When you’ve read a lot of novels, or this could likely apply to a lot of other media too, your brain starts to recognize the patterns of storytelling that will lead to certain outcomes, like seeing where you have to swap the tiles in a puzzle-solving game. Authors can take advantage of these expectations and use a familiar setting, perhaps like a British magical boarding school, and give it a different perspective that’ll shift those familiar patterns into a new light. The Incandescent by Emily Tesh does just that on page one by making Chetwood School’s magical factory the main character, particularly our point-of-view character Dr. Sapphire Walden, Director of Magic. So often, magic is focused on the young, but here we’re dealing with adults.

“If you were doing something, you ought to do it properly” are the words that Dr. Walden lives and works by, well, mostly works, and will be on display repeatedly throughout the book. The opening chapter lays a great deal of groundwork that will carry through the rest of the novel, including Dr. Walden’s accomplishments during her tenure in the position, her expertise, her thoughts on work-life balance, and her somewhat abrasive relationship with her similarly aged Chief Marshall, Laura Kenning. Through simple paperwork and the conversation Sapphire has with Laura the concepts of magic, demons, marshals, and how these are taught at Chetwood are given to the reader in great detail without derailing the flow of the novel. The last person mentioned in Kenning’s and Walden’s conversation is Nikki Conway, a student in her final year at Chetwood who would be the chosen one magical protagonist with the tragic backstory of any other fantasy book involved in a magical school, of which Walden or Kenning would be the older mentor who sacrificed their life in the climactic moments.

The way the first third of the novel goes, it makes you think that is the direction all of this is going when a high-level demon dubbed the Old Faithful tempts Nikki into summoning it by claiming it was the demon responsible for Nikki’s tragic past. This is what I loved about The Incandescent. It doesn’t flip the tropes of this kind of fantasy novel; it takes them head-on, then defies them. The Chief Marshall starts off antagonistic, like a rival, then Walden and she communicate their problems, and then she becomes a romantic interest. Before that can get off the ground, Laura Kenning is taken out of the plot. Old Faithful, the high-level demon that has been with Chethood for many years, is set up to be a pivotal antagonist only to be taken out by Kenning and Walden without anyone dying. It felt so climactic that it had me asking what could possibly be next? Only for the fallout of the demonic incursion and what problems come with it for Chetwood’s security to be the main conflict of the rest of the book or so you think. Once both Walden and you, the reader, guard is down, Emily Tesh hits you with a one-two punch in the last third of the book that leads to the dramatic conclusion with its own epilogue I did not expect.

In the thick of all this is the reality of being a millennial administrator and teacher in a long-standing magical boarding school for Dr. Walden. Scheduling meetings, sending emails, and finding time are just as much an external conflict as demons in The Incandescent. The reason Nikki Conway is a student of interest to Dr. Walden is not that she is special but because she has potential that needs teaching, nurturing, and fostering her education to reach it. Walden’s idea of work-life balance is the difference between wearing a blazer with a cup of coffee while doing work and wearing pajamas with a cup of tea while doing work at home, which is to say, she doesn’t have any. Walden as a character is confident in her abilities, her expertise, and her wants and needs. The problem is she loves magic and loves her job in a system that doesn’t allow her to do it to the best of her abilities. The author doesn’t outright say it but despite her tireless due diligence to do her job well Walden is overworked and it causes her to miss some important details.

The Incandescent is our world, but if magic were a normal part of its structure in education, business, and government with rules and regulations like anything else. A benefit to having an academic as your main point-of-view character is that the exposition never gets heavy-handed weaving the history, laws, and traditions into the events of the novel. The magic system is intricate, at least when taken from the point of view of an academic like Dr. Walden. The book primarily focuses on academic magic particularly her expertise, Invocation, which I imagine is like doing math and poetry at the same time, Chief Marshall Laura Kenning’s own Marshal magic that is straightforward forward offensive and defensive magic designed to hunt demons, and then the demons themselves have their own magic that feels chaotic and oppressive. Whether it’s her or someone else, Dr. Walden’s love of magic seeps through when it is on display, and that lends to the ease and enjoyment of the world-building. The other part that makes it seem smoothly introduced is the Phoenix demon sealed and tattooed into Walden’s arm who genuinely becomes curious about how humans do magic and the human world in general.

Yes, the magic system and world-building are cool but the best part of The Incandescent is the people and the moments between them. The chemistry between Laura and Sapphire, after they’ve finally communicated their original issues, flies off the pages. They come from two different worlds of both magic and privilege but every time there is a scene of them conversing, even when they’re not getting along, it’s golden. Laura confronting Sapphire about her privilege when it comes to her and others’ education at Chetwood compared to others who might have the same magical proclivity felt equally important as the confrontation they have with Old Faithful just the chapter before. A conversation that sticks with Walden throughout the rest of the book when interacting with other faculty. Speaking of Old Faithful, Mark Daubery, who I didn’t trust right away, replaces Laura Kenning in the second half of the novel as both security consultant for the school and a romantic interest for Sapphire comes off as less trustworthy than the Phoenix and more of an antagonist than Old Faithful did just by the nature of being of an outside hire mandated by the governors of the school and a smarmy jock. The most significant interaction between the characters that raises the heart and charm of The Incandescent is the ones Dr. Walden has with her students.

She’s not just an expert in magic but in young people, mostly, because she remembers what it was like to be one. She is well aware of the boundaries between faculty and students as well as how different the world children and adults actually live in. Walden has watched them grow up and thus knows their personalities well. We get to see their last stages of growing up. Their final tests, their budding relationships, their mistakes, and doubts about the future. So many of these types of books focus on the students’ life in school, but the way this one focuses on preparing for when school is over feels fresh and, from the perspective of Walden, who will no longer be in these kids’ lives, will emotionally resonate with a lot of readers. A scene that hits particularly hard in the emotional gut takes place late in the novel between Dr. Walden and Nikki Conway, who wants to turn down going to Oxford to study magic in order to get a job that’ll help support her friend Matthias, who like her has no support system. In this moment, Dr. Walden could go full educator mode that’d help Nikki reach her potential but seeing a distraught student she has watched grow up who has recently made a traumatic mistake decideds to be human instead and speaks to her as Sapphire, one adult to another, being vulnerable in a moment and sharing a connection with Nikki. As much as Dr. Walden tries to be a realist and set boundaries, underneath her primary duties is still her love of magic but she still has to exist in the world, pay rent, and do her job, a fact she is all too aware of. It’s that love of magic that is a guiding force for what kept her from taking the job with the U.S. military creating weapons, and motivates her to teach students and guide Nikki Conway when she has lost her way.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh was one of my favorite books of the year. It represents what is great about a lot of modern fantasy, balancing the fantastical within realistic borders giving readers both complex characters and moving plot. The pacing through the year the book takes place allows for downtime for character’s to speak and express who they are without ever grinding the story to a halt. Dr. Walden as a main protagonist is confident in her abilities, relatable with her poor work-life balance, and has a lot of heart when it comes to her students and relationships. To me, this novel is a must read for any fan of fantasy.

On No Page Unturned we covered The Incadescent when it came out on one of our bookling episodes, give it a listen.

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Joshua was provided an advance copy of the book by Tor Books

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