BINGO: school, obviously
hot take I think magic system was a bit waffle-y and the overall tone perhaps a shade too imitative of the books referenced in the blurb, but I loved the last part and give me more stories with middle-aged protagonists–they can make ill-advised decisions too!
h/t to Britt for the rec!
So I mean: Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy. I’ll admit I don’t know the second series, but sapphic (!) dark academia (!!) fantasy (!!!) and like, welcome to the party it’s been waiting for me (I also got vibes of the Alex Stern books by Leigh Bardugo, wonder where that’s gone…)
Basically, our main character Dr. Walden is the uber dedicated Director of Magic at a tony Eton-esque school of magic in an alternative world where magic exists and is taught alongside other subjects. You don’t necessarily have to be ‘chosen’ to do magic (unless you’re one of the rare few whose latent talent is so strong as to mandate training)…but you do have to be able to afford tuition at one of the schools that does magic training.
It’s one of the more interesting elements of this world, a neat mashing up of inequality and magic that we see in many small ways–there are students who are ‘wards’ of the school (basically scholarship kids), the guards in charge of the school learn a quick and dirty form of incantation vs the more elegant educated version, etc.
The actual rules of magic and how things there work are a bit more wishy washy, which makes it hard to get into the first part of the book–much like a real school, Dr. Walden has about a million demands of her time and bandwidth, and it’s hard to tell what’s important vs a red herring vs a plot point that will suddenly explode to become the only plot point. There’s even a twist-y climax midway through the book, which is a story arc I haven’t come much across…but then the second twist was like, choreographed a mile away.
So in any case, our Dr. Walden is trying to do too much with too little budget, ensure that a generation of students graduates without hurting themselves or anyone else, there’s the head of the Marshalls whom she finds cute, but also there’s the ongoing intrusion of Patience Fortitude PatienceateFortitude Ol’ Faithful (I think?), and just every little mundanity of teaching and getting attached to students who will leave and explore the wide world while you stay behind. If you like some of the drama of academic admin then this will definitely be the book for you 🙂