[In progress] [120,000] [Dark Academic/Fantasy] Book 1 of the Collegium of Ashmere

Hi all!

I'm Brittany, working full-time as a legal assistant in Maine and writing in whatever hours are left over. I've been working on this book for several months. I have 23 of 37 chapters ready for comment right now, with the rest still in progress, so this would be an ongoing thing rather than a one and done read. I'd love outside eyes on it, whether that's all 23 or just a few.

I'm also hoping to find other writers working in similar lanes (dark academia, literary fantasy, slow-burn mystery), because this has been a pretty solitary project and I miss having people to talk about projects with. Happy to trade critique. I read carefully rather than fast, so it might take me a bit, but I'll give real comments.

The Collegium of Ashmere

Celestine Kingston is starting her first year at the Collegium, the school where every ruling dynasty sends its heirs to be educated and ranked against each other. It should be easy for her. Her brother is Lord Kingston, head of the Crown and the Collegium's chancellor, and being a Kingston has always meant doors open before she reaches them.

But the coursework keeps circling the same official history of how the dynasties came to power, and Celestine keeps finding places where the story doesn't hold up. A record that contradicts the textbook version. A dynasty name nobody will discuss casually. A pattern in whose history gets remembered and whose gets quietly written out.

The closer she looks, the clearer it gets: the order her brother rules under wasn't just inherited. It was built, on purpose, out of what happened to the families who didn't survive the telling of it. And Celestine is starting to realize her own name might be one of the reasons why.