Unhallowed Halls

Host Poppy and young reader Raph discuss Unhallowed Halls with author Lili Wilkinson.

Unhallowed Halls is Shortlisted for the 2026 CBCA Book of the Year Awards for Older Readers.

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Page Whittaker has always been an outcast. She's too smart, too quiet, too weird. And after the deadly incident that destroyed her only friendship at her old school, she needs a fresh start.

Agathion College is everything Page has ever wanted: a safe haven of wood-panelled halls and dusty books, on a remote Scottish moor. And for the first time in her life, she has a close group of friends. Cyrus, Ren, Gideon, Lacey and Oak help her feel at home at Agathion; the only problem is, they're all keeping secrets from her.

Page doesn't know it yet, but her perfect new school has a crooked foundation, rooted in an ancient clandestine society with rumoured ties to demonic magic. Soon, Page will learn that not everyone at Agathion is who they say they are. Least of all, her friends.

Agathion claims to teach its students history…but some histories are better left buried.

A wonderfully captivating dark academia fantasy from the award-winning author of A Hunger of Thorns and Deep is the Fen.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Hello and welcome to the CBCA Shadow Judging Podcast, where young readers share their thoughts on the shortlisted books. My name is Poppy Holden, and I'm the host for today's conversation. We'll be discussing the 2026 shortlisted title, Unhallowed Halls, by Lily Wilkinson. Joining us is our reader, Raf Glow, and later we'll also hear from Lily Wilkinson herself. First, Raf's response to the book. Would you like to share?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yes, I found that it was a lovely book. It was such an amazing read. I loved reading every single page of that. And like every single page I turned, there was a new thing jumping up at me, new surprises around every corner. It was a great experience. And I love the world building, I love the characters, I love the plot and all those plot twists, and it's a great book, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Cool. Uh thank you for that. But did you have a particular favorite moment or scene in the book?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

It was more so the events unfolding and like the way things unfolded and the way things didn't go quite as I would have expected. Because that's quite unique for me because I've read a lot of books, and so I can usually figure out what's gonna happen next. I know the plot before it happens, right? But this was the one book that that didn't happen, so it was it was great, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, for me, just a couple of moments I particularly liked was I mean it was one towards the end when it's obviously it's been building up to this, but the scent descriptions when she takes on all the souls, I thought that was so beautiful, and how also the structure changed in the book of how it was formatted, and how that's sort of hinted at throughout the book with like little mentions, but again, it was for me as well. The the twist of that being related to the souls was really interesting to me. I also enjoyed when Paige met that group of friends like properly for the first time, and how it set up the personalities and the dynamics, but also the addition of them doing the tarot cards and how that sort of established again that mystery or the eventual like plot twists around the magical elements in this book. In saying that, there are lots of teenage characters in this book with distinct personalities. Is there one you liked the most or resonated the most with you?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

I think I resonated the most with Oak. What I resonated with him was his sense of curiosity and his appreciation of the world around him. I love the way that he really is grounded to the earth that he's on and his knowledge of that. Uh, I really related with that. And speaking of, I also related to the way that Paige had a love of knowledge and a love of learning because that's the kind of person I am too. I really resonated with that because I understand a feeling of like of these books, of these literature, of all these things. Like, yes, ancient history books are great. Um, history is like a great subject, but then again, we also need a bit of literature for entertainment and all that, not just for learning. So I love that balance within her, and it really resonated with me too.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Yeah, I think the balance in characters is what stuck out to me the most as well. I really liked reading Lacey's character because I like how she started, like, definitely in the beginning, she's a bit different to the rest of the group. She isn't the rest of them a bit more, you know, nature-y rounded, as you said, and she's kind of a roadblock for Paige getting into the group. But as the book continues, and again with all those plot twists, she doesn't fall into that stereotypical, like mean girl trope. She isn't just defined by that meanness that like even Paige assumes at the start of the book her being like the popular girl, and it's instead explained with her protectiveness over her friends and her intelligence and strength as well, which again is revealed by those plot twists and going deeper into the fantasy world. And with that fantasy world, Unhallowed Halls has an extremely multi-layered world. Is fantasy a genre you often read? And how does this compare to those books? Or if this was new, how did you feel about reading this world building?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Yeah, of course. Um, yeah, I love a bit of fantasy. Fantasy is like my go-to genre. Um, so this really was a great book for me. With fantasy too, sometimes I drift off into these little branches of fantasy, like sometimes myths and legend, sometimes more into the sci-fi part of it. But with this one being mainly that trunk of fantasy instead of branches splitting off, it was great for me. It felt like a good match for me. So yeah, and then compared with other fantasy books, I feel like other fantasy books, like I was saying earlier, has the stereotypical plot and the way that things unravel, it was quite different to and quite unique to other stories, which I really enjoyed. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Yeah, for me personally, I actually don't read that much fantasy. So reading such a rich, different world is sometimes just very different to me. But I found that the for me, what really got me into the book and what made me fall in love with this world burning the fantastical elements is all the characters and their situations and their friendships that are just relatable, their high school experiences, just with that like layer of you know, demons and goddesses. So that like in the interactions and the strengths in the different relationships felt real for me and made me enjoy the book. How did you find that balance between the fantastical elements and real life problems?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah, that it was a very nice balance. It felt like I was drifting off into another world, but also felt grounded into my own world. So sometimes when books go like way off to another universe, another world, it's hard to ground yourself to how does this relate to the contemporary world right now. But with this, it's like, oh yeah, it's really relatable. It's a high school student attending a new school, so it was very relatable in a sense that it's not too fantastical and it's too out of reach for us today. And yeah, I really like that balance between it. I would say the fantasy part was a very nice balance, but I would like with the world building of the demons and of the goddesses, it was a very nice world building, but with other books too, they sometimes struggle with this. But just that context of these gods, right? If you've ever read the Percy Jackson series, the context of that, of those myths and of those Greek gods, there is context with that, and the stories that are behind those specific gods, and so you end up learning what that specific religion or that those specific gods were actually about. Like, because Percy Jackson was my my gateway into Greek mythology, and after that I got into Roman mythology, Egyptian mythology, and all that. So it was just that context of those gods. I I would have appreciated that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Yeah, just seeing a bit more into the history or backstory of that. Thank you for sharing all of that. Now we're joined by Lily Wilkinson, author of Unhallowed Holes. Do you have any thoughts on Ralph's opinions?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Oh my goodness, it's always such an incredibly kind of beautiful thing to be able to hear. You know, people say nice things about your book for a start, but particularly when it's young people, when it's the intended audience of the book, like most of the reviews that I read are written by adults. And so it's it's really lovely to be able to hear from like real life young people. Not only that they liked the book, but also that they really particularly appreciated the things that I worked really hard to achieve in the book. So, Raf, when you talked about like Oak and that connection that he has to sort of nature and to the ground and the earth, like that was something that I worked really, really hard on. And all of those kind of uh taking the book in the directions that you were not expecting was also something that I tried very, very hard to do. And Poppy, you know, you mentioned the the scent and the way that scent operates in the book, which was something that that I often try to work really hard on. So I'm glad you picked up on that. So yeah, it's it's really lovely to be able to hear people's feedback. Uh it's yeah, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Yeah. I felt pace also was quite important in this novel, as we've mentioned, with the different reveals of the scenes. Did you intend to have this incremental reveal? Is that yeah?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

So I am like a really big plot nerd. I love plot, I love to plan a book, and so I had this ridiculous spreadsheet for this book because it was quite complicated in like what is revealed and who knows what and who is overheard what, and not only like what the characters know, but also what the readers know, which don't always match. And then, of course, because of the thing that happens in the middle of the book that I won't spoil, a lot of the things that we thought we knew from the first half of the book now are no longer necessarily what we know because of reasons. So that was all really, really complicated and it absolutely broke my brain. So I needed a really good spreadsheet to track, you know, who knows what. And I wanted the pace to be really strong. So every chapter needs to have a bit of a twist, a bit of a reveal to kind of move that story on. But then also because I was trying to meld like the genres of dark academia, fantasy, and horror, I also needed to make sure that in every chapter I was hitting all of those vibes as well. So yeah, it was a big spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Yeah, I can imagine the effort put into I love the idea of having that unreliability of information you received and how, like, I mean, I felt that part like the book of just being like, oh, so none of that is necessarily true anymore. We've already talked about your characters and how deep and nuanced they are. How much fun did you have writing them?

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Oh much fun. I just love that little squad of weirdos. Like they're so like they were so delightful to spend time with. Um, you know, I loved writing Oak and his sensitivity and and sort of presenting a really different sort of cute boy in a book, you know, that he knits and he can talk to trees and he makes you a beautiful magical tea when you have your period. And like, what a dream boat. And also that he has this sort of interesting relationship with his own gender that I really wanted to explore in relation to his mother, who maybe I based on the famous author of a very popular fantasy book series who has the same initials, who could say, um, and also I loved writing Ren, who's such like a golden retriever. She's the Australian character, so I enjoy putting some good Australianisms in. Um, but she's so like enthusiastic, and then really balancing her with Gideon, who is so calm and gentle. And Gideon also was an important character for me to write because he's transgender. And so I really wanted him to be the one because there's quite a lot of instability of bodies in the book for various different reasons. And he is the character who has already kind of gone through that journey of realization and transformation. So I really wanted him to be able to be like a stable guide for the rest of them. And then Poppy, you mentioned Lacey, who I also really loved. I have a real bee in my bonnet about the mean girl trope because I think it's really lazy writing, because I don't think that mean girls or bullies ever exist in a vacuum. I think it's quite an anti-feminist trope that sort of says things about like girls and power and social power. And so I really love to sort of break open that trope a little bit. And so I love that she looks like a mean girl on the outside, but inside she is just like a raging anarchist who wants to burn everything down. And she was very funny to write as well. So yeah, I just love all of them. I kind of miss hanging out with them, really.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, reading it, the differences between them is so clear, and it's so I mean, it's awesome to have a book where you don't just have like the main character and then sort of the melding of everyone else, like they all have their own place in the book and are necessary to the plot. Well, many books in the short list are debuts. Your career is prolific. Many of your other books have also had detailed fantasy worlds. How do you keep generating these worlds?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

I think it's a bit of a compulsion, honestly. I just don't think I can help myself. Uh, yeah, it is lovely to be on the list with a whole bunch of debuts. One of them DM'd me when the short list came out saying that she had read uh pink book that I wrote a while ago when she was a teenager. So that made me feel very old. But lovely, lovely to hear. And yeah, I feel like I'm still relatively new to fantasy. I've only been writing fantasy for the past six years or so. And so I really love it. It's what I've always wanted to write. I felt like everything else that I've ever written was sort of training wheels to do this. And I love that process. Like when I fall asleep at night, that's how I kind of relax to fall asleep, is that I'm thinking about those fantasy worlds and kind of exploring them in my head and thinking about like the possibilities and the guardrails and the rules. And I just love that process of particularly being able to draw on mythology, like kind of pull on those strings of folklore or mythology that are sort of somehow familiar but strange to us, and to kind of then bend them to my own will is yeah, is just so much fun. I just love it.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Oh, thank you for that. Before we finish, one quick final question for Raf. In one sentence, why should someone read this book?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Well, because I've also read A Hunger of Thorns, which was another great book, but I did a shadow judging thing on that last year. Just the the fantasy world and the plot that you get twisted up into, it's a magical experience that you will never forget.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Thank you to Raph and Lily for joining us today, and thank you for listening to the CBCA Shadow J podcast.