Power couple Maria and Lily have their sights set on a clear future: attending Stanford together, away from their boarding school, Acheron Academy. The only person who could ruin their chances is Delilah Dufrey, the school queen and nearly guaranteed receiver of a major scholarship. Maria and Lily are willing to do anything to make their future happen…including using a dark power involving the spirits on the school’s land that used to be a plantation. As things spiral out of control, blood will be spilt.

Robin Talley’s AS I DESCENDED takes Shakespeare’s Macbeth and transforms it into a chilling contemporary story with dark magic, a diverse and queer cast, and a haunted boarding school. Talley masters an eerie tone and dangerous atmosphere from the beginning, and readers should be cautious about reading this spooky tale at night. From scratching sounds on windows to stories of La Llorona to spirits who may or may not be deceased family, every chapter is riddled with a dark edge to send shivers up spines.

Lily, Maria, Brandon, and Mateo are beautifully written and develop well. The way Talley parallels the original Macbeth’s tension and stress of royal politics with modern day high school academic culture is masterfully (and a bit painfully) believable. Maria and Lily know how high the stakes are if they both don’t get into Stanford, and that introduces them to their dark journey. The way both the spirits and the characters themselves manipulate each other is wickedly done, but what makes the story so tragic is that each of the characters have good in them, especially in the beginning. You could easily see the bright future they would have had ahead of them, had their series of choices not changed everything.

AS I DESCENDED captures Shakespearean tragedy at its best with several vengeful spirits, a couple whose power together could change everything, and madness waiting around every corner.

Originally posted at YABC: http://www.yabookscentral.com/explore-ya-fiction/discussions/review?id=37714