Greg Chism

Reading this as an academic who loved Dante's Inferno was a major letdown. Dark academia loves to take aim at academia as an "it's all bad actors" take, and this didn't feel different.

True, there are A LOT of bad actors, but it's mainly from complacency and the slow moving nature of academia.

The author is a PhD student, so I felt this was a mix of catharsis but romanticism... It could have really pushed some boundaries on academia being a hell of its own making, but the book being really her hell makes it too reductive.

My last gripe is that most of the world building was basically textbook explanations of things. This had the opportunity for a great "reality isn't what they teach you in school", but that's not really what we got here.

Just dissatisfied overall.

Pretty good gothic story steeped in Mormon history. Well worth a read if you like either.