mrissa | Dec. 30th, 2024

Dec. 30th, 2024

Review copy provided by the publisher. The author is also a friend, which started because we share an agent.

This is a grown-up book.

There's a lot of dark academia going around these days, but most of it is focused either on institutions of higher learning or on the student level, often both. This one is teacher-focused. The students are brilliantly done, but they are realistic about being 17 in ways that are not always flattering, that are adult-perspective rather than own-perspective. And the protagonist is not just a teacher but a teacher who has moved into administration--what we'd probably call a Vice Principal in the US, where this book is not set. A Deputy Head.

Deputy Head in charge of the magic department. In the magic department of her own former boarding school. So there's that.

The inter-teacher relationships are also beautifully done--co-workers with history and texture--and then there's the magic, which is revealed with the most amazing pacing, every turn a revelation, the small details so important and so well-highlighted that the moments of "ohhhh it's THAT thing" keep coming.

This is a weird thing to praise in a public review rather than a private note, but--the chapters are so well-constructed. If you're having a normal adult life--like our protag Saffy Walden is having!--you will be able to put this book down at the chapter breaks, more curious about what's coming but also satisfied with how the chapter ending went. It's just so well done in so many structural ways, and then the heart is a genuine heart. Highly recommended, pick it up as soon as you can.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

The most common reason I bounce off a book is the prose voice. That means that the most common reason I read a book all the way through that I don't end up liking much is also the prose voice. This was a very readable book on the sentence level. I have no complaints about its prose.

On a larger scale, though...this book just didn't go anywhere deep or interesting with its premise. It's about a young American woman who is hit by a car in Shanghai when her parents think she's living and working in Beijing, and about that whole family trying to figure out what's been going on. Which they mostly don't do. Mostly they just flail around being a mess. Friendships and relationships are severed more or less by bad luck.

On the up side, the sex workers in the book are treated with respect as people. On the other hand, there's not a lot of depth in that part either--and it's a pretty large theme to tackle without having anything in particular to say about it. I can't say this motivated me to seek out Haigh's other books. Oh well, they can't all etc.

I spent the year feeling perpetually behind on reading short things, and I finished it the same way. The thing is, though, that I would rather shout about the things I got to and liked than hold off because I didn't get to everything. And so here we are.

Do Houses Dream of Scraping the Sky?, Jana Bianchi (Uncanny)

Testimony of an Encounter with the Death-Mage, Taken at the Canal Village of Po-Endenn, Stephen Case (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

This Mentor Lives, J. R. Dawson and John Wiswell (Haven Spec)

For Kristen, Who Would Have Turned 47 Today, Melissa Frederick (The Deadlands)

Father Ash, Rachel Hartman (Sunday Morning Transport)

Reciprocity, Valerie Kemp (Haven Spec)

Carbon Cycle, Lindsay King-Miller (The Deadlands)

Evan: A Remainder, Jordan Kurella (Reactor)

A Series of Accounts Surrounding the Risen Lady of the Orun-Alai and Other Alleged Miracles in the Final Days of the Riverlands War, Aimee Ogden (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

Caring for Your Damage Sponge, Rich Larson (Small Wonders)

Morphology, Jennifer Mace (Strange Horizons)

Pockets Full of Stones, Jennifer Mace (Uncanny)