Recent Reading, Not Hugos
Jun. 12th, 2025 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
All thirteen entries (so far) in Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric and Desdemona series, either first reads or rereads (2015 - 2024).
There are excellent "sick on the couch" reading. The stakes are "how will Penric and Des get out of this one?" (spoilers: mix of hiding and chaos), sometimes with added "should we give people second chances?" (spoilers: yes) though occasionally it's "has this person burned up their second, third, etc chances and needs a smiting?" (spoilers: often enough yes, occasionally with Des setting things on fire, sometimes with many witnesses to the smiting). The stories are pretty indulgent, especially once the reader gets to some of Desdemona's meddling (I say vaguely, avoiding spoilers) in "Demon Daughter" and "Penric and the Bandit".
The Incandescent, Emily Tesh (2025): Insta-reaction: WOO MORE TESH. In audiobook, read by Zara Ramm. I was surprised how fast it went, and blame certain big fat space operas who clock in at, let's see, 19 to 21 hours per novel for making me think a 12 hour audiobook is short.
Summary: Saffie Walden, Director of Magic at posh Chetwood Academy, juggles her decidedly unromantic responsibilities as a teacher and administrator, until a magical incursion shakes up the school and Saffie's committment to the persona of Dr. Walden, Teacher, she inhabits with deliberation.
Thoughts:
This started as a comment in response to
cahn's thoughts, so may be a bit messy.
A lot of comparisons to the Scholomance novels are being thrown around, which is not wrong, but it's very incomplete. The Scholomance worldbuilding aggressively excised adults from the school structure; The Incandescent focuses on the internal and external life of an adult who cares deeply about doing right by her adolescent students. The Scholomance novels reoriented questions of privilege around enclaver vs-non-enclaver (or added it to the matrix of country, race, class, gender, etc, but placed enclave status in primacy, IMO), The Incandescent doesn't have a strong magic / non-magic split, or if it does, it's less important than other parts of the matrix of country, race, class, gender, etc, in Tesh's narrative.
I do think HP has to be namechecked, if only as a distant genre precursor. One might see some Minerva McGonagall in Saffie's DNA, but it could also be the "stern schoolma'am" tropes of the boarding school genre. HP plays that trope straight and pretty unquestioned. The Incandescent either plays with the trope or grounds it in one of the reasons it exists: women creating a persona of authority for a classroom audience, or for an entire school.
Unlike SDG, I am reasonably confident Mass Effect should not be namechecked as a genre precursor. Heh.
Laura gets this novel's spirit quest for your rubbish ex, except Saffie isn't even her ex! They went on one date! Saffie nailed it when she said she got a doctorate instead of therapy! She should do something about that.
I'm a plot and worldbuilding person, but theme may be the driver in The Incandescent. Characters might be second, as part of expressing the themes. By that logic, plot would come in third. Which might be why Mark doesn't convince me as a character. His role in the themes (hereditary access to elite schooling / power structures, unearned and unchecked privilege, deceptive social presentation) is present in other characters, including Saffie (as Laura points out). Arguably Mark could be a mirror or foil for Saffie, who does her fair share of deceptive coloring, and is so convinced of her place in the world. If that was what Tesh was driving for, she needed to pull it out a bit more in the actual writing. But what is unique about Mark, from what I remember, is that he is structurally the only adult on school grounds who could kick off the act three issue that Laura Kenning had to be summoned to fix.
(Saffie deciding she didn't need to call the Wardens came right when I was wondering if I should stay up or call it a night, and I decided that the signposted looming disaster could wait until morning, demonstrating that I find audiobooks are easier to set aside than physical novels, ha.)
The real conflict has very little to do with Mark. It's Saffie and the Phoenix, or Saffie and demons in general, or Saffie and Laura, or Saffie vs Saffie. (The Phoenix inhabiting / reshaping Saffie into someone 100% subsumed into the role Saffie had created for herself was both horrifying and kind of funny.)
In an example of wrong-footing, I really thought Old Faithful would find its way back into the narrative. I did not see the Phoenix's awakening coming, but I enjoyed what Tesh did with it.
I do love thinking about how the fight against Old Faithful must have looked from the student perspective: the staid Dr. Walden who does safety lectures and teaches one A-level course and does some vague admistration thing showed up to a magical disaster in the making, took off her blazer to reveal some seriously unstaid tattos, walked into certain death, and started chucking teenagers (and one Warden) out of certain death.
Speaking of students, if running by strict trope checklists, Saffie's students were cheated of a chance to save the school from the Phoenix. This is either poor stuff, if you're here for the "teenagers having adventures at magical boarding school" tropes, or Tesh continuing her thematic focus on the agency of teachers and other adults involved in school life.
There are excellent "sick on the couch" reading. The stakes are "how will Penric and Des get out of this one?" (spoilers: mix of hiding and chaos), sometimes with added "should we give people second chances?" (spoilers: yes) though occasionally it's "has this person burned up their second, third, etc chances and needs a smiting?" (spoilers: often enough yes, occasionally with Des setting things on fire, sometimes with many witnesses to the smiting). The stories are pretty indulgent, especially once the reader gets to some of Desdemona's meddling (I say vaguely, avoiding spoilers) in "Demon Daughter" and "Penric and the Bandit".
The Incandescent, Emily Tesh (2025): Insta-reaction: WOO MORE TESH. In audiobook, read by Zara Ramm. I was surprised how fast it went, and blame certain big fat space operas who clock in at, let's see, 19 to 21 hours per novel for making me think a 12 hour audiobook is short.
Summary: Saffie Walden, Director of Magic at posh Chetwood Academy, juggles her decidedly unromantic responsibilities as a teacher and administrator, until a magical incursion shakes up the school and Saffie's committment to the persona of Dr. Walden, Teacher, she inhabits with deliberation.
Thoughts:
This started as a comment in response to
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
A lot of comparisons to the Scholomance novels are being thrown around, which is not wrong, but it's very incomplete. The Scholomance worldbuilding aggressively excised adults from the school structure; The Incandescent focuses on the internal and external life of an adult who cares deeply about doing right by her adolescent students. The Scholomance novels reoriented questions of privilege around enclaver vs-non-enclaver (or added it to the matrix of country, race, class, gender, etc, but placed enclave status in primacy, IMO), The Incandescent doesn't have a strong magic / non-magic split, or if it does, it's less important than other parts of the matrix of country, race, class, gender, etc, in Tesh's narrative.
I do think HP has to be namechecked, if only as a distant genre precursor. One might see some Minerva McGonagall in Saffie's DNA, but it could also be the "stern schoolma'am" tropes of the boarding school genre. HP plays that trope straight and pretty unquestioned. The Incandescent either plays with the trope or grounds it in one of the reasons it exists: women creating a persona of authority for a classroom audience, or for an entire school.
Unlike SDG, I am reasonably confident Mass Effect should not be namechecked as a genre precursor. Heh.
Laura gets this novel's spirit quest for your rubbish ex, except Saffie isn't even her ex! They went on one date! Saffie nailed it when she said she got a doctorate instead of therapy! She should do something about that.
I'm a plot and worldbuilding person, but theme may be the driver in The Incandescent. Characters might be second, as part of expressing the themes. By that logic, plot would come in third. Which might be why Mark doesn't convince me as a character. His role in the themes (hereditary access to elite schooling / power structures, unearned and unchecked privilege, deceptive social presentation) is present in other characters, including Saffie (as Laura points out). Arguably Mark could be a mirror or foil for Saffie, who does her fair share of deceptive coloring, and is so convinced of her place in the world. If that was what Tesh was driving for, she needed to pull it out a bit more in the actual writing. But what is unique about Mark, from what I remember, is that he is structurally the only adult on school grounds who could kick off the act three issue that Laura Kenning had to be summoned to fix.
(Saffie deciding she didn't need to call the Wardens came right when I was wondering if I should stay up or call it a night, and I decided that the signposted looming disaster could wait until morning, demonstrating that I find audiobooks are easier to set aside than physical novels, ha.)
The real conflict has very little to do with Mark. It's Saffie and the Phoenix, or Saffie and demons in general, or Saffie and Laura, or Saffie vs Saffie. (The Phoenix inhabiting / reshaping Saffie into someone 100% subsumed into the role Saffie had created for herself was both horrifying and kind of funny.)
In an example of wrong-footing, I really thought Old Faithful would find its way back into the narrative. I did not see the Phoenix's awakening coming, but I enjoyed what Tesh did with it.
I do love thinking about how the fight against Old Faithful must have looked from the student perspective: the staid Dr. Walden who does safety lectures and teaches one A-level course and does some vague admistration thing showed up to a magical disaster in the making, took off her blazer to reveal some seriously unstaid tattos, walked into certain death, and started chucking teenagers (and one Warden) out of certain death.
Speaking of students, if running by strict trope checklists, Saffie's students were cheated of a chance to save the school from the Phoenix. This is either poor stuff, if you're here for the "teenagers having adventures at magical boarding school" tropes, or Tesh continuing her thematic focus on the agency of teachers and other adults involved in school life.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-12 02:56 pm (UTC)I don't know if this book officially takes place in the same world as the Greenhollow Duology, but it's close enough in my mind that it might as well be. I really hope she sticks with this world for a few more books, because I cannot get enough of it.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-13 05:44 pm (UTC)I could argue both for and against Greenhollow and The Incandescent sharing a universe. It's hard for me to square the Greenhollow co-existing with the existence of the Wardens, at least until I remember Tobias & co are in a different time period than Saffie. The two 100% share some attitudes.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-06-17 05:06 am (UTC)I love this too. Like, this is kind of an amazing teacher-heroic moment! I must also say I snickered a little bit at the end where Walden goes, "All students forget their teachers," because yeah, it's true I have forgotten (or don't think about) most of my high-school teachers except my very favorite ones, but I think I'd remember a lot better if my teacher had also saved me from certain death!
Speaking of students, if running by strict trope checklists, Saffie's students were cheated of a chance to save the school from the Phoenix. This is either poor stuff, if you're here for the "teenagers having adventures at magical boarding school" tropes, or Tesh continuing her thematic focus on the agency of teachers and other adults involved in school life.
I really liked this trope subversion -- they did what I think is an entirely proper part for underage kids, which is that they snuck out of school to contact another adult who they had some reason to believe could help. That's hard enough; I'm sure they were worried they'd be caught, expelled, and so on. Good job, kids!