Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske: Five Scholars, One Dead Body and I  was totally hooked!

One of Us is Lying meets a healing academy, with dead students sending planned letters. I was completely hooked.

Synopsis

Grey’s Anatomy meets A Deadly Education in this dark academia fantasy from USA Today bestselling author Freya Marske.

At the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr, every mage with the healer’s gift has five years to master their power and to prepare for the infamous Grand Exam—a five-day trial whose results will determine their entire future.

The list of exam rules includes:
• You will perform five practical cases.
• Your exam group is chosen at random.
• You pass together, or fail together.

It does not include:
• On the first day, your exam group will find a classmate’s dead body in the exam hall.

And as they will soon discover, this particular group all have something to hide… and all have a connection with the dead girl, a brilliant scholar who would have been first in their class.

Five scholars. Five secrets. Five days in which to solve a murder, pass the most important exam of their lives, and uncover a secret larger than all of their own combined. One with the potential to change the world.

Are you ready?

Let’s begin.

Review

A resounding 5 stars!

Thank you so much to @panmacmillanexport for my copy!

In her acknowledgements, Freya Marske says that more of herself and her own life experience went into this book than any of her others. I can confirm it was absolutely worth it.

If I had to describe the plot in a nutshell: One of Us is Lying, but set in a healing academy, with the dead sending planned letters.

What makes it so special is the combination of richly nuanced characters hiding significant secrets, a gripping who-did-it mystery, and a world built around mage magic, political intrigue, and deep social distrust of healers in the wake of the serrage, a mysterious illness with symptoms eerily reminiscent of lasting COVID. The whole thing is told from five points of view, one for each scholar sitting their Grand Exam over five days of healing cases. Their group must pass as a whole to graduate.

On the morning of their first exam, they find Ysabel Caudotte, one of the most promising aspiring healers of her generation, dead on the floor of the exam room. Who did this?

The story opens with Moyna, who was forced into this career by her parents and is deeply cynical about it. Graduating means leaving Sieuxerre to work as a healer in her parents’ home country, a prospect she dreads so much that sabotaging her own exam has genuinely crossed her mind. Moyna was a hard character to warm up to. I didn’t dislike her, but her coldness kept me at arm’s length for a while. What I did admire, consistently, was her intellect and her fierce determination to choose her own fate.

Estienne Marcelle is the Master Healer’s son, wealthy, well-connected, and insufferably arrogant on the surface. But the more we get to know him, the clearer it becomes that it’s all a front. Underneath is someone deeply passionate about healing and genuinely ready to change the world.

Jehan is buoyant, reckless, and brilliant in his own chaotic way. He reminded me of a very excitable cocker spaniel. He has also been secretly sleeping with Estienne for five years and is hiding something that could get him sent to work for the army.

Clement was Ysabel’s best friend, the kind of person who loved basking in someone else’s light and staying comfortably in the shadow. Shaped by a difficult childhood, he had learned to prefer being overlooked. Watching him grow over the course of these five days, watching the world finally see his own brilliance, had me going full protective mom. He was my second favorite.

And then there’s Alys, my absolute favorite. So misunderstood from the start, dismissed as silly and untalented by everyone around her, she had internalized all of it and constantly doubted her own abilities. She was used to being reduced to nothing. And yet she had so much light to give. Her character arc gave me real joy.

As you can probably tell from the length of this review, I have a lot of feelings about this book, and I’m not sure I’ve even done it justice.

Read this if you love:

-good writing;

-captivating and nuanced characters;

-crime solving;

-political intrigue;

-magic;

-found family;

-a diverse cast;

And above all else: character growth!

If I could, I would push this book into everyone’s hands.

Thanks for reading.

Sophie