The Grimoire of Grave Fates
Ratings5
Average rating2.8
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. A prestigious school for young magicians, the Galileo Academy has recently undergone a comprehensive overhaul, reinventing itself as a roaming academy in which students of all cultures and identities are celebrated. In this new Galileo, every pupil is welcome—but there are some who aren't so happy with the recent changes. That includes everyone's least favorite professor, Septimius Dropwort, a stodgy old man known for his harsh rules and harsher punishments. But when the professor's body is discovered on school grounds with a mysterious note clenched in his lifeless hand, the Academy's students must solve the murder themselves, because everyone's 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. . . . Contributors include: Cam Montgomery, Darcie Little Badger, Hafsah Faizal, Jessica Lewis, Julian Winters, Karuna Riazi, Kat Cho, Kayla Whaley, Kwame Mbalia, L. L. McKinney, Marieke Nijkamp, Mason Deaver, Natasha Díaz, Preeti Chhibber, Randy Ribay, Tehlor Kay Mejia, Victoria Lee, and Yamile Saied Méndez
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Rating: 3.3⭐️
When I picked this book up I was really curious about the logistical aspects of how you put together a book like this.
This is a murder mystery but each chapter is from a different POV and written by a different author, also each chapter takes place sequentially in the story. And I was and still am, fascinated by how you put together a murder mystery where one character's actions from one chapter would affect all other chapters, with 20 different authors!!
One of the best parts of this book is all the fantastic authors in it. Each chapter I read I was so invested I never wanted to switch to the next POV, but then next chapter I would feel the same. Also the list of authors is incredibly diverse and so are the characters they've written. There are many LGBTQIA+ characters, people of color and characters with disabilities. I would have loved to read any of these chapters as a full length book.
I loved so many details of this book: All the different types of magic, the magical school, the characters, the writing... I was also quite invested in some of the pairings, crushes etc. And I loved how usually there is a “chosen one” in these types of books, but this subverts that by making everyone think that they have to solve the mystery that it's their destiny to do so, which honestly feels a lot more realistic in this kind of a setting.
The resolution to the mystery was a bit of a let down. I was quite invested throughout and there were fun little red herrings and clues sprinkled throughout. But paying close attention didn't end up mattering that much since only a few of the chapters played into the solution.
Also the person who died is so villainous that he's more of a caricature of a character, and you're just left feeling good riddance to bad trash, do we have to solve his murder?
General note: There are a lot of characters so a reference sheet of some kind might be helpful as you're reading.
Thank you to Delacorte Press and NetGalley for the eARC!!
