Unhallowed Halls by Lili Wilkinson

Title: Unhallowed Halls

Author: Lili Wilkinson

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 18^th February 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 464

Price: $24.99

Synopsis: DARK ACADEMIA…WITH DEMONS. After a deadly incident at her old school, Page enrols in Agathion College, an exclusive boarding school, only to find that it’s built over centuries of secrets – including an ancient society potentially linked to demonic magic. Perfect for fans of Lynette Noni and Leigh Bardugo, from the acclaimed author of A Hunger of Thorns.

Page Whittaker has always been an outcast. She’s too smart, too quiet, too weird. And after the deadly incident that destroyed her only friendship at her old school, she needs a fresh start.

Agathion College is everything Page has ever wanted: a safe haven of wood-panelled halls and dusty books, on a remote Scottish moor. And for the first time in her life, she has a close group of friends. Cyrus, Ren, Gideon, Lacey and Oak help her feel at home at Agathion; the only problem is, they’re all keeping secrets from her.

Page doesn’t know it yet, but her perfect new school has a crooked foundation, rooted in an ancient clandestine society with rumoured ties to demonic magic. Soon, Page will learn that not everyone at Agathion is who they say they are. Least of all, her friends.

Agathion claims to teach its students history…but some histories are better left buried.

A wonderfully captivating dark academia fantasy from the award-winning author of A Hunger of Thorns and Deep is the Fen.

~*~

Page Whittaker is on her way to Agathion College in Rannoch Moor in Scotland, escaping a life of being an outcast in Florida following a deadly incident at her last school, St Catherine’s. She’s alone, with no friends and isolated, and feeling like there is something wrong with her. When she finds Agathion College, she knows it’s going to be a new start, where she can connect with people like her. Who understand her. Soon, she finds a herself immersed in a close group of friends with their own secrets: Cyrus, Ren, Gideon, Lacey and Oak. Each has their own history and identity, their own struggles that have brought them to Agathion. Things like not fitting in with their family, what their family expects, or because they’re not ‘right’ by society’s standards. But the perfect school is far from perfect. Page wakes up to find herself trapped by red thread after her first night, the classes are very classical – Ancient Greek and Roman works, and studying appears to be quite different to what she expects. In fact, there seems to be something about the school that isn’t quite right. Something unusual is going on, and Page is soon pulled into the secret society as she finds out that the perfect school is not so perfect. It’s filled with demons and magic, ancient curses and rituals that take place amongst standing stones. And whispers abound about Page and why she is there – what it means to have someone like her there.

In Unhallowed Halls, secrets and magic drive the novel amidst the dark academia themes in a school with a dark past, though it has a sense of an idealised education – its less of a genre or trope and more of an aesthetic because each story it is in can be very different, so it appears to be hard to determine exactly what it is. In Unhallowed Halls, it uses the idealised or romanticised aspects within dark academia to mask or cover up the truth, which unfolds slowly in the eerie boarding school environment. The story takes place over a few weeks, from the middle of September and leading up to Samhain and the first of November, so there is a distinct timeline that everything has to happen within. It’s dark and creepy, as it should be, evoking a sense of evil and dark magic to get what you want.

The magisters – the teachers – in this book are dark – there are a few in particular – Archon Lee, Magistra Hewitt, and Magister Zhang – who seem to know more than they let on. They’re characters you can’t be sure of, and there are some characters like Page’s friends that I found I had to learn to trust. Because trust can be fractured and ripped away at any time in this book.  There were moments when it felt like Page was the only one I could trust. Even her friends – the ebbing and flowing of how they were trusted made sense within the world of this book. It reflects a reality of learning to trust yourself, and learning to trust others, and what acceptance means. How it can empower us and help us. Unhallowed Halls is diverse as well, as the characters come from all over the world, all have a different ethnicity, a different family background and expectations, and there are diverse genders and sexualities as well – a message that it is okay to be yourself and accept yourself for who you are. Yet, it also examines the differences in class – because every student apart from Page is from a rich family, something that is made clear from the beginning and adds to the intrigue about her presence and why the staff at the school chose her to attend the school. But it all comes to a head where secrets come out, where Page finds out what is really happening – and she needs to find a way to save her friends and the school…if she can.

The complexities in this novel show that there are many ways to write fantasy and dark academia, and I think this is a really good book – one that has everything within it and plays with myth and ancient history, with references to certain myths to make this work and make Agathion College seem normal. But Agathion College is anything but normal, and Lili Wilkinson has made it work very well. I found it engrossing and engaging, and one that I felt unable to set aside, because I wanted to find out what happened even if it felt a little creepy at times with its dark themes that young adult audiences will enjoy if that is their thing. I have noticed that young adult books are becoming a lot more adventurous, with diverse characters, themes and stories which is why I love children’s and young adult books like this. They let the characters be who they are unapologetically, and this is a powerful thing. Unhallowed Halls is no exception, and it is going to be a novel that will have many readers and hopefully win some cool awards.