What's infuriating about this book is that I WANTED to love it. I SHOULD have loved it. I love a magic school, I love an older MC, I love badass babes who are hot and Know Their Shit™️. I'm so into the idea of a magic school but from the perspective of a teacher! I'm so into adults who are good at adulting and don't foist their responsibilities off to the young people, or who are so neglectful the youth HAVE to step in. There is so much love and care and genuiene regard for young people in this book, it's such a refresing take on magic schools! It's also written fairly well from a craft perspective. It's punchy, witty, and easy to parse, making this a quick read in a good way.

However. I don't like magic cops, endorsing the status quo, entertaining fuck bois who work for the military, getting lost in the weeds of academic administration, and I don't like time skips that gloss over (imo) important things just to move time forward. This book covers too much time for the amount of substance we get. The pacing is off, with the emotionally charged moments happening way too early in the page count and we spend the rest of the time lollygagging, waiting to see what actually the climax will be.

It's so so clear that Tesh loves being a teacher, and in many ways this is a love letter to other teachers. Which I don't begrudge at all, but I do feel like it bogged down the plot/pacing quite a bit. It's also clear that Tesh really gets and cares for teenagers, and it's lovely to see them painted in such a positive light! The magic system is interesting, although not as fleshed out as I would have liked, as really the only examples we get of using magic as a career/in the world outside of school is in the context of policing or military operations. I would love to know how the average person is engaging with magic in their daily life. How is magic helping the farmer? Or the food service industry? Has magic been incorporated into public transportation? How is the single mom leveraging magic to make life easier? Like what we see is interesting, but it ends up feeling anemic because we end up seeing so little of it, and it sucks big time that what we do get is so frustratingly focused on exploitive and oppressive aspects of society.

The ending mostly didn't work for me, either. It mostly felt sloppy and rushed, and lacked a satisfying conclusion in regards to the fuck boi, the magic cop, and the fate of our MC in general - although I do appreciate there was tangible sacrifice made/cost paid.

This could have been great, but alas.