As far as campus horror novels go, As I Descended is quite good. Students Maria and Lily have dappled in dark forces and have invoked the forces of the dead which begin to have massive consequences of their academic ecosystem.

What was interesting about As I Descended is the depths that people will go for power. However, the overarching belief of goodness makes As I Descended added depth.

As much as I enjoyed the story I didn't feel that I fully connected with the characters and I felt that more could have been made of the campus setting.

As I Descended by Robin Talley is available now.

For more information regarding Robin Talley (@robin_talley) please visit www.robintalley.com.

For more information regarding Harlequin (@HarlequinBooks) please visit www.harlequin.com.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

Book Review:

I started reading As I Descended a couple of years ago but I decided to put it down on a whim. Then less than a month ago I wanted to finish the story so picked it up again. It was this that changed my experience. By the end I was hooked. As I Descended is a haunting and creepy read that will get you through the Halloween season.

I think one of the reasons why I stopped reading As I Descended was because at the beginning I wasn't fully connecting with the characters and didn't really understand the story. This was probably to do with me as overall and by the end I did connect with Robin Talley's writing and it was definitely that which kept me invested in the story.

I think that there are three things that really kept me invested in the story. The first is that it is of course based on Macbeth by Shakespeare. By the end I was connecting the pieces to the Macbeth story that I quite enjoyed. I mean just the way that characters represented other characters in the original story was so well done. Robin Talley must have done some serious planning to get it right. She definitely did it right. Just so good.

I also really did connect with the setting which is a boarding school. I have seen in some reviews that people thought that this not used as much as they hoped, I do think that the way that it was used was so good. I always think of boarding schools as creepy and scary places and this book definitely confirmed that. I'm kind of happy that I don't have to go to schools anymore including the boarding school kind.

By far the best part of this book is the characters. In her books, Robin Talley creates really diverse characters in terms of LGBTQIA+ characters but this book does include Hispanic (I think) representation and a disabled character. Even though they are seen throughout the story, the characters are not just their representation. I also feel hard for some of the main characters and it was really, really sad when they die. (If you know the story of Macbeth this is not really a spoiler.) I also think that the way that the characters were fleshed out was just so good and I loved them.

I did just really enjoy my time reading this book so this is a solid recommendation from me!

The Verdict:

As I Descended is a Macbeth retelling that is spooky, atmospheric and wonderfully entertaining. A Halloween must read!

Unfortunately, this book was a let down for me. I adored Talley's debut novel, Lies We Tell Ourselves, but this just didn't have the same essence and I was by no means captivated. I enjoyed the premise, and once I realised that it was a Macbeth retelling, it made a lot more sense to me. However, the characters did note excite me at all. Even from the beginning, I was doubting whether I would be interested in them enough to finish the book. I loved the diversity in the book, and in all of Talley's book, but this wasn't my favourite.

A brilliant take on MacBeth, eerily lifted into a Texan boarding school setting. Violent, scary and full of distrust. It will have you on the edge of your seat.

As I Descended is very loosely based on Shakespeare's Macbeth (and I really loved Macbeth!), and its setting is at a haunted boarding school.. The narration switches between several characters, but the main protagonists if you like are Maria and Lily.

Maria and Lily are in a relationship and their hope is to move on to the same college after they graduate from the boarding school, but to achieve this Maria needs to win the Kingsley Prize but she can't get past popular girl Delilah who is top of the leader board. Not to mention time is running out.

An Ouija board game with friends goes wrong, and someone promises you that you can have what you desire...but how far would you go?

Here is where I refuse to give anymore details, because there is such a wealth of awesomeness that you need to read for yourself. This book kept me on my toes, the creepy plot kept me up late I do confess and really gave me the shivers. Robin Talley has done a fantastic job.

Set in a southern boarding school, Archeron Academy, As I Descended is written as the re-imagining of Macbeth a very dark but interesting read.

When the main characters Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten one of two LBGT couples in this dark tale and a few others, play with an Ouija board it breaks opening a world of trouble for not only the players but the rest of their classmates.

The book is creepy and dark, but Robin Talley is an excellent story teller because I wanted to hurry and finish this story to see what happens to all the students.

One student, in particular, is a problem for Maria and Lily because she is first in line for the Cawdor Kingsley Foundation Prize and there is only one given yearly and Marie wants it. Not only that but Lily has some issues with the school politics if you will that cause her to have some doubts about her place in the school dynamics. But one thing Lily has NO doubt about for sure is taking Maria with her when she moves on to Stanford. By any means necessary.

This story will appeal to a YA audience as it deals with complicated relationships, jealousy, and revenge.

I highly recommend this book if you like dark and creepy tales from beyond that deal with the occult and a cast of characters who are fascinating.

Power resides in all kinds of places these days so when Robin Talley decided to take Macbeth as inspiration the first thing she did was change the seat of power being vied for to an American High School.

Maria Lyon is one of her schools most popular students. But since she fell in love with her roommate Lily Boiten there are obstacles in her path that she never dreamed of. They can’t come out but if Maria can just win the Cawdor Kingsley Prize they’ll be assured the same college and four more years in a shared dorm room. But one thing stands in their way, Maria’s one-time friend and the most popular girl Delilah Dufrey. Lily and Maria are willing to do anything―absolutely anything―to unseat Delilah for the scholarship. They hold a seance together with Maria’s best friend Brandon but things get out of hand and before long feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what’s imagined, the girls must attempt to put a stop to the chilling series of events they’ve accidentally set in motion.

I’ve read a fair few Shakespeare plots reimagined over the last couple of years and although most have been lit-fic – written by some of our greatest writers; don’t think that this one – written for the YA market by a fairly new (though already award winning) author can’t compete. It can and it does.

For a start, this isn’t a straight up re-write and some of the ways it honours the original are subtle and quite frankly a little twisty. There are no witches, instead she cast the three main characters in the fortune telling role through the seance, and there are plenty of other deviations too.

One of the other aspects I liked was the fact that there LGBT+ leading characters and that they weren’t some kind of freak show or tragedy device. Don’t get me wrong, awful things are done by and happen to these characters but awful things also happen to the straight characters. Not only that but the issues of being out or staying closeted are raised and stereotypes about LGBT+ people and drug-taking are circumvented. The characters are driven by deep and passionate loves but the fact that they are same gender in these cases is just a fact, it’s obvious that these characters could easily have been driven the same way if they were straight and there were obstacles to their happiness.

This is a great mix of psychological horror and waking drama with a big dollop of the supernatural stirred through it.

4 Bites

NB I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in return for an honest review. The BookEaters always write honest reviews

I had to give up on this one.. it really did not appeal to me at all.