The Incandescent

The Incandescent
Emily Tesh, 2025

Premise: In an alternate present where some schools teach magic, Doctor Walden is teaching teenagers how not to get eaten by demons while dealing with constant bureaucracy and her own nonexistent love life. 

I really, really liked this book. I'm not sure I loved it as much as the author's first novel, but that one was a truly unique experience. The two stories are different beasts, although there are commonalities, like occasionally unreliable narration and sapphic relationships.

I liked the characters a lot, and I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the kind of nonsense that any elite school deals with - teenage drama spilling into the classroom, teacher infighting, the tension between kids from rich families and the handful of kids on scholarships, etc. - and potentially life-and-death magical incursions by extradimensional forces. As a stupid American, I did sometimes have trouble following the British school terminology (how old is a what number form student?).

I also liked what demons are in this - forces of magic, somewhat unknowable, only able to exist in our world through possessing other things. Treating an object like a person (e.g., yelling at a recalcitrant copier) gives a demon an opening to inhabit it. They don't seem to have real personalities of their own until after they've inhabited something for a certain time. 

I don't want to say much about the plot since it is still a recent book, but it doesn't end up going where you think at first, and I very much enjoyed the twists and turns.

It's also got a repeated theme of highly educated people doing incredibly stupid things because they overestimate their skills. As a highly educated person who can be very stupid at times, I'm here for it. 

Add an acknowledgment and interrogation of the class system at the heart of modern educational systems, a dash of older protagonists with adult problems, and you've got me hooked.

5 Stars - an Awesome Book