The Incandescent features an older FMC (late 30’s), a highly detailed and well-developed magic system, and sapphic relationships all tied together in a story of self-discovery, belonging, and power. I have never read a dark academia fantasy book told from the perspective of the faculty, rather than the students, and I really enjoyed this fresh perspective - if you're a teacher, I think you will particularly love this story!

I thought the audiobook narrator, Zara Ramm, was wonderful and would highly recommend the audio version of this book if you’re interested in it!

I’ve been frothing at the mouth since I heard about this. Dark academia but it’s about one of the professors? And her love interest(s) is an adult?!?!?! Oh and it’s sapphic???? Yes please!!!! Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the review copy, because I ate this up! Zara Ramm did a great job with the narration!

When Mark showed up I immediately distrusted him, and I wasn’t sure if that setup was because there was something suspicious going on or because he was a man. I mean, definitely the latter part. If you want to know if my instincts were right, read the book.

This was a really good commentary on blame and responsibility and how actions in your youth can shape who you become as an adult. But it was also demons and magic and learning.

I loved it so much and while it works so well as a standalone I hope there end up being companion novels in the universe because I never want to leave it.

Going into this book, I had no idea that this would become one of my favorite reads of the year. Magical schools are nothing new but Emily Tesh does something really great here by making it from the POV of an educator (and a demon???) instead of student. It brought something truly fresh to the Dark Academia genre. The voice actor had a clear and distinct voice that perfectly fits a distinguished teacher and made the entire experience very immersive. (Please sign me up for one of Saffy’s classes asap)

My only complaint? I wanted more of Laura.

🌟4.5 Stars🌟

This was so much fun! If you want some sapphic British boarding school dark academia fantasy I think you’ll love this.

I loved the magic system, especially the idea of demons possessing inanimate objects that you treat as sentient. The imp possessed printer was just delectable. Walden was a great protagonist with the perfect mix of awkward internalized anxiety and outward confidence. Her love of her students was what really made me adore her. What keeps this from being a five star for me is that I think we needed more time with Laura. I totally understand why she has to depart for plot reasons, however more time would have meant her and the relationship were better fleshed out. Overall this slapped and I definitely need to give Tesh’s sci-fi book a shot.

Thanks to the publisher for a free audio-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

One thing Emily Tesh is great at is creating a world. The Incandescent is properly world-built, and the lore is very well-described and thought out. The idea of having a school that deals with demons was really interesting. I think the school she created and its world were very well thought out. I enjoyed the idea of the main characters being the professors at this school instead of the school itself. Usually, it is focused on the students. The setting was really cool. Magicians and demons coming together to use powers was such an interesting concept. Her writing is just always highly immersive, and it feels like she is in the world that she is writing about. Her vocabulary is always fine-tuned to the world that she is creating.

At this academy, the students, who are magic users, have to know how to deal with and understand the complexities of demons. Demons are drawn to those who use magic, so they are all put into this academy for their safety, because they can learn to understand how to handle them instead of trying to figure it out on their own. Our main character, Doctor Walden, is the director of this academy, and she has also attended herself.

I think Dr. Walden was a great main character. She is fallible and not a very easy-to-understand character, which I do enjoy. I love super complex characters, who are not always the nicest, and she fits the bill. Furthermore, sapphic stories are the ones I am most interested in, so the fact that there is a great sapphic romance in this story was really important to me. Their build-up was filled with dislike, then such great yearning that I fell hard for both of them. I was highly invested in their relationship.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator was really good at reading out the book and getting me immersed in the story. She had an interesting voice and was great at being emphatic, depending on what the narration called for.

As for the plot, I think it was really well-written and thought out. At no point was I not engaged with the story that was occurring. I think the phoenix being part of our main character was introduced well and created a good tension for this story. I enjoyed the fights that they had with the demons throughout the novel, finding the way they were written and resolved well-constructed.

If you're a fan of magical schools and crusty professors that truly have a molten heart, this will be right up your alley.

Dr. Walden is an alumna of Chetwood Academy and has ended up back at the school first as a teacher and now as a director, who also teachers. Her days are filled with hectic activity as she balances all her responsibilities, but she loves it. And she's good at it.

However she's still fallible and more than capable of overestimating herself.

Here and there bigger than imp demons pop up at the school and need handling, but after one such situation, somethings changes. It's subtle, and goes unnoticed by Dr. Walden until it can no longer be ignored.

I love Dr. Walden's character. She's so droll, but loving in an awkward way. The students are interesting. The slight smidge of romance is just enough and the humor is dry, but just my style.

Spoilery: I know the Phoenix is supposed to be a big bad, but I cracked up at how it immediately made Dr. Walden go on runs and start cooking healthy meals for herself after taking over. I would need to be possessed for those things to happen to.

I loved this dark academia fantasy that is focused on a Director of Magic at a high-end magical boarding school. Doctor Saffy Walden is a wonderful character, and I was there for her, flaws and all. A lot of the book is Walden just doing her job, teaching and protecting the students at her school, but there are greater forces at work with epic demon threats, along with some small romance storylines. I enjoyed Tesh's Hugo-winning science fiction novel Some Desperate Glory, but this book cements her as an auto-read author for me. Zara Ramm is pitch-perfect narrating the audiobook. Thank you to Macmillan Audio for an audiobook review copy.

Dark acadamia about a queer magical teacher in a school where they summon demons?!?! Say no more. Immediately yes. I loved it. I gobbled it up. It wasn't a PERFECT 5-star read but came very close! I look forward to more from this author.

Oh my goodness.

I've read the digital and now I got to listen to the ALC. Oh the narrator, Zara Ramm, KILLED IT! She really gave life to the wonderful humor in the prose and I already LOVED Walden and the Kids and she really gave them life. One of the best audio renditions I've been able to listen to. Ahhh!!! This was amazing!

Easiest 5 star.

Thank you NetGalley, Tor, and Emily Tesh for the ALC in exchange for my honest review.

Stunning work

“The Incandescent”is a beautifully written and atmospheric sapphic dark academia fantasy with demons.

The main character is Walden, the 38-year-old Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy. She’s not only incredibly competent at her job, but also a complete badass. I really liked her, and it was refreshing to read about an “older” (aka not a student) protagonist in this kind of setting.

The sapphic romance is well-done, adding just the right amount of sweetness to the plot.

Overall a great, moody read.

The Incandescent follows a Director at a magical school . I loved the premise/following an older main character, and this book is extremely well-written. That being said, I could NOT connect with the main character and found multiple parts of this book as boring. I think there is absolutely an audience for the Incandescent that will love this book, specifically teachers or people who endure a monotony of paperwork.

Narration performed by Zara Ramm was well done, and I love her accent.

I received an ARC from Macmillan Audio via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Magic, high schoolers, demons, mystery, and plenty of hubris fill the pages of Emily Tesh’s second novel — The Incandescent.

Set in modern day England, Dr. Sapphire Walden is both a teacher, and the Director of Magic at the Chetwood School — not to mention one of the most powerful practitioners of magic in not just England, but the world. Her primary duty is protecting Chetwood from demonic incursions. However, when unusual happenings involving demons begin to occur, Dr. Walden starts down a path that leads to hard truths, and unexpected revelations.

This novel takes the reader on a long and winding ride through dark academia, where nothing and no one can be trusted. While magic and intrigue are at the heart of this novel, it is highlighted with humor, romance, and a dash of sex. Admittedly, it can be a bit slow to start, even as an audiobook, but it soon picks up, and compels you to keep reading — if for no other reason than to know what happens next. I would personally like to see more stories from Chetwood, and Dr. Walden, in the future. However, even if this is a standalone novel, it is very much worth the read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the pleasure of listening to the advanced copy of this audiobook.

This was my first read by Emily and it won't be my last!
I was lucky enough to get both the audio and the ebook and I think immersion reading this book really brought it to life.
the narrator was perfect for the book!
The book was perfect, the pacing was great, I can't say enough good things about it!
A must-read!

This book was a breath of fresh air. I had been searching for books with main characters who were well past their teen years. I also appreciated how the main character being a teacher of magic helped flush out how the magic system worked in the book without feeling like an info dump. It was very well done.

I thought Mark being bad news was fairly obvious, but did NOT see the actual plot twist near me he end coming. And brava for having the courage to let her arm remain gone. No magic reversal of consequences for actions taken.

I do wish there had been more focus on the romance, I wanted more Laura.

Thank you to NetGalley, Emily Tesh, and Macmillan Audio for the audiobook arc in exchange for an honest review.

5 stars

The audiobook was excellent. The narrator Zara Ramm did a fantastic job with the cast of characters' voices. I had no idea it was only one person. It always amazes how a narrator can bring characters to life.

4 stars

I knew I was going to adore this book. We are following Doctor Walden who is the director of magic at an academy and it’s a sapphic romance. I mean those are two of my favorite buzzwords. It originally was going to be a higher rating but the last 20-30% was not my favorite. I felt like things took a weird turn and concluded too quickly. Regardless, I enjoyed the majority of the book. I highly recommend it!

Dr. Saffy Walden is a straightforward, dedicated, and incredibly talented magician. As Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy, she spends her days dealing with paperwork, administrative challenges, and the occasional possessed photocopier. She also teaches an invocation class to a small group of interestingly and believably complicated teenagers.

Despite some action-filled scenes and a dramatic conclusion, this is almost entirely a slice of life book. Most of it focuses on the everyday grind of school, the challenges of working with students, building maintenance, and classroom management, with a side order of demon contract law. There's quite a bit of exploration of English social class. And then there's Saffy herself, 38 years old with an overdeveloped work ethic, who is so immersed in her job that she has trouble seeing how lonely she is, and how easily that loneliness can lead to seemingly unimportant but actually wildly dangerous choices.

The Incandescent is a fascinating take on the magical English boarding school: give us academia in all its hilarious minutiae, and make the teachers the main characters. The only flaw, if there is one, is that the interpersonal relationships get short shrift amidst the sometimes meandering storyline. Still, this was a knockout of a book, and gorgeously read by Zara Ramm.

I was happy to have been granted both the ebook and audiobook for this title, and I love immersive reading more than anything!

Emily Tesh had blown me away with her ability to write different stories in one and the same book. This was done to perfection in Some Desperate Glory (I'm still not sure how she pulled this off, and it keeps living rent-free in my head).

There is a point in The Incandescent where I had the feeling this might happen again. The first 30% are quite different to what happens next. However, if you trust the author (and oh I do) you will get rewarded.

Saffie is the FMC, and much to my delight she is in her 30s with a very adult attitude. She is also unapologetically queer. And she is very caring, good at what she does, and would give her life for her school and her students.

In her magic school she is fighting demons as well as the chores of administration.

Speaking of demons: the human world and the demon world are kind of sharing a space, and there are portals or gaps where demons can enter our world. Such an incident is happening in the school, and as you can imagine this leads to all kinds of trouble.

I have to admit I was a bit confused in the middle part of the book, but the beginning and ending are kind of bookends to the story - a narrative device I very much adore.

As this is from the POV of an adult, I have the feeling this is finally an adult Dark Academia, and I loved this book for all it is.
Oh and did I mention there is a cheeky demon in the copier machine?

The audiobook is really good, giving Saffie - but also everyone else - the perfect voice. And the British vibes are perfectly captured. I highly recommend the audiobook.

4,5/5 stars

Thank you @netgalley and @macmillan.audio and @torbooks for the eARC!

#TheIncandescent #Netgalley #Bookstagram

I just couldn't get get into this, it was very boring and like we were getting an info dump for the world building and the mundane life of the main character, and it's all presented very matter of fact. The students are introduced by being listed one after the other, which I was not fond of and really just added to the dullness. The pacing was very slow and it felt like we were getting a lot of unnecessary information. If you like character driven stories, then I'm sure you'd like this. It does have a literary fiction tone to it. The magic system is interesting and I appreciate getting the point of view from the teacher’s perspective rather than a student, which made it stand out.

Perhaps this would have been better read with my eyeballs than listening to the audiobook. The narration was fine enough though.

I really enjoyed how this started and how this ended, but the middle was just a slow slog through the tedium of being an academic instructor. The two most interesting parts of the beginning (the demon phoenix and the sapphic love interest were then sidelined for the majority of the novel in favor of a bland white dude and administrative details. That said, I did enjoy reading from Saffy’s perspective as 38 year old, confident, established woman even during the slower parts.

The audiobook narrator was generally fine, though her American accent was not quite it, and she seemed to pronounce some words incorrectly (since I only had the audio and not the print, it’s possible I misheard as well).

Thanks to Macmillan Audio for the gifted copy!

Doctor Sapphire Walden is the Director of Magic and a professor at Chetwood Academy, a school of magic in England. She's stretched thin with meetings, teaching, and securing the school from demons... and everything else that comes with being a school administrator.

THE INCANDESCENT is a slow-paced, atmospheric, and character-driven dark academia book. I loved the perspective shift of focusing on the Director of the school rather than the students, the mishap of A-level student accidentally summoning a powerful demon, and magical contracts. However, this book moved a little too slowly for me and it was hard for me to feel like much was happening. I think this book will find its perfect audience when it publishes! All that aside, I loved the narration in this one by Zara Ramm.