The Incandescent

By: Emily Tesh

Narrated by: Zara Ramm

“Zara Ramm's narration is like watching a film, conjuring images of demons and humans alike. It's funny, it's dark, and it's some of Ramm's best work.” — AudioFile (Earphones Award Winner)

"Narrator [Zara] Ramm's sensible yet snarky performance immediately gives listeners a sense of Walden's personality — competent, knowledgeable, and professional, but never dull" — Library Journal (Starred Review)

Naomi Novik's Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."

Doctor 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. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from—is herself.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.

Great idea, drones a bit

I really liked the idea, but the last two or three hours were very slow and droned on and on, waiting to get to the point I’d figured out much earlier on.

Magic school but from the teachers

Loved this take on a classic style of story! Fascinating inner life to the main character. Funny and charming but also surprising.

great narration and good story

I should clarify: I mean that this is just a "good" story by the standard of the authors previous works. This still ranks among my favorites when it comes to storytelling. It's just hard to surpass #1 (which is also by this author)

A more condensed story than their other works, it still tells an enthralling story with deeply human characters in a story that is smaller in scale, but just as compelling as their other works.

I eagerly await the next title from Emily Tesh. Her LGBTQIA+ writing has portrayed our experience with an accuracy and sharpness that no other writer has yet hit in my experience.

She just does not miss. Keep the humanity alive, Ms. Tesh!

My favorite book of the year

This book won’t be for everyone. I can actually see a lot of people hating it. The pacing can be glacial in places and the protagonist could be deeply unlikable, depending on your tolerance for certain things, but if those aren’t things that put you off, and if you might enjoy seeing a magical boarding school tale from the perspective of a teacher, while keeping a lot of the themes of such tales, this will be a real treat.

Fun Story and Interesting Concept

I enjoyed the world the author created and, as a teacher, I also enjoyed the main character. The narrator sometimes doesn't do as good as job as I would have liked differentiating character's voice, and I really did not care for the ending of the story. It felt like we just skipped over the most interesting moments in a way that I found unsatisfying.