Higher Magic - by Courtney Floyd (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"Higher Magic is my catnip. By what dark arts I know not, Floyd has summoned up a wonderful wizard-grad-school slice-of-life, replete with organizing, romance, anxiety, camaraderie, and courage. More please!" --Max Gladstone, NYT Bestselling Co-Author of This is How You Lose the Time War

In this incisive, irreverent, and whimsical cozy dark academia novel for fans of Heather Fawcett's Emily Wilde series and R.F. Kuang's Babel, a struggling mage student with intense anxiety must prove that classic literature contained magic--and learn to wield her own stories to change her institution for the better.

First-generation graduate student Dorothe Bartleby has one last chance to pass the Magic program's qualifying exam after freezing with anxiety during her first attempt. If she fails to demonstrate that magic in classic literature changed the world, she'll be kicked out of the university. And now her advisor insists she reframe her entire dissertation using Digimancy. While mages have found a way to combine computers and magic, Bartleby's fated to never make it work.

This time is no exception. Her revised working goes horribly wrong, creating a talking skull named Anne that narrates Bartleby's inner thoughts--even the most embarrassing ones--like she's a heroine in a Jane Austen novel. Out of her depth, she recruits James, an unfairly attractive mage candidate, to help her stop Anne's glitches in time for her exam.

Instead, Anne leads them to a shocking and dangerous discovery: Magic students who seek disability accommodations are disappearing--quite literally. When the administration fails to act, Bartleby must learn to trust her own knowledge and skills. Otherwise, she risks losing both the missing students and her future as a mage, permanently.

Review Quotes

"Higher Magic is my catnip. By what dark arts I know not, Floyd has summoned up a wonderful wizard-grad-school slice-of-life, replete with organizing, romance, anxiety, camaraderie, and courage. More please!" --Max Gladstone, New York Times Bestselling Co-Author of This is How You Lose the Time War

"Timely, twisty and immensely clever, Higher Magic is both a love letter to the written word and a rallying cry for the disenfranchised." --Frances White, Sunday Times bestselling author of Voyage of the Damned

"Higher Magic is enchanting, affirming, and an astonishingly realistic representation of my own experience in grad school (which is a delightful thing to say about a book that also features a most loquacious narration skull). Courtney Floyd's intelligent, inclusive novel captures the challenges of navigating academia as a disabled person...while ultimately celebrating the bravery of living and learning in spite of an oppressive system." --Sylvie Cathrall, author of A Letter to the Luminous Deep

"An outrageously original magic system, real and relatable characters, themes of belonging, self-determination, and community, A+ romance, and some of the best disability representation I've read--not to mention the charming talking skull--make this an entrancing page-turner." --Leanne Schwartz, author of A Prayer for Vengeance and To a Darker Shore

"Higher Magic is the subversive, dry-humored, disability justice-oriented dark academia book of my heart. Between the truly ingenious magic system, potent renderings of grad school trauma (and community!), an edge-of-your-seat mystery, and a romance that had me cackling, I couldn't put this book down. Actual witchcraft." --P. H. Low, Locus- and Rhysling-nominated author of These Deathless Shores

"Higher Magic is simply brilliant: a delightful mash up of dark academia and nineteenth-century sensation fiction. A magical university, found family, and a powerful championing of kindness, love, and compassion for others--this book is perfect for fans of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries and The Winx Saga. Floyd is an exciting new voice in contemporary fantasy, and her debut is a higher kind of magic indeed." --Jen Sugden, author of High Vaultage

"A brilliant celebration of friendship, education, and refusal to surrender in the face of injustice, all set in a magical university that anyone who has ever battled through the joys and torments of postgraduate study will find hauntingly familiar. Witty, compassionate, and fiercely intelligent." --H.G. Parry, author of The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door

"Floyd creates a spellbindingly accurate reimagining of the grad school experience, where magic does little to improve the struggle of trying to succeed in academia for neurodivergent or nontraditional students...A campus novel with a fantasy twist, Floyd's debut will charm anyone who's had to fight for their place in higher education." --Library Journal