Author: Emily Tesh
Release: May 13, 2025
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 432
Review: 5 Stars
Synopsis:
Naomi Novik's Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."
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, 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 demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her 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.
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Review:
While I don't know if anything will be able to top Some Desperate Glory, The Incandescent was still amazing! I started the book Thursday afternoon and stayed up until midnight to finish it. I love how it plays with the magical school genre. Some of the key tropes/plot devices are turned on their heads, but it never makes fun of it. It's both a celebration of the magical school and reminder about how responsible, caring adults are necessary for young people to grow.
Our main character is Sapphire "Saffy" Walden. I immediately loved her and if you don't we're not friends anymore. I related to her in many ways (amongst other things, she set off my autism tingle) and was always rooting for her to succeed. But that said, boy does she make some capital "b" Bad decisions. Particularly in the romantic department. You can guess pretty early who the 'true' love interest is, but Walden botches it, repeatedly. Luckily (I say sarcastically), a hot guy comes along. He set off my "no good, stay away" radar immediately, but Walden ignored me yelling at the pages. How rude.
I LOVED the world-building, particularly the demons. In many ways, the world is the same as ours. The book takes place in England at a fancy English boarding school, expect the boarding school specializes in teaching magic. Magic requires a combination of effort and talent, and occasionally someone has so much talent that oops, they do magic spontaneously as a kid and bad things happen. Magic is powered by a demon world that sits parallel to our own. There's everything from low-level demons like imps to super powerful arch-demons. Demons can possess anything that has been assigned personhood, which is complicated as we humans like to talk to furniture, devices, and objects, which is enough for a demon to possess it.
One aspect I really enjoyed was how magic is approached like science. It's explored, people run experiments, etc. There's mention of an ongoing experiment in the desert of Arizona that I desperately want to learn more about. Walden basically has a PhD in a specific type of magic (summoning demons). I loved how the author explains magic in a way that is easy to understand, but also hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud often while reading this book. Her description of how we "you" objects, the demons in the clock and the copy maker, were absolutely delightful.
One part I really liked was how, through her descriptions, you could tell who *would* be the protagonist if this was a typical YA magic school book. Walden's star pupil Cassie is clearly made to be a fictional teenage heroine, and don't get me wrong, she goes through a LOT over the course of the book. But Walden and the other adults around her refuse to give up on Cassie, and they fight for her to be able to be young, and student, not a savior of the world. Cassie has a group of friends that in another book is the ragtag crew, including the all-powerful teenage love interest. Just because they're not the protagonists doesn't mean they don't also help save the day, but they're only able to do so due to what Walden's taught them.
There are several lines from The Incandescent that stood out to me, but most prominent is a line that is repeated internally several times by Walden. In my opinion, it gets at the heart of the novel itself. Walden loves to teach, but is not always great with interpersonal interactions. Nonetheless, sometimes she is the one helping a student through a tough situation. In those moments, she reminds herself "every child was every adult's responsibility". Which, yes! This may be a school, and there are individuals directly responsible for any given student, but they're not always available or the right person for what that child needs. And in a time of crisis, the most important adult is the adult that is *there*. And as adults, we owe every child our responsibility. While coming from different places, it echoes the quote from James Baldwin "The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe".
Reading The Incandescent, I can tell Emily Tesh is from the UK (even if it wasn't in the author bio in the back). There is a LOT of UK terminology (particularly in regards to schooling) that went right over my head. Terms used repeatedly I got the gist of, but a lot of it I just ignored. I think most of the terms should be google-able if you're particularly confused.
Overall, The Incandescent is a brilliant follow-up to Some Desperate Glory. The writing is engaging and funny, the characters are great, and every nook and cranny of the world feels filled. It doesn't retread the same ground covered in Some Desperate Glory, but it doesn't shy away from the tougher topics. Discussions of class consciousness and who gets to benefit from magical private schools (not the poor the magical kids, that's for sure) are woven throughout. She doesn't beat you over the head with it, but if you don't come out of the experience with some deep thoughts of your own, I'm not sure you read it right.
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