Amelia Hruby: 00:01

Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading. I'm your host, Amelia Ruby. And this is a podcast about the pleasure of reading, where I share curated reading lists, author rankings, chats with my bookish friends and more. If you too take pleasure in reading, I hope that you will subscribe and share the show with a friend. Cheers to your next best book.

Amelia Hruby: 00:26

Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading, a podcast about the many pleasures of reading featuring curated book lists created by me, Amelia Froomey. In today's episode, I will be sharing a few dark academia recommendations. Now, if you're not familiar with dark academia, in short, it is quite literally what the two words suggest. These are books that are typically set in academic places, often a boarding school if it has a high school setting, or a university if it has a college setting. Occasionally, we get some type of library or archive beyond university, but typically we have these very academic settings, and we have a lot of darkness, and that darkness can take many forms.

Amelia Hruby: 01:16

It can be the sort of goth nature of the setting. It can be the persona of the characters, it can happen through the plot. There are many murders in dark academia books and often it takes the form of dark magic. So I would say that the quintessential dark academia book, the one that everyone says started it all, would be The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I read The Secret History almost a decade ago now when I spent half of a summer in France.

Amelia Hruby: 01:53

I was in Nice and I failed to bring any books with me. And at the open market where there were a bunch of books being sold, The The Secret History was the only one in English. So I picked it up, I read it on this rocky beach right outside of Nice, which is pretty much the opposite of a dark academia setting. And I really enjoyed it, but honestly had not thought about revisiting that book or the genre of it since then until the past few years when dark academia became very popular among the sort of booktube, booktalk crowd. One of the other books that I would say is kind of a classic dark academia novel that brought that forward would be If We Were Villains by M.

Amelia Hruby: 02:39

L. Rio, and both that book and The Secret History are set at universities. They feature a sort of cast of student characters. There is a murder that takes place and a sort of mystery to unravel how that's resolved amidst the sort of power dynamics and problematic hierarchies that occur in universities. I'd say that's like a typical dark academia plot with both the secret history and if we were villains.

Amelia Hruby: 03:07

They're set in our world. I don't know a better way to say that, but they're fiction books set in the world that we all live in. And while I've enjoyed that, I really love the dark academia books that take us into fantastical places. So for today's episode, I have curated 5 dark academia recommendations that are also all fantasy books. So these are all set at universities, and they all feature magic in some way or another.

Amelia Hruby: 03:43

These are also all adult books, so I'm going to do another episode in the future on young adult dark academia, and I've been collecting that list as well and have so many great books to read. But this episode specifically curates adult fantasy dark academia books. And the reason I'm getting so specific about that is because I thought I was gonna do a cute little dark academia episode and, you know, read 3 to 5 books and that would be it. But so far for this episode alone, I have read 8 books and counting because I haven't even finished all of the series that I've read the first book of to recommend it here. So I realized that the reading lists were just getting longer and longer and longer and longer, and I was never ever gonna get this episode out if I didn't narrow it down a bit.

Amelia Hruby: 04:30

So all of that shared. I would say that if you are somebody who likes to read about universities or academic settings, if you like books that involve archives, if you like magical systems and aren't afraid when they get a little messy and murderous, if you like to lean into the gothic, if you like to wear a tweed blazer and some dark lipstick, this episode is definitely gonna be for you. And if you don't know if that's you or not, give it a listen, and maybe one of these books or series will strike you as interesting. So let's go ahead and dive on in to this episode on 5 dark academia recs adult fantasy edition. So the first book that I want to recommend is actually the newest release on this list and that is an academy for liars by Alexis Henderson.

Amelia Hruby: 05:28

At the beginning of an academy for liars, we meet Lennon who, in the very opening chapter, finds herself in the bathroom at her engagement party, and we learn that she can do some type of mirror magic. I don't wanna be too specific because I want you to go read it, but something that shall not be spoiled happens at her engagement party, and she leaves the party and sets off on this totally different journey. That journey takes her to Drayton College, which is a school of magic hidden outside of space and time in Savannah, Georgia. Once she gets there, she has to take an entrance exam and then she's invited into the school where she will learn the gift of persuasion. And this is really one of the coolest parts of this book.

Amelia Hruby: 06:15

I think that the college itself and the setting in Savannah really lends this, like, gothic quality to the book, but the magic of persuasion is really what kept me reading. So persuasion is exactly what you might expect. It's the ability to make people do what you want them to do, And there's just a lot of other cool things that happen along the way, including some really cool elevator magic that I won't say anything more than that, but I really found it interesting. So that book, again, is an academy for liars by Alexis Henderson. This is a standalone.

Amelia Hruby: 06:51

It's the only standalone on this list, and I read it in, I think, one day in the fall. And I will say that I've seen it get some mixed reviews. Some people did not find the plot as, like, propulsive and interesting as I found it. There is a romance subplot that I also found a little lacking and have seen critiqued elsewhere, but if you can be in it for the Gothic setting and the magic, I think you will really enjoy this one. So I've got a couple of ways I'm gonna rank these dark academia books, but we're going to rank them all on how many out of 5 they are dark, how many out of 5 they are academia, how many out of 5 they are romance, and then each book is going to get its own little special quality that we add for a 4th rating.

Amelia Hruby: 07:31

So for an academy for liars, I'd say this one is like 4 out of 5 dark. It got pretty dark at times, definitely a lot of darkness in this book, particularly like psychological darkness. I would give it a 2 out of 5 for academia. We don't really get that sense of, like, going to class, studying, how that works so much in the book. And I think some of that has to do with the romance that is a major subplot in the book, and I'm giving it, like, 2 out of 5 for that romance.

Amelia Hruby: 07:59

I was not very convinced by it. I just didn't think it was that important. Like, the book could have been perhaps more interesting without it. But what really sells this one for me is that it is 5 out of 5 southern gothic. It has a great Savannah setting.

Amelia Hruby: 08:14

We've got this really creepy university building and series of buildings and how they're connected, and I just found that so interesting. So, again, that is an academy for liars by Alexis Henderson, the first book on my 5 dark academia recs list. The second book on the list is a Denley Education by Naomi Novik. This is the first book in a trilogy that is called the showomance, or I've heard some people call it the scholomance, but I really think in my brain, it was always the showomance. Either way, the showomance is a school for the magically gifted.

Amelia Hruby: 08:54

And in the world of these books, you have wizards and humans. And in their teen years, the wizards are sent to this school. And at the school, their only job is to survive. So the school is full of monsters that are called Mal, and the school basically kind of runs itself and provides this curriculum for each student to master their powers. They have to learn all of these languages that spells are written in.

Amelia Hruby: 09:25

They have to learn how to battle the monsters or mals in the book. They have to learn how to hone their magical skills, and all along the way, they face the threat of death because there are monsters lurking everywhere. So throughout the series, we follow 2 main characters. Their primary emcee is Elle, and she has this very dark mysterious power. And pretty early in the series, she befriends another very powerful student named Orion, and Orion seems to just be able to fight off any monster that crosses his path.

Amelia Hruby: 10:07

And so we see them connect at the very beginning of the first book, and we watch their relationship unfold. We watch their time in the school unfold. And I don't wanna say too much more than that, but this may have been my favorite series of all of the ones that I'm recommending here. I found the school so compelling, and I really loved Elle's character and the way that she wrestled with her own darkness. So on my dark academia scales, I would give this one 5 out of 5 for dark.

Amelia Hruby: 10:37

We really see a lot of dark magic both from the wizards and the monsters, and we really see Elle and Orion both navigate their own magic and their own kind of darkness of their own psyches. And so 5 out of 5 dark, I think it's 4 out of 5 academia. I was pretty obsessed with the school and the politics of the school, and then also when they got out of school, the politics of all of these different, like, wizard enclaves around the world and who has more power and who has less and what it takes to gain power and how you lose it. Like, all of that was really fascinating. So I think 4 out of 5 academia for me.

Amelia Hruby: 11:15

And then I think 5 out of 5 romance on this one. We do get a romance subplot for Elle and Orion, and I was really into it. I thought they were characterized so well. I thought their connection was characterized so well. I really enjoyed that.

Amelia Hruby: 11:28

And the wild card for this one was definitely the monsters. This book has 5 out of 5 monsters. Now in many art, dark academia books, the monsters are, like, the characters themselves, which comes up a bit in this, or the monster is, like, the hierarchical power of universities and of systemic or structural oppression. Like, part of dark academia is the critique of those power structures. But in this one, I loved that they were just literal monsters.

Amelia Hruby: 11:56

Like, we also get this whole critique of the power of the elites through the enclaves, but there are literal monsters here, and that is a threat and a big part of the darkness. So that is A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. The trilogy is called The Showomance, and I cannot recommend it highly enough in this list of 5 dark academia recs fantasy edition. The 3rd book that I will be recommending on this list is 9th house by Leigh Bardugo. This is the first book of what will be a trilogy or longer.

Amelia Hruby: 12:31

Leigh Bardugo has said that she's willing to write many, many of the books in this world. And this book is set at Yale where Galaxy Stern, known as Alex, has been offered a full ride scholarship. And there's a lot of mystery around who has offered her this scholarship and why, which as we learned throughout the book, leads Alex deeper into the web of Yale's secret societies and toward more and more occult activities. This is definitely the most occult book on this list. If you love a dark book, 9th house is for you.

Amelia Hruby: 13:10

This is dark academia, heavy on the darkness. We have murder, mystery, and mayhem in this book. We perhaps have some demons in this book. With our secret societies, we get a lot of very academic references to Virgil and Dante and just everything that you expect in a dark academia book, you will find in 9th house as long as you are prepared for a heavy dose of occult magic along the way. So for this one, I'm gonna give it 5 out of 5 on the darkness.

Amelia Hruby: 13:42

I think it's like a 4 out of 5 academia. For romance, we've really got, like, 1 out of 5 on this one, at least in the first book. There may be some hints, but no actual romantic subplot in this one. And then our wild card rating here, I couldn't decide whether it should be 5 out of 5 occult or 5 out of 5 secret societies, so we're gonna go with both. We have an occult secret society in this series, my friends.

Amelia Hruby: 14:09

And with the 9th house, I have only read the first book because this was a dense read. And so I know before I can read the second or the third, I need to reread 9th house, and I'm just kind of waiting to have that 3 part set before I read the follow-up hell bent and whatever book is coming next. So, again, that's 9th house by Leigh Bardugo. Then up next on our list of dark academia recs is the Atlas 6 by Olivier Blake. This book actually opens at a college graduation.

Amelia Hruby: 14:37

So at the opening of the book, we meet Libby and Nico who are graduating as co valedictorians from the New York University of Magical Arts. And when we meet them, we get a sense of how powerful they are, how acrimonious their relationship is, and pretty quickly, we learn that they are both going to be invited to audition, to some degree, to try out to earn a place in the Alexandrian society, which is supposed to be the world's foremost secret society that has access to the library of Alexandria, which actually has not been destroyed, but has, through some magical means, preserved itself over the years. And once every 10 years, 6 people are recruited to join the Alexandrian society, but only 5 of them will be selected. So they have to compete against each other seemingly to the deaf, and 5 of them will prevail and join the society. Now this one took place maybe a little less at the school itself, but we have this promise of the academic setting of the library of Alexandria and all that comes along with that.

Amelia Hruby: 15:53

I also really loved the magical system in this book. I felt like we had all of these different types of magic, and we have these 6 main characters, the 6 recruits or the Atlas 6, that all have different forms of magic that range from controlling elements to reading people's minds to being able to persuade them. So a lot of the different things that come up in these other books are present here in this magic system. And if I had one complaint about this book, it was just that I wanted even more from each point of view because juggling 6 points of view is a lot in one book, and I really enjoyed being in each character's head, and I could have done even more of that. But luckily for me, there are 2 more books.

Amelia Hruby: 16:33

This is a trilogy. I have only read the first one, the Atlas 6, but it is followed up by the Atlas Paradox and the Atlas Complex. So I really loved the Atlas 6, and I will be honest that I have seen very mixed reviews of the 3rd book in this series, so I've been a little hesitant to continue on even though I want so much more time with these characters. So for the Atlas 6, I would give it, like, 3 out of 5 dark. I mean, there's definitely some darkness in the magic in this book.

Amelia Hruby: 17:03

There's definitely darkness in the murder plot. Every character is kind of unlikable, but I liked that, so maybe some people would find that darker, but I was kind of into it. I think it gets maybe a 2 out of 5 for the academia just because I really love a school setting for a dark academia, and this doesn't quite give us that. This one's also gonna get a 2 out of 5 for romance. There are some sort of steamy moments in the book, but there's not really a romantic subplot in sight at this point.

Amelia Hruby: 17:33

But for our wild card on this one, we are getting 5 out of 5 on magical competition. I really loved the magic system in this book, and I really loved how competitive the different recruits were. And you can even see on the back of the book, secrets, betrayal, seduction, power. That is definitely the vibe of what we are getting here. So this one gets a 5 out of 5 magical competition, 5 out of 5 secret society.

Amelia Hruby: 17:59

We'll see how I feel about the rest of the series, but I do highly recommend the first book, The Atlas 6 by Olivier Blake. And then the final book on my 5 dark academia recs fantasy edition list is a book that I don't think makes it on a lot of traditional dark academia lists. And I just think that's because there are dragons in it. So that book is 4th Wing by Rebecca Yaros. So I said in my creature feature episode earlier this fall that I was going to finally read 4th Wing, and I did my friends.

Amelia Hruby: 18:37

I read both 4th Wing and Iron Flame, and I ate these books up. Do I think they're the best written literature? No. Frankly, I don't know if any of these books on this list are amazing literature, but I think that the 4th wing books have really great characterization, an interesting magical system, and they are, in my opinion, pretty perfectly paced. You really get just enough time with each character to understand their motivations, to understand why they act in certain ways even when you don't like the things that they're doing and for the broader plot of what's happening in the events of this world to unfold.

Amelia Hruby: 19:15

So 4th wing features 20 year old Violet Sorengale, who at the beginning of the book is just about to go to college, essentially. And the college in this world is Basgiat War College. So she's on her way to War College. She was supposed to enter what's called the scribe quadrant, which is essentially the archivists, but her mother is the general of the army. And her mother has said, you have to become a writer.

Amelia Hruby: 19:41

Writers are the people who, hopefully, eventually ride dragons. And Violet is not big, not strong, not brawny, not the type of person who typically becomes a rider. So everyone thinks that when she has to go off to do this, she's essentially being sent to her death. The first thing you have to do to even get into the school for riders is walk across this harrowing parapet, as they call it, which is essentially a very tiny bridge. And as you do this, it's very windy.

Amelia Hruby: 20:11

The day she does it, it's raining, and a ton of the recruits fall off of it to their death. And slight spoiler, Violet makes it across and everything unfolds from there. We eventually meet our other main character, Zayden, and Violet and Zayden have this sort of enemies to lovers relationship. There are dragons. There is a lot of politics in this world that Violet has to navigate.

Amelia Hruby: 20:35

There is a lot of conversation around who we choose to protect and how we do that and who we leave out of our protection and what that entails. And I think that while this isn't quite the traditional dark academia book because it's maybe a little bit more about the war than about the college, we do see Violet and Zayden both go to class. It's just that their class is more like martial arts class and battle history class than it is, like, reading Dante and Virgil, like we might see in some of these other books. And so I think that 4th Wing is a nontraditional dark academia book, but it's definitely super dark. It definitely has an academic setting, and so I am including it in this list.

Amelia Hruby: 21:15

And for this one, I would give it, like, 3 out of 5 on the dark. There's definitely a lot of depth, but because there's so much, the stakes of it don't feel so high. I don't know. It didn't feel like the darkest read to me. I think I'd also give it a 3 out of 5 academia because the war college setting is absolutely a college, but it's, like, heavy on the war, especially when we get into the second book, Iron Flame.

Amelia Hruby: 21:38

And then I would give it a 5 out of 5 for romance. I really did love Violet and Xander's sort of enemies to lovers vibe, and there is definitely some spice in this book. There are explicit sex scenes, so know that going into it. And, of course, we get our wild card rating here. It's gonna be for the dragons.

Amelia Hruby: 21:56

5 out of 5 dragons for 4th wing. I absolutely loved them. They have personalities. They communicate clearly. They have needs and desires and their own magical system and hierarchy, so we really get a lot of that point of view as well, which I thought was super fun.

Amelia Hruby: 22:12

And 4th Wing is the first book of what will soon be a trilogy. So we have 4th Wing, then Iron Flame, and then Onyx Storm will be out in January 2025, and I cannot wait to read it. So that's my list, friends. Those are my 5 dark academia recs adult fantasy edition. Just to recap briefly, that was an academy for liars by Alexis Henderson, which is giving you that southern gothic persuasion magic, dark academia vibe.

Amelia Hruby: 22:43

Then we had a deadly education, the first book of the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik. If you want a really dark school setting where the school is literally trying to kill all of the students, and we get a lot of world building around the magic and the powers that be. You're really definitely gonna love A Deadly Education. That's your vibe of dark academia. Then I recommended 9th House by Leigh Bardugo, which is the most traditional academic setting of these books.

Amelia Hruby: 23:12

If you wanna go to Yale and explore the occult secret societies that are there and maybe get a little bit into some, like, demonology along the way, 9th house is absolutely your choice of dark academic book. My 4th recommendation was for the Atlas 6 by Olivier Blake. This one's for my friends who love many points of view in a book, who love archives and libraries and magic and a little bit of murder, you're gonna like the Atlas 6. And then, finally, I recommended 4th Wing by Rebecca Yaros, and that one's for everybody who likes dragons and doesn't mind a little bit of smuttiness in their dark academia reads. Before I go, if you want even more dark academia recs, I'm gonna link 2 YouTube videos in the show notes that I really enjoyed and referenced while I was working on this.

Amelia Hruby: 23:59

One is by the book, Leo, and it's called the ultimate guide to dark academia books. So she really walks through the core qualities of all dark academia books and gives a bunch of examples. And then I'll also link to another video by Jeneny of the story ain't over, which ranks popular dark academia books, but she talks a lot about just, like, the lack of critical consciousness around race in dark academia books and how they really do a lot of dissecting power dynamics, a lot of critiquing class and elites in these books, but they don't necessarily actually grapple with race in very meaningful ways. So those 2 YouTube videos will be linked in the show notes as will all of the books that I have talked about in this episode. I hope that you pick up 1 or more of them, that you enjoy the stand alone or any of the series.

Amelia Hruby: 24:52

They are great reads for these colder, darker days of winter, and I can't wait to be back in New Year with another episode on all of the young adult dark academia books that I'm planning to read because there are currently, I think, 6 of them, and that list could grow as well. So so if you like dark academia, keep an eye out for that. And until next time, my friends, cheers to your next best book.