Secret societies, dimly-lit halls, teetering stacks of time-worn books and coffee-stained papersโdark academia has so many tangible elements, but the lifeblood pulsing through its veins is its undying pursuit of forbidden knowledge. At its heart, the genre centers around death and morality, and the history of how humans have struggled to reconcile their ouroboros relationship through the ages. That kind of knowledge is power, a weapon or a tool that can harm or healโthe genre of dark academia explores that tightrope, and what itโs like to fall on either side of it.
When I was toying with setting my second thriller in a haunted library, I decided that the library itself would be a labyrinth of deadly knowledge, both for the characters on a plot level, but also in terms of book antiquity. In the story, the Daedalus Libraryโdubbed โThe Library of Deathโ for multiple unfortunate reasonsโwas created by an eccentric woman said to be obsessed with death. Sheโs amassed a gothic building teeming with macabre curiosities, from a hallway lined with plaster cast faces of the dead, to chilling sculptures of Death across cultures and time, to a room dedicated to arsenic-bound books where one touch can cause the skin of your fingers to melt away.
I am delighted to say that nearly all of these bizarre elementsโthe books, artifacts, and bizarre historical tidbitsโin the story exist, showcasing just how fascinating and deadly the book world can be. There really is a 17th century poison cabinet disguised to look like a theology tome. The untranslatable Voynich manuscript, filled with consistent script no oneโs been able to decode, and drawings of plants and creatures that do not exist, is one of the most fascinating true mysteries I’ve found. In recent years, there really was a manuscript forger named Marino Massimo de Caro whose Galileo forgery fooled the antiquarian world for years. Bookbinding has been a deadly art in centuries past, with some tomes being bound in human skin, or in the Victorian era, dyed with arsenic dye. Death masks were another bizarre trend back in the day (those Victorians again), with Princeton Universityโs Firestone Library housing the largest collection in the US (according to the story, the Daedalusโ collection recently beat out this one).
One of the ways this eerie setting nestled perfectly within the dark academic genre is the unflinching approaches to death. Think of the popular phrases Carpe diem and memento moriโconcepts that have trickled downstream through the centuries, reminding us that our hearts are ticking timebombs in our chests, and someday theyโre going to hit zero. Dark academia asks what our livesโour moralityโmeans if there is nothing after death, or alternatively, what they mean if something really does wait beyond the veil. And just as some people might kill in their lust for knowledge, others might do the same to keep those deadly questions unanswered. The question then becomes, what will you risk to know the truth?
These complex questions of death and life, morality and mortality are a labyrinth that have kept us wandering its twisted paths, driving humans mad for centuries. And while the book world is a strange and wondrous place, itโs dark and cutthroat, too, and as the characters in The Library After Dark discover, some secretsโsome knowledgeโare only bought with blood.
Ande Pliego began writing stories when she discovered she could actually wield her overactive imagination for good. A lover of stories with teeth, she writes books involving mind games, dark humor, general murder and mayhem, and most importantly, finding the hope in the dark.
When not reading or writing, she can usually be found dabbling in art, scheming up her next trip, or making constant expeditions to the library. Born in Florida, raised in France, and having left footprints all over the globe, she is settled in the Pacific Northwest, USA, with her little son. Ande Pliego is the bestselling author of You Are Fatally Invited and The Library After Dark.
