My Favorite Magic Schools

It is officially back to school time! Here in Minnesota, we start in September because our State Fair is such a big driver of community competition (in rural areas) and employment for teens (in the cities) that it runs our calendar. This was my second day back with staff, and I can’t wait to meet my new students next week!

In honor of that, here are my favorite (mostly magical) school settings! I was a Harry Potter kid, and while my love of that particular series has withered, I have a long fondness for school settings, including those featuring teacher protagonists!

• Journals of Evander Tailor by Tobias Begley: I have to start with the selfish pick. I have an unnatural love for this series, which was my first proper gay magic school story, and it tickled my Harry Potter childhood obsession. It’s pretty nitty-gritty with how it handles magic systems, and has some choppy prose in the first two entries. The fight scenes are excellent though (and each book has a tournament arc), and the final book sees the protagonist as a professor of item enchantment!
  
  
• Schoolomance by Naomi Novik: This trilogy follows a very deadly magic school which, despite its body count, is the safest place for magical adolescents. The setting is very cutthroat, and I appreciated how the author wove monetary power dynamics into supernatural worldbuilding. The main character is super overpowered, but Novik keeps it interesting by presenting challenges that can’t be solved with an atomic bomb or exploding volcano.
  
  
• Divinity 36 by Gail Carriger: I like to describe this book as a K-Pop idol boot camp, except as an intergalactic music organization. This doesn’t feature classes or lessons in singing, but it has a remarkably slice-of-life and chill approach to boarding school life. I liked how it dodged a lot of traditional school plotlines, such as how it handles bullies/unpopularity.
  
  
• Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor: perhaps this isn’t so much a school but a mentorship program. Akata Witch brings disparate kids together into a really delightful reimagining of school settings. There are enough familiar elements to be grounded while also making some big changes to the kids-lit formula for school books. It’s a bit darker than most middle grade books go for too, which I appreciate a lot.
  
  
• Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic: This is a time loop power fantasy which features a school (especially the first book). Honestly the school itself isn’t the draw, but rather one of my favorite asshole teachers of all time. Zim is wholly unreasonable, and Kurmaic’s writing made me want to throttle a fictional character while turning me around to how great he is by the end.
  
  
• Mage Errant by John Bierce: Set in a mountain, this series has a lot of stereotypical elements. However, the principal is a sphynx who takes a special interest in the protagonist, and the mentor (and main teacher) is a bisexual disaster who uses origami magic. This builds into a really fleshed out ensemble cast with some of the most epic war fights I’ve seen. I wasn’t sold on the multiverse concepts introduced later in the series, but I’ve loved the next series Bierce has been writing in the extended multiverse (The City that Would Eat the World)
  
  
• The Protector of the Small by Tamora Pierce: This is my childhood nostalgia pick, but I think it stands up even as an adult! The knight school is a remarkably down-to-earth rendering compared to how they’re written nowadays. I doubt its realistic at all, but it feels very believable. Lots of Pierce’s books feature good schools, but this is the quartet that holds my heart. I use it as a teaching tool, actually!
  
  
• Three Meant to Be by MN Bennett: The final three books all focus on teachers! Three Meant to Be actually is my least favorite school on this list, but I appreciated a teacher who wasn’t aggressively positive all the time. He’s still a bit of a teacher martyr, but I like that he’s a grump. The second chance romance with a celebrity demon hunter is the big draw though, especially when it explores whether or not Telepaths and Seers can behave morally in relationships, especially if they can’t turn their powers off.
  
  
• The Fall of Kings by Ellen Kushner: I like to describe this as medieval academia, and a major portion of the book focuses on different lecturers fighting for students. In the end, a public scholarly debate about whether or not magic is real forms a major portion of this book’s climax. The Riverside books resolutely ignore many modern prose stylings, which is a delight. This is technically #3 in the series, but all can be read as standalones.
  
  
• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh: as a Hugo nominee, I’m hoping this encourages publishers to put out more teacher POV books. I’m kind of worried they’ll see others as derivative of this instead of as another potential bestseller though. Anyways, all teachers can agree the copy machines are literally the worst thing in the world, and seeing one possessed by an imp gave me vindictive joy. I would like for a modern teacher depiction that doesn’t feature someone putting in 80+ hour weeks, but that wasn’t this book.