AndaReadsTooMuch's Reviews > The Incandescent

Y’all. I really wanted to love this one. I absolutely adored Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory. And this had a good, strong start. We had a whole magical school, a lively debate on the personhood of demons (which is now my new favorite philosophical debate question), and a mysterious demon that tormented the school named “Old Faithful”. What could go wrong?

Paperwork. Administrative paperwork. We get so lost in the day to day life of Dr Warden and her role as head of magic, the magic system, the demons, and the energy of the world dwindles completely. By almost the halfway point I felt I had a better handle on the to-do list of Dr. Warden than I did on the purpose of the book. We had the big slug out with Old Faithful and a huge past mystery revealed just barely at the 25% mark. You can’t help but ask yourself, then what?

After the endless tedium of the day to day life of a school administrator, I found myself doing everything but reading the book. It’s well-written, don’t get me wrong. I could not figure out where it was going, and by the halfway mark, I’d lost the interest in getting there. I will say this, coming from a very long line of teachers, the behind the curtain look at what it takes to be a teacher and administrator was accurately captured. Maybe a bit too accurately. I would have loved to see more of the magic system (run on demons and the contracts they forge when they summon them) and more about the school students themselves, how they learn this magic, what effect it has on the world around them. We don’t get to see any of that, except in the barest outline of Dr Walden’s students. This had potential. If only it had applied itself.