These Dreaming Spires
Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane, eds.
Titan Books (September 2, 2025)
Reviewed by Carson Buckingham
These Dreaming Spires is the latest literary effort by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane. It is part of the newly popular horror genre labeled ‘Dark Academia’, and surprise, surprise, all the stories take place in schools…the new haunted houses of the millennium’s second decade.
There are a dozen stories in this anthology, and they are all good ones. Here’s what you get:
“Tallow’s Cove” by Erica Waters – Lana Waldron is writing her thesis about haunted sacred spaces in the US that represent historical wrongdoing. The other places she visited didn’t show much evidence of the paranormal, but the St. Clement’s College chapel is another story—just don’t fall asleep and spend the night there!
“Utilities” by Genevieve Cogman – Studying and working inside a virtual reality (read that, living inside the server), Madeleine, a student at Scholomanz School, a virtual university, is working on coding utilities around midnight…but on the hour, the campus clock chimes 13. And suddenly, nobody recognizes her anymore…and the reason for that is horrifying and unexpected. One of my favorites.
“Destroying Angel” by Jamison Shea – Evander, an expelled Philosophy major, still sneaks into the University of Whitby library to steal books and to sell drugs. When he steals a rare book, entitled The Book of the Damned, we learn what self-love is really all about…
“Within the Loch” by Elspeth Wilson – Why is the Schoolmistress so attached to the Loch? And why does she panic when the school votes to drain it?
“Advanced Dissection” by Taylor Grothe – At Hallenrod University in Switzerland, there are only a few prestigious spots open in the Dissection class, and only the best of the best get in. But there’s an awful lot of fine print that goes with it. Nice twist at the end.
“God, Needy, Enough With the Screaming” by Olivie Blake – Seraphina goes from being a top-performing college student to an asylum resident in the blink of an eye…and all because of her boyfriend and an experiment that her father is involved with. Another favorite.
“Poisoned Pawn” by De Elizabeth – Gives a horrifying new meaning to codependence.
“Open Book” by Kit Mayquist – An ancient grimoire, an Archivist, and a student who takes competition to a whole new level.
“A Short List of Impossible Things” by Faridah Abike-Iyimide – How far would you go to be with someone again? Someone you truly love? Isadora Lex is willing to do the impossible… literally…in this epistolary story.
“The Harrowing of Lucas Mortier” by M. K. Lobb—Lucas Mortier seeks spiritual salvation, as he is convinced his soul is forfeit due to the death of his girlfriend when he was behind the wheel. A mysterious woman offers to help him, leading to a wonderful twist at the end of the story. Another of my favorite stories.
“The Coventry School for the Arts” by Ariel Djanikian – Katherine is an art student who is the product of an emotionally absent father and an out-of-control mother. Her father is the art teacher at the school she attends. He paints a woman and a child obsessively and exclusively, and will not allow anyone in his studio…ever. Katherine has a great deal of talent, and the only people who are at all nice to her are her father’s teaching assistant and another girl her age named Abigail. Things get stranger and stranger until the truth comes out in a beautiful twist at the conclusion. Another favorite of mine.
“The Magpies” by Kate Alice Marshall – At a school of magic (and aren’t we all getting sick of those), two young students, one who makes Cassius’ ‘lean and hungry look’ seem like a request to pass the potatoes, and the other devoted to kindness. I would have put this story in the middle somewhere, and ended the book with the much stronger “The Coventry School for the Arts.”
All in all, though, the stories presented had sufficient variety and depth to keep me interested in what could have easily degenerated into mind-numbing repetitiveness, due to the specific and narrow nature of the theme. All were well-written, imaginative, and I enjoyed each one. Marie and Paul did a fine job of choosing the stories for this volume, and you will take something away with each of them and be mulling them over long after you close the book. ‘Stick to the ribs’ literature like this is becoming increasingly difficult to find in this age of ‘let’s crank out 12 books a year, who cares if they’re any good’ nonsense, so it is nice to see the concern for quality, and the thought that was put into this book. I highly recommend These Dreaming Spires to the horror reader who enjoys thinking.
5 out of 5 stars
