One of fantasy’s favorite settings is the magic school. A student receives their (sometimes coveted, sometimes surprise) acceptance to a mysterious, fabled school dedicated to teaching its students the mystical arts. They find themselves plunged into a world full of arcane rules, fantastic architecture, hostile classmates, stressful tests, terrifying trials, and probably a really weird sport. There’s a prophecy. A clique. Probably a classmate or two will die, or at least be transformed into something distasteful. Our protagonist will have to find allies and make friends to survive, stretch themselves past their limits of knowledge, grow up at least a little, and assume their destiny.
Basically, adolescence, but with fireballs.
It’s not a new idea in the slightest—think Ursula K. Le Guin’s school on Roke in Earthsea, Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University, and Mercedes Lackey’s Heraldic College in Valdemar, just to name a few—but the YA boom put the idea on steroids as protagonists headed off to schools, academies, and training grounds for every kind of magic.
Like a lot of readers my age, I grew up on the concept of the magic school. I yearned to be whisked away to learn the secrets of the universe. Then I grew up and had a kid, and suddenly started looking at those fantasies with a very different eye. Kids today (and teachers and administrators) aren’t even allowed to have peanut butter in the classroom out of respect for allergies. And today’s lesson plan involves a spell that does what? It’s what inspired me to write The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, in which the protagonist is not the one who gets the magic school acceptance letter, but the perfectly mundane parent. When Vivian’s kindergartner is bitten by a werewolf, she suddenly finds herself dealing with school supply lists that include henbane and an athame, an immortal teacher (who worked with Maria Montessori herself), and a dark prophecy that’s starting to sound frighteningly like her own little family. Oh, and it’s her turn to bring in the classroom sacrifice this week.
I’m not the only one who’s been interrogating some of the tropes of the magic school setting. Over the last several years, authors have been moving the focus away from the standard student-on-a-hero’s-journey and taking a close look at what the classic magic school stories ignore. So let’s look at some refreshing spins on the magic schools we know and love.
Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang
Oxford University seems magical enough on its own, but in R.F. Kuang’s incendiary alternate history, the Royal Institute of Translation turns words into magic. This magic school follows many of the standard trappings—outsiders who must band together, enthralling descriptions of an elaborate magic system we learn along with the students, storied stone halls. But Kuang goes deeper, asking hard questions most magic school stories avoid. How does scholarship control knowledge, and therefore power? Who decides what gets studied as a classic and what gets studied as anthropology? Here, the magic school isn’t just a charming and morally neutral setting, but an active tool of colonialism and oppression.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
It’s a cliché to say that the setting is a character, but Novik’s Scholomance really does have a mind of its own. This magic school has no benevolent instructors. Instead, the school itself brims with malevolence. Students here are going to learn if it kills them, and the school probably does want to kill you. There are no adults at all; just a load of scared teenagers trying to survive the most personal of magical curricula. Novik questions not only the pedagogy but the very purpose behind the magic school.
Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
So the cherished acceptance letter for a student finally arrives. What happens to the sibling left behind in the mundane school system? Detective Ivy Gamble wasn’t lucky enough to get into The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages; that was her twin sister’s destiny, not hers. Which makes it incredibly awkward when, as an adult, Ivy has to investigate a murder at the school where her sister now teaches and where she still feels the bitterness of exclusion. What does it mean to be the normal one in the family when you weren’t Chosen?’
The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
Because not everyone gets to be the Chosen One. Focused less on the high school and more on the student body, this book features the background characters—the ones who don’t fight the zombies or lay the ghosts to rest, but instead are the ones mentioned only in passing, screaming and running and just trying to find a prom date. Trying to graduate high school is hard enough; it’s even worse when the world ends. Again.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
We’ve covered the politics, the building, the left-behind family, the non-protagonist students—how about the faculty? Dr. Walden’s true love is teaching, but as an administrator, most of her days are now consumed by meetings. The occasional demonic incursion just puts her behind on her grading. But have you ever really thought about what it would be like to be responsible for several hundred horny magic-wielding teenagers trapped together at boarding school? Enforcing curfew at Chetwood School is no joke. It’s another view of a magic school you haven’t seen before.
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The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association
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I would like to namecheck and recommend Diane Duane’s, ‘So You want to be a Wizard?’ series of books
Those are great books, but the school that we’re told Neet and Kit are at doesn’t appear to be at all magical; ISTM they’re more like apprentices, albeit with very little supervision.
[blink]
That’s actually kind of the point – Nita and Kit (and Dairine, and even Darryl) aren’t in a magic school as such; they’re attending regular schools while doing what amounts to independent study in wizardry. The series is a straight-up inversion of the trope. And yet it’s thoughtful even about the everyday school setup; we learn in later books that one of the counselors in Nita’s school is – while not himself a wizard – specifically in place to provide advice and support to the student wizards who are there. (Which is also an inversion, considering that a lot of the classic wizard schools don’t seem to even have counselors….)
I’m not sure if Elisa Bonnin’s Lovely Dark and Deep is doing anything super-new with her magic school of Ellery West, but I am enjoying the plot hook of “the probation students are tacitly permitted to investigate the weirdness going on because they have nothing to lose”. Also, the protagonist is Filipina and had to flee the country with her family before well-meaning relatives had her exorcised or declared a witch, so her perspective on the student body of Ellery West, most of whom are “legacies” from well-known magical families, is…skeptical.
Seconding the Scholomance trilogy by Novik, for those who thought Hogwards was really far too safe for a world of magic and magical creatures.
I have Caitlin’s book on my hold list at work. I’m looking forward to it. I loved the So You Want to Be a Wizard books. I really wanted to find my very own copy in the school library. I’ll add The Rest of Us Just Live Here, and The Incadecent to my tbr pile . They sound interesting, and I’ve never heard of them before.
Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks is a fun read.
It’s a school for evil doers with courses on forgery, poison, etc.
First book in a YA series.
Olivie Blake’s Atlas Six series has a sentient school building which supervises every aspect of its students’ independent studies.
Patricia C. Wrede’s Frontier Magic series is full of magical classwork. And Universities specializing in schools/types of magic. From the first book of the trilogy:
“We will begin the year by taking a general look at the three great theoretical systems of magic: the Avrupan, the Hijero—Cathayan, and the Aphrikan…”
Wrede, Patricia C.. Thirteenth Child (Frontier Magic, Book 1) (p. 51). Scholastic Inc.. Kindle Edition.
sorry – not sorry – but i just did not like Babel. great characters, very interesting magic system, i totally get the politics of it all, etc., but… so hopeless. in the end — what was accomplished? and sometimes the characters did such stupid things. i’m not expecting them to be flawless but some of their mistakes (brave or otherwise) were just head-scratchingly bad.
Rachel Caine’s Great Library books (starts with INK AND BONE) have a very exciting school and some even more exciting field trips. Watch out for automata sphinxes…
Possibly my favorite is the magic school in Sarah Rees Brennen’s “In Other Lands.” Or maybe it’s Elliot’s reaction: “Oh god- are we child soldiers?”
Shoutout to Gail Carriger’s steampunk ‘Finishing School’ series, too.