I've never read a dark academia book from a teachers perspective and I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. It's a unique take on an old format of a magical school. I liked following the teachers and I've already recommended this to some friends who are educators. Also, I enjoyed the sapphic romance!

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for this eARC!

As the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy, one of the most prestigious boarding schools in England, Dr. Walden's day is full of everything from faculty meetings to demons trying to break through the school's wards. She is constantly torn between keeping up on mundane admin while trying to stop idiot teenagers from messing with magic beyond their capabilities. But what is Dr. Walden to do when the greatest threat to the school might be herself?

THE INCANDESCENT is a fresh spin on the magical academia genre, where the overworked, underpaid faculty at an elite boarding school get to shine front and center. Nearly, if not all, magical academia books I have read have been from the POV of the students. I've seen plenty of books where a group of scrappy teenagers discovers a dark conspiracy afoot at their school. They sneak behind teachers' backs, dabble in a bit of forbidden magic or research, and generally defy authority, all in the name of saving the day.

But let's face it, many teenagers aren't noble heroes on a quest - they're idiots. Enter the exasperated staff of Chetwood Academy, trying to help shape students on their quest to discover their path in life, while also making sure they don't fall prey to demonic possession because they cut corners while drawing a summoning diagram. Dr. Walden and her staff are just as often trying to save the students from themselves as much as from outside threats, all while grading papers, offering career counseling, and managing the school's budget.

THE INCANDESCENT also takes a moment to examine and critique the whole structure of elitist boarding school culture. It examines the notion that what parents aren't paying for isn't really a top tier education; they're paying for their child to join the network of alumni scattered across the country and use that network for the rest of their lives. It's the social connections that truly matter to most parents, the security of knowing their child will have plenty of contacts who will open doors for them in the future. This in turn perpetuates systemic class disparities, as most often only those who can pay for the connections, get the connections.

I want to take a moment to note that while the marketing for this book makes a point of mentioning this is a sapphic story, you shouldn't expect a sweeping romance. Relationships are just one part of Dr. Walden's life, and certainly not the focus - which is good, because I found those romance dynamics one of the weaker parts of the story. On the one hand, I liked that Dr. Walden is grappling with the complications of juggling potential romance with the demands of her career. But there was just no chemistry between Dr. Walden and her love interest, leaving not particularly interested in what happened on that front.

THE INCANDESCENT is a worthy addition to the shelves of magical academia, and any fan of the genre should give it a read. It examines school culture from the rare perspective of the teacher, but it doesn't put forth that the teachers have all the answers; one of the best scenes is a student who challenges Dr. Walden's notion of how well their life situation and an elite boarding school education track go together. It gives you food for thought while also being an entertaining blend of school exams and demonic invasions, making THE INCANDESCENT a definite recommend.

Emily Tesh is one of those authors that I’ve been meaning to try for quite some time and just have somehow never gotten around to. I recently got approved for an ARC (obligatory this hasn’t impacted the contents of this review, etc.) for her recently released novel, The Incandescent, so I figured this was a good place to start with her work.

Set at a boarding school that teaches magic (not a magic boarding school, it’s just one more subject for students, along with more mundane topics like languages and sciences), the book is focused on Dr. Walden, the Director of Magic. We follow her as she teaches students a discipline of summoning demons, makes efforts to protect the school from demonic incursions, and deals with her complex interpersonal relationships with the students and other staff.

I loved books about magical schools as a teenager, and I still do as an adult, but often wish there existed more of them that had mature themes. This absolutely delivers on that front—Walden is a super compelling character, and I loved reading about things from her perspective. She’s in her late 30s (please give me more fantasy books with main female characters that are not aged 16-25) and balances out a weary sort of cynicism with a genuine desire to help the students.

The school setting is also great, but it’s very English. I went through primary school in England, so I have a basic passing knowledge of how the school system there works, but I was frequently confused as to which group of students were being referenced (ages, Years, and forms are used pretty much interchangeably), so this is probably going to be even more confusing for any American readers. The plotting was a little bit odd—the first third of the novel feels almost like a prologue to the rest. This does make the middle of the novel drag on a bit, but there is a strong ending.

I really liked this and would recommend. I’ll definitely pick up more of Tesh’s work in the future.

I really enjoyed this sapphic dark academia fantasy novel! Thank you so, so much to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read this title!

Blurb:
"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School 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.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh is the dark academia novel I didn’t know I was waiting for. Not because it’s dripping in shadows and secrets (though it is), but because it hands the narrative reins to someone we rarely hear from in these magical school stories: the adult in the room.

Dr. Walden, Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy, is not your usual brooding, brilliant student protagonist. She’s a mid-thirties academic, painfully competent, quietly awkward, and methodically unraveling magical disasters like it’s her job—because it is. And for once in fantasy, it’s not the teen heroes saving the day while the professors conveniently vanish into plot holes. Walden shows up, and watching her navigate bureaucracy, demonic incursions, and her own emotional landscape is weirdly riveting.

This book has the bones of classic fantasy—demons, secret knowledge, arcane history—but it’s clothed in something much more grounded. Think faculty meetings and spellwork, gothic buildings with bad plumbing, magical theory next to mundane course loads. It’s the kind of realism that makes the magic feel all the more earned.

Tesh brings an elegant, dry wit to her writing, and Walden’s perspective offers a refreshing, nuanced critique of academia from the inside. This isn’t your typical chosen-one story… it’s about power, responsibility, institutional rot, and the subtle emotional weight of being a woman in her late 30s trying to keep it all together. The fact that Walden is allowed to be messy, self-reflective, and not have it all figured out is a quiet act of rebellion against the usual tropes.

In short: if you’ve ever rolled your eyes at magical schools where the teens outsmart every adult or if you’re simply craving a fantasy that feels like it grew up a little, The Incandescent is for you. Sharp, thoughtful, and grounded in the real-world logistics of running a magical institution, it’s easily one of the most original takes on the genre I’ve read.

so hard these days with finding sapphic books that are about anything other than just... realizing you're sapphic? this was a great refresher. plot that had me on the edge of my seat the whole time with a relationship that slowly, and rewardingly, blossomed, and lighthearted moments to keep you engaged in between. such a good book, thank you ms. tesh

While I don't know if anything will be able to top Some Desperate Glory, The Incandescent was still amazing! I started the book Thursday afternoon and stayed up until midnight to finish it. I love how it plays with the magical school genre. Some of the key tropes/plot devices are turned on their heads, but it never makes fun of it. It's both a celebration of the magical school and reminder about how responsible, caring adults are necessary for young people to grow.

Our main character is Sapphire "Saffy" Walden. I immediately loved her and if you don't we're not friends anymore. I related to her in many ways (amongst other things, she set off my autism tingle) and was always rooting for her to succeed. But that said, boy does she make some capital "b" Bad decisions. Particularly in the romantic department. You can guess pretty early who the 'true' love interest is, but Walden botches it, repeatedly. Luckily (I say sarcastically), a hot guy comes along. He set off my "no good, stay away" radar immediately, but Walden ignored me yelling at the pages. How rude.

I LOVED the world-building, particularly the demons. In many ways, the world is the same as ours. The book takes place in England at a fancy English boarding school, expect the boarding school specializes in teaching magic. Magic requires a combination of effort and talent, and occasionally someone has so much talent that oops, they do magic spontaneously as a kid and bad things happen. Magic is powered by a demon world that sits parallel to our own. There's everything from low-level demons like imps to super powerful arch-demons. Demons can possess anything that has been assigned personhood, which is complicated as we humans like to talk to furniture, devices, and objects, which is enough for a demon to possess it.

One aspect I really enjoyed was how magic is approached like science. It's explored, people run experiments, etc. There's mention of an ongoing experiment in the desert of Arizona that I desperately want to learn more about. Walden basically has a PhD in a specific type of magic (summoning demons). I loved how the author explains magic in a way that is easy to understand, but also hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud often while reading this book. Her description of how we "you" objects, the demons in the clock and the copy maker, were absolutely delightful.

One part I really liked was how, through her descriptions, you could tell who *would* be the protagonist if this was a typical YA magic school book. Walden's star pupil Cassie is clearly made to be a fictional teenage heroine, and don't get me wrong, she goes through a LOT over the course of the book. But Walden and the other adults around her refuse to give up on Cassie, and they fight for her to be able to be young, and student, not a savior of the world. Cassie has a group of friends that in another book is the ragtag crew, including the all-powerful teenage love interest. Just because they're not the protagonists doesn't mean they don't also help save the day, but they're only able to do so due to what Walden's taught them.

There are several lines from The Incandescent that stood out to me, but most prominent is a line that is repeated internally several times by Walden. In my opinion, it gets at the heart of the novel itself. Walden loves to teach, but is not always great with interpersonal interactions. Nonetheless, sometimes she is the one helping a student through a tough situation. In those moments, she reminds herself "every child was every adult's responsibility". Which, yes! This may be a school, and there are individuals directly responsible for any given student, but they're not always available or the right person for what that child needs. And in a time of crisis, the most important adult is the adult that is *there*. And as adults, we owe every child our responsibility. While coming from different places, it echoes the quote from James Baldwin "The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe".

Reading The Incandescent, I can tell Emily Tesh is from the UK (even if it wasn't in the author bio in the back). There is a LOT of UK terminology (particularly in regards to schooling) that went right over my head. Terms used repeatedly I got the gist of, but a lot of it I just ignored. I think most of the terms should be google-able if you're particularly confused.

Overall, The Incandescent is a brilliant follow-up to Some Desperate Glory. The writing is engaging and funny, the characters are great, and every nook and cranny of the world feels filled. It doesn't retread the same ground covered in Some Desperate Glory, but it doesn't shy away from the tougher topics. Discussions of class consciousness and who gets to benefit from magical private schools (not the poor the magical kids, that's for sure) are woven throughout. She doesn't beat you over the head with it, but if you don't come out of the experience with some deep thoughts of your own, I'm not sure you read it right.

This was just okay. I don't think I could really get into the magic system as much as I wanted to for this universe. Some of the concepts were pretty interesting but I wasn't really vibing with how the characters were written. Not bad, but just not great in my opinion.

It’s always refreshing to read something original. When it comes to fantasy books set in an academic setting, we often get tales about students fighting evil forces or navigating treacherous paths. But here, we get a story told from the perspective of a teacher instead.

Following Dr. Walden, the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy, we see the mundanity of her teaching job and the administrative side of running a magical school, while also keeping demons at bay.

There are lots of philosophical themes brought up in this book that I found interesting, but the one that stuck with me was how to navigate relationships as a woman in her late 30s. I found that refreshing because we don’t often get that kind of representation. That kind of representation is rare, and Tesh does a brilliant job crafting a character who is competent, mature, professional, and deeply human.

The plot was chef kiss. A perfect balance of action and theoretical discussion, while still being character-driven. At times it feels like a slice-of-life, but with magical stakes. Easily one of the most unique dark academia books I’ve ever read.

A story with a magical school setting that follows competent adults (with tattoos no less)? How refreshing!

This magical world is unlike any I've ever experienced. This is magic in *today*'s world, where we have boarding schools with ancient, crumbling buildings but we also have smart phones and risk assessments, a place where magic isn't hidden away, but instead woven into society be that in military, academic, or industrial applications.
And WOW does Emily Tesh do a fantastic job with setting: it's both perfectly detailed and dreamily atmospheric at times.

And while I found the overall plot to be only somewhat compelling I was fully invested in the deeper *layers*: there's great exploration of privilege and baked-in biases, loss and neglected grief, how to effectively and respectively communicate with adolescents as adults, and what the world and others expect of us versus what we expect of ourselves.

The Incandescent is one of those rare works of fiction that I'm certain I will want to revisit in the future—maybe at a time when I need to find a new path or contemplate my place in the world at large, or when I simply need a reminder that not all children are devil spawn.

*Thank you to Tor for providing me an e-ARC of this book.*

Dark academia, particularly of the evergreen "magical boarding school variety," is having a moment right now, but I find that many of the recent entries in the subgenre are more interested in the aesthetic than in actually exploring the fertile thematic soil of the space. In that regard, Emily Tesh's latest stands out from the crowd.

Part of what distinguishes The Incandescent from the ever-growing field of magical schools is that its narrative follows the professor and de facto headmistress of the institute in question, rather than the retreading the tired ground of adolescent wizard-in-training adventures. Dr. Saffy Walden is a sorcerous prodigy, a gifted teacher, and an absolutely passionate defender of her school and her students. She's precisely the kind of teacher most of us wish we'd had in our formative years, an impression further solidified by the narrative's emphasis of the titanic amount of care she puts into every aspect of her work, from the approaches she takes to dealing with each of her students to the management of the school, to dealing with the ever-pesky demonic incursions on the grounds. This cerebral, self-aware internal monologue is one of the main pulls of the story, which slows down significantly in the middle portions before abruptly ramping up to what ends up as a nonetheless satisfying finale.

dr. walden, one of the most powerful magicians in england, spends her days acting as the director of magic at chetwood academy. part of her job is to ensure the school is safe from demons…though it’s entirely possible that the school’s biggest threat is walden herself.

i’ve heard such great things about emily tesh, so i was quick to request this one to make my first book by her. this was a very interesting book. most dark academia books i read are from the viewpoints of students, so walden’s perspective as a professor added a unique angle to this genre’s critique of higher education. i loved the writing and will definitely read more from emily tesh in the future!

WOW. The dark academia vibes in this novel were top tier. The magical boarding school is such a vibe and it seemed like a more thoughtful and intelligent read than other dark academia fantasy reads that I've read. I had such an excellent time with this one. Thank you so much for the advance copy!

Walden is no stranger to fighting demons. A school full of magic-learning teens makes for an enticing target for all kinds of hungry creatures and as the Director of Magic, its her job to keep them at bay. When Walden finds herself fighting one too many demon incursions in quick succession she must figure out where the gap in her defenses could be or if someone could be intentionally sabotaging her. Despite the risks, Walden is not worried, she is an expert in her field and has a secret weapon. For over a decade she has had a powerful demon leashed and ready to do her bidding - a last resort if she is ever outmatched. When the attacks continue Walden's hold over her demonic servant starts to slip and everything comes to a head as she desperately tries to keep the children from danger. This pleasing twist on the Dark Academia genre places a teacher as the central protagonist which makes for an enjoyable and original journey through life at a magical school. Tesh draws fantasy lovers in with a well drawn world and an interesting story full of clever plot twists and a likeable cast of characters including some LGBTQIA representation. A must read for fans of Niomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy or for anyone who loves dark academia.

This was a book that had me thinking I knew what was going on, only to find out that I could never have predicted what would happen! The vibe is pretty cozy at the start, with Saffy enjoying her busy yet predictable life, competently managing every challenge and anticipating worst case scenarios. She always seems to find the right balance in her many roles at Chetwood, whether she's teaching her brilliant students, handling staff concerns, or wrangling imps and demons. The magical boarding school is a familiar, comfortable setting, but Chetwood comes with a twist - it's the target of a massive, powerful demon that has been attempting to take over the school since it's founding in the 1400s. And while Saffy likes to keep all things in hand, even she can't predict what will happen when her best student sets out to kill the demon.

I'll be honest, the plot and pacing of the novel was not what I was expecting, and I spent the middle of the book being very frustrated by Saffy and certain things that were happening/not happening. However when things took a turn I couldn't stop reading! I was like "oh, it all makes sense now!" I like that the book examines the inequalities in the education system, and that Saffy is again and again forced to reckon with her privilege and try to see things from other perspectives. While most of the book revolves around the schemes of demons and human, there is a lovely romance subplot that I really enjoyed! Overall, The Incandescent is an entertaining and devilishly clever fantasy!

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh is sharp and brilliant to read, much like the main character, Walden. In the novel, Walden is dangerous but also able to do her job with brilliance. I love the magic boarding school from the teacher’s perspective. In particular, I like how you see how that perspective is used to create an interesting and engaging narrative that slowly brings you in all the while building to an ending with believable consequences.
I love the character of Saffy Walden. In particular, I like how you see her holding pattern in regards to where she works and her lack of a personal life. But she also is deadly with demons and I love her relationship with Laura, the Marshall, where both struggle to find a way to connect. I also love the way Walden connects with her students, each as distinct and interesting as the main characters.
If you like urban fantasy set in a world with demon magic and boarding schools, you just might like this novel. I love the queer characters but most of all, I love how the story builds to a beautiful crescendo, progressing in how Walden uses her magic and ultimately leaving her with a realistic ending. It is both beautiful and brilliant, sharp and dangerous all at once.

So, based on the "Sapphic dark academia fantasy" description, this is not at all what I expected. When I hear fantasy, I definitely don't expect a book to be set quite so clearly not only in the real world, but near enough in time that there are references to how COVID-19 impacted the socialization of kids in school. "Dark academia" generally brings to mind moodier vibes, possibly gothic. And "sapphic" typically doesn't have the majority relationship in the book being M/F (there is a F/F relationship/situationship but it felt like much less page space and development was devoted to it). I think Scholomance isn't a bad comp, necessarily, but this felt more like Sorcery and Small Magics with considerably less romance.

What I got instead was an almost cozy contemporary AU fantasy, with heavy slice-of-life chapters of an academic administrator. The main character is a bisexual millennial who is a bit of a disaster romantically and socially, and oh yeah, there are occasional demon possessions. The thing is, that is generally delightful. I liked the book. It just was very much not what I was anticipating. As far as the romance goes, I think it could have been either developed a little more or left out entirely. I would have loved to see the FMC go further with Laura initially before we switched to Mark, because to me, the ending would have made more sense. As it was, it felt a bit unearned. I really liked the passage of time in the last quarter of the book and the general POV shift (which I won't say more about to avoid spoilers). That was really interesting.

Overall, this is probably a 4.25 or so that I am rounding up because of a unique premise.

I really enjoyed that this magical school was from a teacher's perspective, instead of a student. I liked the way it made the themes and language feel more adult, too. The characters were all unique and well-written, and the writing was wonderful---those two things combined made for a really compelling plot. I am absolutely looking forward to more from this author as this was a stunning book. I am excited to get our physical copies in at my branch so I can push them into the hands of every patron.

If you look behind all of the aesthetics and moodiness of any dark academia novel the heart of the matter is this: a contract has been broken between the educational system and one or more character in the book. There is a crack in the foundation, the world has become unbalanced, and that’s where you’ll find the book’s central conflict.

The Incandescent isn’t the first novel to take a different approach to dark academia than the usual student protagonist: Lee Madelo’s Summer Sons has a student’s brother as the protagonist, and Lauren Nossett’s The Resemblance has a police officer/alumni as the protagonist (including The Resemblance as DA is something I do because I believe it meets all of the markers save the aesthetics and supernatural element). It’s not the first to have a teacher as the protagonist either (The Swallows by Lisa Lutz has a teacher protag). It is the first dark academia novel I can think of to have an elder millennial, pseudo-head of house/part-time teacher as the protagonist. It’s also the first dark academia novel I can think of where the contract that was broken was between academia as an institution and the administration/staff of the school, which led to the central conflict of this book: How do you protect a school full of bright, promising, young students from demons when no one seems to want to foot the bill?

One of the best things about this book is that Tesh (being a Millenial herself, I think) knows that not everything about this book has to be taken so seriously. Doctor Saffy Walden, our protagonist, does her marking in her ratty pajamas, works 14 hours a day, is awkward talking about anything that’s not work, doesn’t date, knows her students are completely unserious about nearly everything, and deeply loathes smart phones (demons just love technology). Saffy knows she’s deeply uncool and she’s okay with that. Saffy is okay with almost anything so long as the 600 students of Chetwood are as safe from a demon incursion as possible.

This book was very engaging and interesting, with an awkward wit to it and an unexpectedly sweet and caring side to it that comes from the teacher-student dynamic between Saffy and her four Upper 6th Invocation students. There’s a romantic and wistful dynamic between Saffy and a kind-of government-mandated demon hunter/security guard. There are a good deal of dramatic and creative magical scenes that are extremely well-written that fully capture your attention that I wish I could see fully rendered in film.

The Incandescent will remind you that your teachers and administrators were once students too, often making the same mistakes and now living with the various outcomes, both positive and negative, of those mistakes. Everyone was young and dumb once. Only time will tell how much you learn. 5⭐️



I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Adult Fantasy/Dark Academia/LGBTQ Fantasy/Sapphic Romance/Supernatural Fantasy

Walden is one of the most powerful magicians in England, able to summon a demon higher than the 12th level — which one should never do. She loves Chetwood, the school she went to as a child, the school where she studied magic and learned to summon demons. Upon graduating school, after a brief stint in America where Walden decided she very much did not want to work with the Pentagon, she returned to Chetwood to teach. However, as the most powerful magician there, Walden has more duties than teaching. She also must test and repair the wards, especially the thaumatic engine; give assembly; corral, listen to, and help teachers; listen to parents … in short, to do all the necessary work that no one else either can or wants to do. Walden is always calm, always prepared, and always follows the rules, because that’s how things work. There is tradition, centuries of it. A tradition Walden loves, is proud of, and is proud to be a part of. It’s that very tradition that forms her armor, it’s the trellis that has supported her all her life. But … Walden is nearing 40, and the nights, well, they can be long and lonely.

In the past, Walden’s lovers have always been magicians of some power. Much as some people might like a nice ass, lovely breasts, or a pretty face, Walden’s first attraction to someone is through their magic, through that part of themselves that will never be artificial. No makeup, clothing, or illusion will hide the shape and vibrancy of someone’s magic. Their skill, their competency, their cleverness and quickness, how skillfully they use it and what they use it for. These are the things that draw her.

Laura Kenning, a Marshal — or demon hunter — working at the school is both an irritant (Walden does not like the idea of having a police officer in her school) and a necessity, as demons do enter the world unsummoned, and, when they do, there isn’t always someone strong enough to banish them. That’s where Marshals come in. But Laura isn’t a thug with a sword. She’s thoughtful, funny, honestly devoted to her cause, and a fearsomely skilled magician. Where Walden relies on complicated arrays, Laura uses her weapons, and when the two of them have to come together to fight a demon, it’s an effortless melding of their skills.

Mark Daubery is a bluff and manipulative man who is equal parts charming and untrustworthy, but he’s also a damned good magician. His ideas are good ones, and because — unlike Laura — he and Walden both went to Chetwood for school, they have a shared background, and a shared understanding and use of magic. They can talk in a way Laura and Walden simply can’t. And it’s nice to be flirted with by a handsome man who, like Walden, wants nothing more than a friendly physical relationship. They’re both using each other equally.

Then, there is the third love in Walden’s life … Chetwood. More than a collection of buildings from various ages, more than acres of ancient trees and a church whose roof needs repair, it’s the hundreds of students and the dozens of staff, all of whom are known to Walden, all of whom are and have been and will always be part of her life. It’s palpable in her thoughts, in her conversations, and in the demon Walden has bonded to, how important the school is to her, but she’s not blind to what the school is to other people. Magic is the least of what you gain at Chetwood. What matters is the power to walk the walk and talk the talk, to have your résumé picked out of the pile and the interviewer already speaking your language. It is the power to know the people you ought to know, to befriend them easily over a commong bond, or to laugh together about how ridiculous the whole theme park experience of childhood had been. A few can afford that power. Most can not. Plenty of parents who love their children work appalling hours and then remortgage their homes to pay for it. They do it for love, and for terror. You can never completely future-proof your children, but power will keep them safe from the bitter grind of survival in a way that nothing else can.

I’m going to be honest, this book isn’t going to be for everyone. In essence, it is a long and languid character study — at 432 pages — of a middle-aged professor of an English boarding school for rich, entitled children (and some scholarship students) that teaches magic and demon summoning. It’s almost a love letter to teaching, with Walden going through her day, organizing her schedule, dealing with emails, grading, attending assemblies, more scheduling, so on and so forth. She works 16-hour days, seven days a week, and you’ll feel every one of them. And I love it. So, let me sell you on this book!

There are a lot of thoughts in this book, conversations with students and other teachers about the ethics of personhood, and what it is (can a plant or animal be considered a person? What about a demon?); the ethics of consent (can a demon consent to be summoned?); about classism and entitlement, about grief and loss, about the difference between being a good teacher and being seen to be a good teacher. Walden is flawed, heavily so. She is emotionally stunted, manipulative, complaint, and vain. She thinks she knows more than she does, she thinks she knows better than everyone, and she’s a bit of an ass. And I love her.

The world of this book is shown through Walden’s eyes, but it’s not just her words, it’s the things she sees but doesn’t understand, the things she sees and does. It’s the shadows behind the exposition and the knowledge that Walden is — sometimes more than others — an unreliable narrator. I had fun trying to find the moments where she slipped, where her blind confidence led to the small openings in her defenses, and just reading her story.

The plot is straightforward and the twist is expected. It’s very well done, though. The writing is clean and crisp, and all of the side characters — seen through Walden’s eyes — are always innocent of malice. She sees them as flawed and foolish, but always forgivable, her people to protect and shelter, and it’s that fondness, that love that ends up saving everyone. I loved the world building, I loved the demons, I loved the end …

Again, not everyone is going to like this book (and I forgive them for it). It’s long, it’s slow, and it’s almost entirely in Walden’s head, as she ponders aging, loneliness, and her school. The world building is subtle and doesn’t hold your hand; there’s no lengthy explanation of the magic, because that’s not the point of the book. So if you’re looking for a hard magic system and epic levels of world building, you’re going to be disappointed in this book. This is a slice of life through the eyes of a teacher at a magical school where students are taught to summon demons. And I love it. Expect to see it in my yearly Annual Favorites.