What if you got all the benefits of magic, but someone else had to pay the price?
That’s basically the idea behind this brilliant book by M. L. Wang, and I loved it!
The book opens with Thomil trying to escape with his family to Tiran, a city where they can be safe from the “Blight” that has been ravaging their homeland.
The Blight shows up apparently randomly, burning everything living in its wake. Sometimes it’s just plants, other times it’s animals, but it is too often humans.
Thomil is forced to watch as his beloved sister and her husband are both burned up by the blight. He barely makes it to safety with their baby, which he claims is his daughter because he knows that’s the only way he can prevent the guards at the border of Tiran from separating them.
Meanwhile, our plucky heroine is Sciona, and because I listened to the audiobook, I just now realized as I was looking it up that her name is the female version of “scion,” because of course it is.
Sciona is an orphan whose father is wealthy and powerful, but when her mother died, he sent her to live with her aunt and cousin. They don’t have much material wealth, but they love Sciona and take her in, love her, and care for her as best as they can, even when Sciona is an ungrateful brat.
Sciona has always resented her father for sending her away, so she doesn’t use his last name and she doesn’t tell anyone she’s related to him.
She’s determined to be the first woman ever to be accepted into the High Magistry, and she’s so single minded in that pursuit that she tends to ignore the wants and needs of those around her. As annoying as that can be, I appreciate her honesty in admitting that about herself.
Of course, Sciona makes it into the High Magistry, but that’s just the beginning. Once there, she has to deal with all the insults and inconveniences women face in academia. The ones that seem innocent on their face, but add up to provide real barriers to women trying to make any meaningful progress.
It starts with Sciona being assigned a janitor as her lab assistant, even though he is in no way qualified to be a lab assistant and Sciona has to take on the added responsibility of training him to get him to a level where he can be useful to her.
Turns out her lab assistant is none other than Thomil, 10 years after he made his treacherous journey to Tiran. It should surprise no one that anyone from outside Tiran is treated as a lower-class citizen. They earn low wages at menial jobs and live in slums. And, of course, they’re blamed for the Blight that forces them to leave their homeland and come to Tiran. One might think Wang was trying to comment on our immigration system…
That’s not the only thing Wang is commenting on. In addition to immigration and sexism, she covers environmentalism and the price that has to be paid for technology. But in this world, it’s made clear that the people using the technology (magic, in this case) are not the ones paying for it.
For all the social and political commentary she fits into this book, I never felt like I was being preached at. On the contrary, it was also a thriller with a fast-moving plot that kept me reading (or listening, since I went the audiobook route with this one.)
I won’t spoil the ending, other than to say no one lives happily ever after.
This book is so well done and I thoroughly enjoyed it!