Magic and hubris collide with devastating consequences as a professor attempts to keep the gears of her venerable school turning in the mature, emotionally complex dark academia fantasy novel The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo Award for her first novel, Some Desperate Glory.
Dr. Saffy Walden lives a life no different than that of any other school administrator: there's not as much time to teach as she would like, far more meetings than she would prefer, and the constant toil of keeping the school's magical wards in fit shape to fend off any demons who might want to snack on the student body. Well, perhaps her position as Director of Magic at the Chetwood School is a bit different than the average school administrator. Her 14-hour workdays don't leave much time for hobbies, but work-life balance is no priority since "her career was her life." Her challenges include protecting the world from the poor decisions of magically gifted teenagers, especially in the face of other, less imaginative faculty. "It was an unfortunate truth," the narrator muses, "that in the Venn diagram of 'qualified to teach magic' and 'still alive,' the overlap consisted almost entirely of people who had always been much too sensible to accidentally get eaten by a demon."
Walden balances safety concerns with students' educational needs, which leads her to lock horns with Laura Kenning, the school's gorgeous head demon-hunter. Luckily Walden is one of the world's finest magicians. Bring on the demon that possesses the photocopier in the workroom, the arrogant legacy student, the piles of paperwork, because she has everything under control. Unfortunately, while demons are formidable, no one is as potentially dangerous as a magician who believes she has everything under control.
Tesh encapsulates all the wonder and hormone-soaked angst implied by the exclusive magical boarding school setting with an adult glow-up that highlights the soul-crushing bureaucracy and burnout that can accompany a career in education. Walden's loss of relationships and self to a job that sets her above and apart from others rings true, and the demons that both fuel and threaten the magic practitioners work as an apt metaphor for all manner of obsessions. Fans of Naomi Novik's Scholomance series or Leigh Bardugo's Alex Stern novels, as well as any readers who have wondered what the workday of a Hogwarts professor might look like, should find this story a veritable cornucopia of dark delight. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: A faculty head at a magical prep school battles demons while losing her work-life balance in this mature, emotionally complex dark academia fantasy.