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I'll start by saying this book is not for everyone. Khaw has a distinctive writing style. It's sometimes chaotic and doesn't feel the need to explain itself. The characters are all unlikeable and the storyline jumps around.
But let's start at the beginning. The Library at Hellebore takes dark academia and saturates it in blood and gore. Magic pulled a Kool-Aid man and busted into the walls of our modern reality, thrusting humanity into a precarious and dangerous new world, where people and creatures have terrifying powers. Our main character Alessa is one of many young adults gifted with world-ending magic. Against her will, she's sent to Hellebore after killing her abusers. The school is a thin veneer for the ulterior motives of the institution and the governments that back it, which is to study and then kill anyone whose power poses a threat to humanity and the institutions.
Readers often miss this point. I see questions asking why the school pretends to be an academy where nobody learns a damn thing and kids are dying faster than anyone can keep count. It's easy to overlook amidst the viscera and complicated motivations of the few students left alive and fighting to survive. The school is actually a laboratory where the teachers are studying and dissecting the students before the end-of-year graduation, when the teachers feast on the students who survived. This is not a spoiler. From the jump, Khaw tells us that eight students survived the slaughter and locked themselves into the library.
They have three days to kill each other because only one student can survive. Why? No idea.
The remaining students are all terrible and powerful, and we go back and forth between the present whittling down of the remaining students, and the past, where we learn about each person, their power, the school itself, and so on. Alessa is cutthroat with the ability to tear someone apart by manipulating their internal organs. She's locked in with one of Satan's sons, a necromancer, a prophet, a spider-like individual, someone who uses hair to infiltrate a person's body and mind, a person whose voice demands compliance, and a dude with a weird portal in his body.
Oh, and there's an immortal slug thing that takes care of the library and wants to eat them. All-in-all the book is a bloodbath. When I finished, I couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. I will DNF a book at 90%, so finishing the book is a good indicator that I liked it well enough. And I think I did enjoy reading it, especially after the 50% mark. Alessa, while still brutal, becomes more interesting and her motivations clearer. Generally, I hated some of the other characters more. And she kills her abusers, which I love. Big fan.
The audiobook was easier to consume than the physical copy. There isn't any genuine romance or spice in the book. All the warnings are about past trauma and current trauma.
I would not recommend this book to everybody. You have to suspend your disbelief and be okay with not getting all the answers to your questions. Very little makes sense, and that's not a problem for me as long as I know that's what's happening. If you're not sure about this book, I'd recommend reading the preview on Amazon before purchasing. It's enough to decide whether this book is something you want to read and if you like her writing style.
/rae/