The Incandescent
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4.5 • 46 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A Deadly Education meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy from bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards
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 and 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 when a new threat arises in the form of the ancient demon who has long waited patiently just beyond the school’s wards, even Walden and the aggressively competent Chief Marshal, Laura Kenning, may not be able to contain it.
It’s Walden’s 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.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hugo and World Fantasy Award winner Tesh (Some Desperate Glory) puts a fresh spin on dark academia by focusing on school administrators, faculty, and staff. Dr. Sapphire "Saffy" Walden, director of magic at Chetwood School (and an alumna herself), spends her 16-hour workdays managing one crisis after the next. In between, she teaches the Year Seven arcane safety course and maintains the thaumic engines that keep the school from collapsing "out of mundane reality altogether and disappear into the demonic plane, taking six hundred children with it." Walden doesn't have time to fight with the school's chief marshal Laura Kenning, a "butch avenging angel" in charge of magical security, over the inherent risks of her star pupil's ability to summon demons. When said pupil summons an 11th-order archdemon, however, the women must put aside their differences to address the threat. Defeating the beast forces Walden to confront her own demons (real and figurative) and, what's more galling, acknowledge that Kenning may have a point. Focusing on the administrators is a fresh entryway into a popular genre, and "awful nerd with a superiority complex" Walden makes for a fascinating and often humorous narrator. Fans of Naomi Novik's Scholomance series won't want to miss this thoughtful exploration of privilege, power, and private school education.
Customer Reviews
Marvelous
Loved it!!
“A School Story” Set in a Alternate World With Magic and Demons
The Incandescent
is the second full novel by Emily Tesh. It’s quite a departure from her previous works. This consists of the Greenhollow Duology, which is a pair of excellent fantasy novellas. “Some Desperate Glory” was her first novel and is a space opera and a deep and complex story.
The Incandescent is different from either of these other works. It is an alternate world fantasy that is very similar to our world, except that there is magic. The forms magic can take are somewhat constrained, but one school of magic involves summoning and controlling beings from the demonic plane.
The protagonist of this story is Doctor Sapphire “Saffy” Walden. She is a world class Magician, and teaches Invocation at Chetwood School, an old English boarding school. Teaching gifted students how to manage their magical talents safely is an important job, and Dr. Walden takes her job very seriously. There’s a lot of administrative tasks to be done, as well as maintaining the warding that protects the school from incursions from the demonic plane.
The subtitle of this novel is “A School Story” and it absolutely is that. It involves Dr. Walden’s own story which is untwined with that of Chetwood. It’s also a fantasy, and has some sapphic romantic aspects. It also involves demons, from minor imps to powerful scary creatures. I found it to be a complex novel with a surprisingly positive outcome.