Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent takes a look at the magical school setting, and puts some rather unique and inventive spins and point of view on it, starting with her main character.
I want to start this look at The Incandescent with a quote from a little known movie called Interstate 60, where a minor character tells the protagonist, who is set to leave a overnight warehouse job for a pre-law program, his theory of life.
“You just remember that
no matter what hot —t you are,
It’s always gonna be more the same
Just another High School…
Everything in life is like high school.
They just change the names..
Oh yeah, names are different,
but it’s the exact same —t.
High School!”
Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent, in a way, engages with the idea that school is life, and life is school, especially through her main character, Dr. Walden, who has been the Director of Magic at the prestigious Chetwood School for a decade now. Sure, the magic protections of the school from demonic incursions are running on gum and baling wire and a prayer, and trying to be Director of Magic and teaching A levels means that Dr. Walden doesn’t have much of any sort of social life, but her life is a routine of classes, and meetings and more classes. The novel makes explicit throughout how much of her life is scheduled—just like a student’s life is scheduled.
But with this newest set of students, Walden’s own secrets and past are ready to collide with the present, and possibly endanger the school, and beyond.
This is the story of The Incandescent.
If you have read more than a smattering of fantasy novels, you’ve read a magical school fantasy novel, or seen a magical fantasy school anime or read a manga with the theme. They are inescapable, even if you take a certain billionaire off of the board. The coming of age story, growing up and learning who and what you are, except with learning magic. These stories can be the main plot of a secondary world novel, a side plot in a secondary world, or can be set in a version of our own world, with varying degrees of knowledge of the general populace, but usually relying on magic being a secret.
The world of The Incandescent breaks this mold in two ways. First of all, magic is known as a discipline, an art and a science, in our modern world (which appears to have an identical history to ours). Magic is certainly dangerous, with the existence of demons and the other hazards of magic, but everyone knows what it is. There are people preternaturally talented at magic (called sorcerers) but anyone can learn magic in the same way that anyone can learn chemistry or mathematics, or history. It is quantified and teachable. It’s still magic, mind you, and dangerous, but, apparently, as science became regularized, so did magic.
The other mold breaking is our choice of point of view. With an exception that would be hugely spoilery to talk about, the vast majority of this book is from the point of view of Dr. Walden. This is her story, her challenge, and her struggle. Yes, there is a group of students that she is teaching that have a major role in the book, but that is because they are her students.¹ A more typical magical school novel probably would have focused on them and their struggles, and I could see that book being really successful, but Tesh has decided to write the book less likely.
In addition, the magical school avoids something that may have bothered you about some other magical school books. In some of those books, the students seem to not even have any sort of training or education in anything but magical disciplines. Mathematics? Literature? World History? In some of those books, the students never seem to learn anything other than an elementary school level, at best. In The Incandescent, Chetwood School (the equivalent to a boarding high school in the US) teaches a full spectrum of courses. Sure, the school specializes in magic, has magical wards, and a prestigious history of studying magic. But you can totally go there and never take a course in magic. And there is no way you can JUST study magic, you have to have a full education and you are going to get it. It’s the most comprehensive look at a school in the modern age that also teaches magic.
Chetwood School is an immersively described experience, but from Walden’s point of view. We see the school and its world and how it is described through her eyes, her life, her day to day, and we get a real sense of the school as a living, breathing place that, in the course and ruts of her existence, comes to life. So we don’t spend time in chemistry labs, or English lectures, but the school comes to such life, so groundedly described, I can feel their presence. The solidly imagined playground of the author’s conjuration of the school demands their existence.
With that solid grounding, back to Dr. Walden, Director of Magic. The novel follows a school year and her life within it, starting with a major incursion from the demonic realm, and the fallout from that. The incursion has her see the Marshal in a new light, which puts the book on a very slow path toward a queer adult romance, as well as other relationships. (Dr. Walden is firmly bi, by the way.) We get to see the students evolve and grow, through the eyes of Dr. Walden. The whole book interrogates the idea of High School, and how it affects and shapes your life, especially after you’ve left it (or in the case of Dr. Walden, come back to it in a different form).
From the other side, the novel interrogates the magic and unique nature of a school setting from a perspective that for a change is not that one of the students. What does it mean to progress through a school year with a new set of students, again and again? What does that mean for you, psychologically and emotionally? How much of the weird unique magic of an educational facility is not only in the student experience, but in the experience of the teachers? Add in the fact that this is a school with magic and these questions come firmly into the realm of genre.
And again, we’re seeing this through the perspective of a teacher, not the students. It’s not that surprising to me that this perspective has been uncommon in fantasy, because the shininess of students learning magic is just so iconic and emblematic. But Tesh shows us that the space of teachers, adults, in a “magical school”, as front and center characters, is intensely interesting. What kind of person goes to school (and a “magical school” at that), graduates and then comes back to teach there? That is part of the heart of this book. That is the ultimate question that it interrogates. And it ties in completely to that quote from the movie I featured at the beginning.
There are plenty of secrets and revelations throughout the novel as we piece together Dr. Walden’s story, her history and come to understand just how she got to the position she is in, and what that means. And the very big secret she is hiding—and partially even hiding from herself. The very title of the book seems to have one meaning…but then, it has another meaning. And what of the gorgeous cover art? That, too, is itself a subtle clue.
The Incandescent is a fascinating and well written fantasy novel very much worth your time for its interrogation of the high school experience, what it means to leave it (and yet, not) and of course magic. And demons. It’s a book whose target audience is not the teenagers who are going to the school, but rather the adults a decade or more removed from that experience. What does Tesh have to offer after her stunning break into novels with the Hugo-winning Some Desperate Glory? A fantastic British school story with a Doctor of Magic, and demons, that’s what.
¹ It should be noted that while a couple of Dr. Walden’s students are skilled or have family history in doing magic, one of her students is really focused on other other academic studies and is taking magic as just one of her subjects that she is academically qualified in. She doesn’t have any special talent or skill in magic, but she is a good *student*.
