them becomes obsessed with deciphering Flayne's strange opus and its promise of another world... and they may be willing to sacrifice everything, and everyone, to get there.”

In this episode we discuss:

Representation of female characters

Pace vs plot vs payoff

When literary and genre fiction collide

Unreliable narrators

The was inevitable. Just a glance at the summary tells you this book was always heading towards a spot on the podcast:

“Ellory Morgan is determined to prove that she belongs at Warren University, an ivy league school whose history is deeply linked to occult rumors and dark secrets. But as she settles into her Freshman year, something about the ornate buildings and shadowy paths feels strangely…familiar. And, with every passing day, that sense of déjà vu grows increasingly sinister.

Despite all logic, despite all reason, despite all the rules of reality, Ellory knows one thing to be true: she has been here before. And if she can't convince brooding legacy student Hudson Graves to help her remember a past that seems determined to slip through her fingers as if by some insidious magic…this time, she may lose herself for good.”

In this episode we discuss:

Elite institutional gatekeeping and abuse.

Third person vs first person narratives.

Where this book sits as a subgenre (of a sub genre?)

Is it Dark Academia? Checking against our genre framework.

It’s no secret that we love Kat Dunn and ‘Hungerstone’ - have you listened to our interview with Kat? - so it was inevitable that we’d have to read and discuss ‘Rottenheart’.

Revenge me. For I am murdered . . .

Odette and Cecilia are young women, living between their grand homes in Hampstead and the imposing, ancient Herne House in Suffolk. Though Odette's artist mother Lydia keeps a tight grasp on her, she and her beloved Cecilia are mostly left free to roam, to learn and to love.

But when Lydia inexplicably sickens and dies, a dark veil falls. As the funeral rites are performed, Odette's aunt, the cold and implacable Claudine, increasingly takes charge of the household, while her father retreats to his study. Odette, lost in grief, disappears into the shadows.

But as Claudine is announced as Odette's new stepmother, a sinister presence in the house makes itself known. To her horror, Odette realises that despite her death, Lydia never really left. And now she wants revenge . . .

Inspired by Hamlet, the ultimate revenge tragedy, Rottenheart is the stunning new sapphic gothic horror novel from Kat Dunn, the lauded author of Hungerstone and Bitterthorn. Set in the 1890s, this a story of love and grief, mothers and daughters, death and madness.

A sapphic reimagining of ‘Hamlet’? No more needs to be said, honestly.

In this episode we discuss:

- ‘Hamlet’, Shakespeare, the ‘Romantics’ and the power of skilful intertextuality

- The men benefitting from the vilification of women

- The intertwining of the Gothic and dark academia

If you’ve been with us since Season 8, you may recognise the name of this week’s author as we read his novel ‘Black Chalk’ back in 2024. Now Yates is back with another dark academia novel that has had it’s praises shouted from the rooftops.

When Ali McCain, an eighteen-year-old from Los Angeles, is accepted at Oxford, it’s a chance to fulfil his dreams. To study English literature in England; to meet true intellectuals; and to glimpse the life he might have lived had his father—British rock star Gel McCain, legendary frontman of the Pale Fires—not abandoned him and his mother when he was a toddler.

But not long after he arrives at the storied campus, Ali is drawn into a dark, disorienting world where events grow more and more curious by the day. Trading on his father’s name, he gains entry into one of Oxford’s oldest and most selective secret societies, the Saracens. As he immerses himself in this rarefied world, he inadvertently sets in motion a series of events that might culminate in disaster.

A mind-bending literary house of mirrors, replete with bookish allusions and Easter eggs ranging from Brideshead Revisited to King Lear, The Rabbit Club is an arresting work of dark academia by the category’s finest writer.

We were interested to explore how a second novel by Christopher J Yates would go for us, and whether it would live up to the dark academia comparisons

In this episode we discuss:

• A reflection on an interview with the author where he stated that he doesn’t plot his novels, and how that showed itself in the text and structure

• The intertextuality of the novel; how it succeeds and how it fails

• The desperate want to be British

• ‘The Rabbit Club’ by Christopher J Yates

• ‘Black Chalk’ by Christopher J Yates

• ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt

• ‘If We Were Villains’ by ML Rio

• ‘Brideshead Revisited’ by Evelyn Waugh

• ‘King Lear’ by William Shakespeare

• Sylvia Plath

• ‘Pale Fire’ by Vladimir Nabokov

• Virginia Woolf

• ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

• Ted Hughes

• ‘His Dark Materials’ by Philip Pullman

• ‘Ninth House’ by Leigh Bardugo

• ‘Rottenheart’ by Kat Dunn

• ‘Saltburn’ (2023)

• ‘The Riot Club’ (2014)

Please sign up to The Dark Academicals Book Club mailer for exclusive book club content, extra episodes and special content!

‘The Dark Academia Journal’ will be published on 10 September 2026 by Wildfire and you can pre-order it right now!

Jennifer Niven is a huge name in YA, most known for ‘All the Bright Places’ which was released in 2015 and neither of us had read her since then.

As soon as we saw a 2025 dark academia release from her that was compared itself to ‘The Secret History’ we had to revisit this author of the golden age of YA.

Eight students walk into an exclusive writers’ retreat, but only one will walk out with a life-changing opportunity to realise their creative dreams.

Effy is piecing together a story about the tragic betrayal that led to her mother’s death. Arlo hopes to publish a novel – but he’s also trying to start a new chapter with Effy after he broke her heart and ghosted her three years earlier.

Their mentor is Meredith Graffam, enigmatic writer, director and actress, whose compelling accounts of her own near-death experience on the same retreat decades before continue to spark controversy.

But this celebrated teacher is not all she seems, and her students gradually realize they are fighting for something much more primal than academic advantage. As Graffam’s unorthodox teaching methods push them past breaking point, they reveal their darkest secrets, take unthinkable risks and slowly start to turn on one another. But Graffam never expected they would turn on her . . .

We’re so intrigued to see the comparison plays out and what it’s like reading Jennifer Niven ten years later.

In this episode we discuss:

• The jarring name of the school, Brighton and Hove, when Brighton and Hove is a famous British city

• The way that multiple POVs affect the dark academia vibe

• How ‘When We Were Monsters’ acts as a YA entry point for dark academia

Podcast RSS

• ‘When We Were Monsters’ by Jennifer Niven

• ‘All the Bright Places’ by Jennifer Niven

• ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ by Shirley Jackson

• Ali Hazelwood

• ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

• ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde

• Sylvia Plath

• ‘Voice Like a Hyacinth’ by Mallory Pearson

• ‘A Study in Drowning’ by Ava Reid

• ‘The Rabbit Club’ by Christopher J Yates

• ‘Black Chalk’ by Christopher J Yates

Please sign up to The Dark Academicals Book Club mailer for exclusive book club content, extra episodes and special content!

Welcome to Season 13!

We’re kicking off with an audio-only novella from one of our very favourite authors, Ali Hazelwood, as she tackles dark academia and paranormal romance in ‘Bound’.

A reluctant con artist and a professor with too many secrets are bound by an arcane text-in more ways than one.

Veronica "Vero" Mercer grew up with grifters for parents, and she knows her way around a con. When grad school bills pile up and her friends are in trouble, she turns her art history skills into a forgery side hustle.

It's supposed to be a short-term deal, but her work draws the attention of Dr. Viktor Ashworth, a reserved, very British professor. Instead of turning her in, Ashworth kidnaps her-politely-and makes an unusual offer: forge a mysterious ancient manuscript for him.

Soon Vero finds herself spending long nights with Viktor, bent over rare vellum samples and obscure inks. But as the con grows riskier, Vero has to wonder: what does Viktor really want, and why can't she stay away?

How will Ali Hazelwood tackle dark academia?

In this episode we discuss:

• We grapple with listening to spicy romance via audiobook…

• How does dark academia integrate with paranormal romance?

• The way that the atmosphere draws on so many paranormal and supernatural classics

Podcast RSS

• ‘Bound’ by Ali Hazelwood

• ‘Bride’ by Ali Hazelwood

• ‘Mate’ by Ali Hazelwood

• ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ by Ann Rice

• ‘The Vampire Diaries’ (2009-2017)

• ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (1997-2003)

• Interview with the Vampire’ (2022-2025)

• The Vampire Lestat’ (2026-)

Please sign up to The Dark Academicals Book Club mailer for exclusive book club content, extra episodes and special content!

This is it! The last episode in for this season! Can you believe we’ve done 12 of these now? So we’re going out with a bang with some horror in the form of ‘The Library at Hellebore’.

Is it… dark academia though? Well…

In this episode we discuss:

Body horror and the effects of being a horror-first narrative

The technical delivery of the story and what we enjoyed (and how we wished it was longer!)

Academic horror, eldritch lore and folk tales, the parts that made us feel queasy

It’s time for one of our most anticipated books of the season: Emily Tesh’s ‘The Incandescent’. A magic school? Check. Demons? Check. An entirely different perspective? Check.

Dr Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job - no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It's her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. But it's possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from . . . is herself.

Will it live up to our expectations and establish itself among the dark academia canon?

In this episode we discuss:

- What it looks like when dark academia comes from the teacher rather than the student

- An unexpected exploration of what our schools looked like compared to Chetwood

- A discussion around how the system is failing schools, students, and teachers