Recent Dark Academia to Read With Your Book Club

Reading the description for the second book in this series (Hell Bent) made me pick up this one, and let me just say that I inhaled both. Ninth House was an introduction to Leigh Bardugo’s adult fiction, and I now stan. It follows Galaxy “Alex” Stern, who dropped out of school and has had a string of bad boyfriends and crappy jobs. Then she becomes the only survivor of a multiple homicide, and while in the hospital, she’s approached with a rare opportunity: she will be admitted to Yale University. But, of course, there’s a catch. One she may not fully realize until later. Some of what she meets at Yale is not surprising — there are rigorous academics, smart kids, and spoiled rich kids. But there are also secret societies, mysterious benefactors, and occult practices that get pretty intense and gory. And trust, the sequel will also have you by the throat.

I’ve mentioned this fairly recently, but felt like I had to include it here since it is one of the dark academia of the season.

In it, Maya is excited to go back to Princeton for her 10-year reunion. She’s also hyped to see her little sister, Naomi, graduate from the same school. But then something terrible happens: Naomi is found dead. Police are saying it was an accident, but Maya knows better, and as she starts to look into Naomi’s life right before she died, she sees how right she is. Turns out, Naomi had joined the über exclusive social club Maya had warned her against, and Maya is certain they approached her for the secret society within it. Maya starts to wonder if she should have been more forthcoming about what really happened at Princeton when she went there as an undergraduate because Naomi isn’t the first woman who died.

A new Alexis Henderson for fall always bodes well, and An Academy for Liars is an especially fall-friendly dark academia novel that has a synopsis that kind of reminds me of Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko, which I mention below. In it, Lennon Carter is invited to take the entrance exam for the mysterious Drayton College because of her innate gift of persuasion —which can be used on people and matter alike. Once she passes the test and gains entry to the school, she finds that the moss-covered campus, with its smartly dressed students, is the only place she’s ever felt like somebody. And her alluring adviser, Dante, is kind of enjoyable, too. The history of the college itself, though? Unnerving. As is her mentor’s connection to it and the role those in charge plan for her to have in it.

Sixteen-year-old Sasha Samokhina is vacationing with her mom when she notices a strange man following her. She finds out he’s there to recruit her by coercion for a magic school no one has ever heard of. Now, before you get it twisted thinking this is just another story of a magical high school, just know that the magic studied here is unlike anything you’ve read before. The students also have to do things that other magical high school students don’t (it gets dark, y’all). It flirts with metaphysical philosophy, teeters on the biblical, and is plum gibberish at times. This story has been described as what those popular wizard school books would be like if they were written by Kafka. This is an all-around darker take on the magical high school subgenre that’s definitely for adults.

Ingrid Yang is 29 and going through it as a PhD student. For years, she’s been researching the late Chinese poet, Xiao-Wen Cho, even though she had no interest in him prior to starting her PhD (or any interest in since having started, if we’re keeping it real). Instead, the subject of her future dissertation was chosen by her adviser, a white guy who starts off being very invested in Chinese culture and ends up… being the opposite of that. One day, she finds a note in the Chou archives that leads to a helluva discovery. With her best friend, she sets out to get to the bottom of the mystery. There are book burnings, Anti-Asian propaganda, and a reckoning with how white men factor into her life that Ingrid experiences in this funny dark academia novel.

Kuang is the award-winning author of The Poppy War, another banger. In Babel, she turns her talents towards the darkness inherent in Western academia. Robin, who was orphaned by cholera, was brought from China to London by a professor and studied Chinese, Ancient Greek, and Latin. His efforts through the years are so that he can enroll in a prestigious Oxford University program called “Babel.” The program’s location, the Babel Tower, serves as the world’s translation center and is the reason Britain is able to maintain power. This power comes as a result of the unique magic system of this world, known as silver-working. With it, meanings lost in translation are manifested with enchanted silver bars. Robin eventually realizes how much his own country — and others — suffer because of this magic and Britain’s use of it and must decide if he wants to serve that power or disrupt it.