The Grimoire of Grave Fates Edited by Hanna Alkaf + Margaret Owen.
Collaborators: Preeti Chhibber, Kat Cho, Mason Deaver, Natasha Díaz, Hafsah Faizal, Victoria Lee, Jessica Lewis, Darcie Little Badger, Kwame Mbalia, L. L. McKinney, Tehlor Kay Mejia, Cam Montgomery, Marieke Nijkamp, Karuna Riazi, Randy Ribay, Yamile Saied Méndez, Kayla Whaley, and Julian Winters.
Delacorte, 2023. HC 464pp.
Crack open your spell book and enter the world of the illustrious Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary. There’s been a murder on campus, and it’s up to the students of Galileo to solve it. Follow 18 authors and 18 students as they puzzle out the clues and find the guilty party.
Professor of Magical History Septimius Dropwort has just been murdered, and now everyone at the Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary is a suspect.
Told from more than a dozen alternating and diverse perspectives, The Grimoire of Grave Fates follows Galileo’s best and brightest young magicians as they race to discover the truth behind Dropwort’s mysterious death. Each one of them is confident that only they have the skills needed to unravel the web of secrets hidden within Galileo’s halls. But they’re about to discover that even for straight-A students, magic doesn’t always play by the rules. . . (Publisher’s Copy
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Professor of Magical History Septimius Dropwort is a particularly hideous figure. The kind that suits a mystery where the murderer could be anyone. And yet, some will be eliminated from the running fairly quickly. Their contribution will be clue-finding and/or networking. And despite what the publisher’s copy says about “racing to discover the truth,” each character creates their own sense of urgency. Each author/character chooses how they’ll use their allotted hour.
It is particularly interesting to watch how the novel provides a motivation for each protagonist’s participation. Some will need to provide an alibi or evidence to support their innocence, but others will have to find a more creative approach: it’s according to a prophesy; it’s a quest; it’s an opportunity to be their favorite investigator; or—one of my favorites—because the powers that be are inept and the school (literally) needs to be able to move on as quickly as possible.
Like the 18 authors themselves: characters will read LGBTQ and Non-Binary, Native American, Black, Asian, Latinx, Muslim, *disabled, neurodiverse and socially awkward. Backgrounds span the socio-economic, magical inheritance, and familial structures. The novel even provides different passionate pursuits, some relational in nature, political, artistic, intellectual… The capture of different personalities, cultural histories, and motivations is a primary contributor to the strength and success of The Grimoire of Grave Fates.
The other strength has to be the editors. The most common collaborative project that is “edited by” is a theme-oriented anthology of collected short-stories. We tend to think little about what that means other than editors collect the stories and put them in some semblance of order. But the impressively coherent result of this murder mystery can only be the fault of its editors. They held a vision for the narrative and the writers fell into line. While each piece is distinct, everyone is working toward the unfolding of the who-dunnit, and why. Will the sequence of hours transition smoothly or maintain a single story pacing? No. The project will make up for that in other ways.
Where we learn about a student in their chapter, over the course of the novel we’ll learn who Dropwort was–the contexts that created/nurtured him, and how Galileo Academy (and its staff) plays its part. Septimius Dropwort is, in a sense, a group project—which suits those themes of what/who goes into the making (and murdering) of a person.
Not all of the characters and their antics are restricted to their chapter and so they may become the respected property of other authors. You can tell there was collaboration here as the shared characters remained consistent, the events they inspire follow through coherently. I would have loved to have seen some a little more frequently, but that’s a personal preference. I’m still marveling at how well pieced together this project is. And given how much of the setting and its world can account for, I marvel at how the editors keep their 18 threads over 18 hours so nicely woven.
The editors and contributors gave themselves a lot of room to play structurally and cleverly used certain devices as thread. Each chapter provided a certain expectation: a character physically described and their internal landscape telegraphed; their backgrounds and their reasons for being at Galileo provided; a connection to the murder played out. How that looked varied (occasionally). The opening character has a fairly conventional narrative, but the second is told in the form of a transcript from his interrogation. The evidence file reportage that alternates between characters may differ in nature; an object, an exchange of texts or emails. Notes, texts, announcements over the loudspeaker are interspersed organically. (I read the novel as an ebook, so I’m guessing the format is even more pleasing in paper form).
The grounds and inhabitants of Galileo Academy are another playground. The flying gyroscope that is the Academy with its different schools is presently hovering above Stockholm where Neutrals (non-magical) and Students (sorcerers, witches, etc) are completing an exchange program. It is a fantastic and strange world. And it is a marvelous opportunity for the storytellers to create a slow but compelling reveal of the murder mystery at hand as it will require us to become acquainted with the world and its inhabitants. And so each author and their student offer a greater familiarity with some aspect of the Academy than others whether it be an administrator, professor, a creature, location, history, rule, magical thing, etc.
One of my favorite aspects of The Grimoire of Grave Fates is that the magic– where it is sourced and how it is articulated—is diverse and inclusive. The imaginations and cultural roots behind it’s invention/expression are truly lovely. I feel the editors led with one of the best writers to set the groundwork for what is to come, Marieke Nijkamp and their character Wren.
While Nijkamp sets a tone for just how inclusive and diverse the perspectives might be, the atmospheric is definitely left to each writer. The Grimoire of Grave Fates will provide humor, romance, friendship, combat, mythology, spooky-shit, cute animals and vicious ones, pop culture references, family dramas, charming liars, and lots of puns. As long as the Reader has an interest in the mysteries of magic and/or murder, there is something or someone for them in The Grimoire of Grave Fates. And if the Reader’s experience is anything like mine, they’ll find a new author to pursue.
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Highly recommended: for lovers of magic systems, mythology, murder/mysteries, and/or dark academia. And if you could use something refreshingly different. If you aren’t already pursuing every novel Hanna Alkaf authors: do so, even her middle grade. It’ll be worth your time to seek out other anthologies with these authors, and not just their novels.
** examples: Chronic pain; brace-wearer; scoliosis; wheel chair user