King Sorrow
Joe Hill's King Sorrow puts six friends at a small Maine college through a summoning that works. The dragon they call up solves Arthur Oakes's problem, then bills them for it: one human sacrifice a year, for the next four decades. Dark academia horror with a long memory and a working sense of consequence.
From the review
The bargain comes with a payment schedule. Six friends at a small Maine college summon a dragon to solve one specific problem, the problem gets solved, and then the thing they called up wants to know who they are bringing next year. Joe Hill discloses the terms early. That should defuse the dread. It does the opposite. Arthur Oakes is a student at Rackham College with a library card, a new girlfriend, and a mother serving time over a man's death at a protest that went wrong. That last fact is the hinge. When a local dealer and her partner get leverage on Arthur and start using it to strip rare books out of the college collection, the ordinary exits are shut. He cannot go to the police. His mother is already inside. Hill builds that trap with a lawyer's patience, one clause at a time, and by the time Arthur's friends start floating impossible solutions, the impossible has become the reasonable option. Rackham supplies the dark academia surface: snow, a very good library, buildings that photograph well.
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