What could be more stressful than a five-day practical final exam on which all of your future plans and job prospects depend? Try throwing a dead body into the mix! Five students at a magical school for healing must put their minds together to both solve a murder and pass their finals in Bodies of Magic, Freya Marske’s new standalone, which came out on September 15. Freya Marske has shown herself to be a master at blending genres with both her sexily spooky novella Cinder House and her epic Last Binding trilogy, but she really knocks it out of the park with this one, which will appeal equally to lovers of murder mysteries and fantasy set in uniquely crafted worlds. Plus, a splash of romance!
As the residents of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr celebrate the feast week of the First Healer, the fifth-year scholars at the Academie are taking their final exams in the healing arts. Randomly assigned into groups of five that will pass or fail together, the students are presented with real patients that they must diagnose and treat. But when Moyna, Estiene, Alys, Jehan, and Clement walk into their exam room on the first day, they’re presented with the dead body of Ysabel Caudotte, one of the most brilliant scholars in their year. The authorities are quick to dismiss it as a case of suicide or magical burnout but the scholars aren’t so sure. When they begin receiving mysterious notes written by Ysabel before her death and referencing secret details of their exam cases, it becomes clear that Ysabel was involved in something much bigger—something worth killing for. But who would commit the ultimate crime of murdering a healer?
Bodies of Magic follows all of the plot beats of a classic murder mystery while also building out a sophisticated and fully lived-in fantasy world. The team of five students in the exam group serve as amateur sleuths, with Marske masterfully shifting between their points of view as they chase down different lines of investigation and come together to share their findings. Though at times the scholars suspect each other (and they all have a secret to hide), ultimately the unlikely Scooby gang form deep bonds with each other as they learn to act as one in both their investigating and their healing. They track down clues and multiple suspects, trying to piece together motive, means, and opportunity. A second murder halfway through the novel ups the stakes and sets the clock ticking as one of the scholars is framed. And at the end, once the team of sleuths has figured it all out, they lay out their logic and conclusion before an audience that includes the killer, forcing a confession.
But while all of that sounds like something straight out of an Agatha Christie novel, it is the sophisticated geopolitics of this fantasy world that really flesh out the complex motives of the suspects and make the murder story believable. The wider world of Bodies of Magic is one in which geography determines magical abilities. Only the small region of Sieuxerr produces healers, so families from other countries flock to the city in the hopes of producing healer children that they can bring back to their homelands and patients from areas with few healers travel great distances for the chance to be treated at Sieuxerr’s free clinic. Healers were once highly revered both in their home city and abroad, but a devastating outbreak of an incurable disease called the serrage has made many people resentful and suspicious of the healers that failed to save them. The fact that healers were hit hardest by the disease garnered little sympathy, since the shrinking workforce became more susceptible to political corruption and healing became increasingly a privilege of the highest bidders. Then you have major institutions like the Academie and the local hospital as well as the city’s most wealthy and influential families wrestling for power and resources. Each member of the exam group comes from a different background: Moyna’s family are expatriates staying in Sieuxerr just long enough for her to finish her education, but she doesn’t want to move to a homeland she’s never known for a future she didn’t choose; Estienne is the golden boy of the powerful Marcel family and the son of the hospital’s top healer but he’s torn between craving his father’s approval and feeling trapped under his shadow; Alys is from a family of wealthy socialites but her anxiety is misinterpreted as snobbery, her magic is uncooperative, and she’s constantly dismissed as a pretty face with an empty head; Jehan is broke and has been engaging in some illegal extracurriculars for extra cash—but worse, he’s brokenhearted after getting dumped by Estienne; and Clement was the best friend of the murdered girl Ysabel, happy to coast on her coattails as they slowly healed from a traumatic upbringing among religious extremists. Ysabel herself was a complicated person—brilliant and talented, but also an outside-the-box thinker who rejected tradition, loved secrets, and had a tendency to manipulate others. Each suspect—whether a fellow student, administrator, hospital worker, or townie—fits into this world in a unique way and has complicated views that might have led them to kill a healer.
If you’re looking for dark academia in a magical med school environment, definitely check out Bodies of Magic! You can find it on shelves now at your favorite local retailer or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve already read it, let me know your thoughts in the comments!