The Incandescent

Chetwood School is a prestigious private school in England, and Dr Saffy Walden is its Director of Magic. Magic is an ordinary part of life there, and demons are a genuine danger. Saffy teaches advanced magic to the most gifted teenagers in the country.

Her job has a second half. She guards the school against whatever waits beyond its borders, and she does it as a former Chetwood student herself, carrying the weight of mistakes she made in the past.

Her star pupil is Nikki Conway, a brilliant foster child at the school. Saffy's attention to her gifted student sits alongside the demands of protecting every other pupil, and her own history hangs over both tasks.

The book is contemporary fantasy that follows the faculty instead of the students, which turns the usual magic school story around. Its concerns are teaching, responsibility and what a person does with the lessons their own errors have left them. The question running through it is whether Saffy can put what she learned the hard way to use for the children in her care.