2021 romantic fantasy. Thesan Wain is in charge of Astronomy at
Schola, the preeminent magical school of Albion. Isembard [sic]
Fortier is a specialist in protective magics, seconded to teach in
part so that he can provide protection to the children of Council
members.
It's that rare thing—all right, I'm reading another at the
moment—a school story from the perspective of the teachers. I grew up
with Wodehouse's Tales of St Austins but, like most children I knew,
wasn't really interested in reading about children having adventures;
children were familiar and boring. (So was the school setting,
though of course Wodehouse's schools weren't so very much like the
ones I knew.) As an adult, I find children even less interesting as
protagonists; if you want a story of transformation, well, adults can
do that too, and you don't need to have the sort of utter failure of
care, or other painstaking setup, that's needed for child
protagonists.
In any case, there are some children who need guidance, and others who
are possibly getting up to something they shouldn't be. There are
internal politics and a headmaster who seems not to be doing his job.
There are external politics, especially since Isembard's family is
of a rather higher status in magical society than Thesan's. All of
these things interweave with the slow and gentle process of not just
falling in love but admitting it to each other, over the course of an
academic year.
These people could be stereotypes but they go behind that: Thesan is
isolated at Schola and behaves accordingly there, but is involved with
the professional community of magical astronomers; Isembard is not at
all happy about the things he did in the War but has at least come to
terms with them. Tension is often not from an immediate threat but
from the knowledge that something is going on, but not what it is or
what the outcome might be, and so nothing can be done about it except
to try to gather more information.
Lake has a writing style unlike any other author I read, a halting
approach to speech that's probably more true to life than well-ordered
paragraphs, and I continue to enjoy reading about her world and what
she's doing with it There are some occasional infelicities but they
stand out because they are such an exception to the generally smooth
flow of prose.