Gothic architecture. Candlelit study sessions. Finding a body belonging to one of the student body. This is dark academia, the high school experience that we all secretly wish we had. While not all of us were privileged enough to live this fantasy (or escape it without copious student loans) these authors were gracious enough to give us all the dark academia drama without any of the actual scholastic mortal peril. Here are some of the 10 best dark academia fantasy books on the syllabus.
Babel, or The Necessity of Violence
While R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War trilogy is also about a nightmarish school experience, her followup novel Babel or The Necessity of Violence turns up the dark academia dial to eleven. The plot concerns a Chinese orphan who is adopted by an English scholar – the boy is renamed Robin Swift and relentlessly tutored in the study of language arts. After learning a slew of tongues both living and dead, he’s groomed to attend the Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University, nicknamed “Babel” after the biblical tower whose construction was doomed by linguistic differences. While attending Babel, Swift discovers a dark secret, the Institute is using the latent magic found in untranslatable words to serve as magical fuel for the colonial exploits of the ever expanding British Empire. A better cautionary tale of how academia can be corrupted to serve dark ends there never was.
His Dark Materials
While most remember Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials as the series about the little girl who makes friends with a talking polar bear, many forget that this trilogy’s foundations are laid with dark academia floorboards – probably rich mahogany. The story begins at Jordan College, a fictional city in Oxford, and concerns young Lyra Belacqua – a precocious preteen who lives there under the guardianship of her often absent uncle. After Lyra becomes privy to a secret of the universe that a world ruling church would rather keep under wraps, she’s forced to free from her scholastic sanctuary and travel the globe in search of hidden metaphysical truths. While the Lyra jumps between the shadowy halls of her school-home and the frozen wastes of the north and beyond, her fervent pursuit of forbidden knowledge is dark academia coded to its core.
Death Note
Tsugumi Ohba’s Death Note is the story of Light Yagami, a brilliant but bored high schooler who stumbles across a death god’s diary – one that contains the power to kill any person whose name it written on its pages. Spurred on by his own delusions of grandeur, Light decides to put his genius intellect to work and use the Death Note to shape a utopian world free of evil – one where he will reign as God incarnate. After Light begins a killing spree, along comes a teen detective known as “L” – whose intellectual brilliance is rivaled only by his love for sweets and sitting in weird positions. So begins a mental chess match between bitter rivals on opposite side of the law – it’s basically the story of what dark academia students do after graduation.
Ninth House
Leigh Bardrugo’s Ninth House is the story of Galaxy “Alex” Stern, high school dropout whose unimpressive academic record is rivaled only by her slew of equally unimpressive post-school activities (dating loser boyfriends, holding down dead end jobs etc). Her humdrum life changes abruptly after she’s injured in a mass murder attempt, and she wakes up in the hospital to find out that she’s somehow been accepted to Yale. In exchange for a full ride, her mysterious scholastic benefactors request only that she keep tabs on Yale’s secret societies, many of whom are mucking around with the occult. Surely the actions of these culty undergrads couldn’t possible be related to the unsolved murder that almost ruined her life, right? It doesn’t take a dark academia-educated brain to see a dim connection a-brewing.
A Deadly Education
Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education novel is the story of El, a young woman accepted into a deadly institution known as Scholomance. In these unhallowed halls, a failing grade is a death sentence – students who don’t pass scholastic snuff are fed to one of the many monsters that lurk on campus. With mortal peril only one bad report card away, the students of the Scholomance don’t take the time to suffer friendships – unless they’re purely strategic enough to ensure the mutual non-shuffling of mortal coils. Lucky for El, she carries an ability that allows her to draw power from unwilling victims, which will allow her to become one of the most powerful black magic practitioners – just as a generations old family prophecy foretold. Unlucky for El, she carries too strong of a moral compass to lean into her parasitic powers, so she’ll just have to figure out a way to survive without syphoning life away from other students.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Taking place in England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell concerns the academic exploits of Gilbert Norrell – a man who believes that magic should be regarded with a healthy mix of scientific curiosity and caution. His methodical methods are upended by Jonathan Strange, a young upstart who shakes up the academia with his freewheeling approach to the arcane arts. While the two men attempt to bridge the ideological gap with a mentor/mentee relationship, said relationship soon sours into bitter magical rivalry when they are unable to reconcile their differences. Matters are made worse after one of the pair enters a Faustian relationship with an ancient fae spirit, assuring the mutual magical ruin of many to come.
The Atlas Six
The Atlas Six the story of The Alexandrian Society – a secret order of magical caretakers that protect Earth’s arcane history. Only six initiates are chosen to enter this academic society, and a group of talented young magicians from around the world are selected to become candidates. Except this time, the initiation process will be different – this year only five of them will be accepted into the institution, and one will not. The sextet has one year to compete with one another for academic supremacy, at the end of which the top five will be chosen as Alexandrians. It’s Dark academia Survivor, but with five winners.
The Library at Mount Char
Picture this: you and eleven other young children were adopted by a mysterious man who may or may not be God, who instructed each of you to spend your lives studying the mysterious books in his magical library. That’s how young Carolyn spent her youth in Scott Hawkin’s mind-bending The Library at Mount Char, only to have the equilibrium between her and her adoptive siblings tipped after their surrogate daddy’s mysterious disappearance. Now that the potential Creator has seemingly abandoned Creation, Carolyn and her family wonder who among them will inherit his divine position – and the untold power that his library holds. Only one way to find out: with a magical battle royale that may rip apart the fabric of the universe itself! Twelve brilliant sociopaths fighting over some books – I can’t think of anything more darkly academic.
The Magicians
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is the story of Quentin Coldwater – a young boy destined for a career in dark academia by his name alone. This brilliant and brooding youth couldn’t care less about what most high school kids want – necking under the bleachers and what not – and would rather be neck deep in the pages of his favorite fantasy series Fillory and Further. Everything changes when Quentin is accepted into a mysterious institution in upstate New York, which promises to school him in sorceries beyond his wildest dreams. After giving magic the old college try, the recently graduated and academically burnt out Quentin learns a shocking truth – the magical world of Fillory from his favorite childhood fantasy series is real. Though in reality Fillory is less Chronicles of Narnia and more Chronicles of Riddick (which is to say it’s a seriously dark and dangerous place) Quentin and friends intend to explore it anyway.
The Library of the Unwritten
Hell has libraries, and of course, none of the books are finished. A.J. Hackwith’s The Library of the Unwritten is the story of where incomplete novels go when they die – a section of the Inferno dedicated to housing literary left-behinds. The formerly human Claire is the Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing, whose duties mainly consist of repairing any damaged books and maybe shushing demons that are talking too loud. However, Claire has to be cautious that the protagonists of Perdition’s library books don’t escape from the pages – which happens more often than one would think. After a simple retrieval of a runaway literary hero ends with a horrifying attack from an angel, Claire and her demonic assistants are forced to go on the lamb across Lethe, running from divine forces that are convinced the trio carry an infernal tome capable of toppling the balance between Heaven and Hell.
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