The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
Publisher – Orbit
Published – Out Now
Price – £20 hardback £9.99 ebook
Dr 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. But it's possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from . . . is herself.
In fantasy and science fiction we have a well known concept of the mentor figure. They teach our hero how to use their skills, accept their destiny and often end up in some form of sacrifice for our hero. From Merlin in many legends, Chade in Realm of the Elderlings or the classic Obi-wan we know their role and that it may require a training montage or two. Interestingly its also always told from the pupil’s side. We focus on the pupil’s teaching but very rarely get to see it from the mentor’s point of view. This though is what made Emily Tesh’s new fantasy novel the excellent The Incandescent such an interesting and thoughtful read.
Chetwood School is famous in Britain for centuries being a key training ground for young magicians. Originally crafted for the rich this private school now also has several scholarship students and a very promising group of four students are prepared for their final year of A-levels and the road to university (and adulthood). The class are being prepared by Dr Walden (Saffy if you really know her) the extremely knowledgeable Director of Magic not just responsible for her four students but also the school’s wider magical skills and the not so minor task of keeping a school of several hundred inexperienced magicians that impact reality safe (and the wider world too). However, one of the biggest demons drawn to Chetwood’s magical energies has decided its time again to make a move for getting into our world and this set in motion a chain of events making Dr Walden once again key to the school’s safety but raises questions on Saffy’s own past that will have huge consequences for her students.
What is always appreciated is when a book does something as little differently and in so many magical academia tales we’d no doubt have followed the students, watched their personal battles and then how they come together to save the world. Tesh though actually while making us still care about Dr Walden’s charges actually brings Walden into focus. What exactly does the teacher do?
We are so often focused on mentor’s lessons and the odd well told cryptic life lesson that we don’t see the skills and thinking going on behind all of this. Tesh brings to life what a teacher does the rest of the time and as someone with loved ones who work in these areas Tesh does a really good job of showing us the many other skills a good teacher needs to have. We see Walden not just have showy magic lessons but deal with crisis of confidences, admin, marking, more marking and many more meetings. How does a teacher work out the best approach to engage a struggling student. By focusing on Walden we see the teacher that the pupils know, that her co-workers know and just occasionally the woman underneath all of these hiding in her personas. I’ll talk about the bigger plot in a moment but there are sequences here where Tesh walks us through how a simple marking scene actually ends up Walden putting the bigger pieces of a less than stellar student‘s work together and how she thinks she can improve things to help them get a better mark in an exam and help their future development. No showy magic is used but it’s just a gorgeous behind the curtain scene that brings the role of teacher to life and resembles the type of discussions various people I know in teaching have signalled. You will come away from this book a hopefully new level of respect for the difference that a good teacher can make.
But of course, magic and demons also are key to the mix! Tesh has re-imagined a UK where magic is real and known, has quite powerful people in authority who wield it and also a world dangerous enough when magic is not understood particularly in the young then it can go deadly wrong. It’s a complex alternate history and I really liked how Tesh brings the reader up to speed with what is different and what is not. There is a shout out here for the way Tesh uses third person narration to have a slightly wry glance at the world, isn’t shy to add some knowing commentary on characters and knows when to leave the jokes behind. This is a world that feels its got real history and depth. One key scene is when a particularly powerful demon attacks the school and suddenly Tesh goes from the almost-ordinariness of magic lessons to full on magical attack. Tesh writes these scenes with action, splendour and a smidgen of horror as characters realise they’re in huge trouble. There are stakes here helped by us realising these vulnerable young people who are still learning about emotions while can alter reality are in the centre of things. I liked how these consequences are explored and how Walden has to not just deal with stopping the world ending every now and then but also the impact these events may have on her students.
Which all comes down to what the story also explores as to who actually is Dr Saffy Walden? If you’ve ever had the weird experience of meeting a teacher outside of school, you may recognise the slight oddness of thinking teachers have lives outside classrooms. Tesh gives us one ultra-professional very competent very school-teacher fact of Walden and then suddenly we also see a woman hiding her various tattoos, very comfortable in her bisexuality and as demons strike also a woman who has her own past events that has shaped her choices. I really liked that you can have a very competent professional who at the same time we get an understanding is that her own life experiences have shaped her choices far more than she thinks and also that competence often does not stretch to all aspects of her life. The end of the world by magic is one thing we have to look out for in this novel in Walden’s own choices and sometimes the poorer ones both slightly shock us (in particular when it comes to romance) but actually as we get to know her feel for me understandable even as we shout no don’t do that! Walden is just a fascinating refreshingly complicated character who feels very human and she holds the book together really well as we realise this isn’t your standard school story it’s a teacher tale.
I do though have a few slight issues. Firstly, and this is very much still in some ways a classic setting – the private school. It works here due to the mystery and history of the school but for me this is not the average child’s experience in the UK. When we hear most pupil’s families are paying £50k a year in fees the school with its boarding, resources, pastoral care all feel in some ways even more fantastical to most British student’s lives. This is a setting that many UK stories have used for decades, and I wonder if in the 21st century we could just let it go? The book does touch on issue of race and class in particular the Black working class star pupil Walden is teaching but part of me wondered if this was an inner city comprehensive what differences would that mean? Perhaps even greater resonance? The resources Walden could call upon have would be far less for a start. But I can’t judge a book for what it is not, but I feel it is slightly undercutting itself. One other issue is Tesh at the end of the book allows us to see her students work together as their own group and while this heightens the drama a few more interludes showing the development may have helped better sign-post the changes in how these students interact and have grown as a consequence of Walden’s teaching.
Putting all that to one side though I was hugely impressed by The Incandescent, its got a fascinating topic rarely explored in the genre, an engaging plot and world that is very very interesting helped by the narration Tesh provides to make the story flow across term time and it does feel a book more interested in exploring teaching rather than simply just giving us the chosen ones for the year. It cements for me Tesh as one of science fiction and fantasy’s most versatile interesting authors and I strongly recommend it!
