Magic, Mystery, and Mastery: Exploring The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

Synopsis

Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

“Look at you, eating magic like you’re one of us.”

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.

Review

5 stars

Oh wow! It’s been some time since a book surprised me in such a good way!
When people talk about magic school, I am always on board but I didn’t expect the book to be so spot on about teaching techniques, running a school, raising teenagers into young responsible adults etc.

We follow Saffy or Dr Walden the director of Chetwood School, a boarding school for magicians somewhere in England. And being privy to her inner thoughts as a director, we learn A LOT about what it takes to run such establishment! I found it FASCINATING!

But of course that’s not all! You have demons lurking everywhere, drawn to kids with magic like moth to a flame. All these little sorcerers would make for tasty snacks!
And one of Saffy’s task is to avoid demon incursion.

Of course when you have very talented teenage magicians who love experimenting, you can expect something to go wrong…

I won’t say more about the plot just know that you have:
-sapphic and bi representation ;
-demonic action (from imps invading smartphones to level eleven class demons);
-acts of bravery (putting oneself in front of danger to save your charges);
-an extremely smart heroine who totally kick behinds (Saffy is brilliant and reading about her magic was mesmerizing);
-an enemy lurking in the shadows (and not always the most obvious but I guessed it and I wanted to shake Saffy so hard!);
-empathy, passion, (I would have loved having a teacher like Saffy, she IS how professors should all be)…
-very well fleshed out characters (from our teenagers to the adult staff)

Magic aside it rang so true I was wondering if Emily Tesh was a former teacher or school director!

I read this in record time and was extremely satisfied with the plot, the writing and all the feels!

Thank you for my ARC OrbitBooks I had a grand time reading this story!

Thanks for reading.

Sophie