Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske was an absolute standout of a book!

From just the description I was completely hooked and that carried on throughout the entire book. The mystery and twists were incredibly well written, I was both surprised and happy with the answer to who did it and reading back, it made complete sense.

Each character comes across so differently and each had a unique and interesting personality and plot. I absolutely adored the romance between some of our main characters!

It was so interesting to read about each characters different interactions and views on Ysabel and the ending came together perfectly.

An absolute hit of a stand-alone that felt super well rounded with a great ending. I will definitely be reading Marske’s future works!

5/5

Oh man this was an incredible read. I don't think I've felt this moved by a book in AGES! Just great from start to finish.

The premise of this book was so unique and I was immediately drawn into its world. Marske did a commendable job with the worldbuilding and it was well-thought out and explained - which was remarkable for a standalone! Although the world wasn't that complex, the magic system was definitely nuanced and Marske explained it well without making it too exposition heavy. The magic system itself was so interesting and I was so taken by the way magic was yielded for healing. I found myself greatly invested in the small cases and how magic helped heal them.

The plot was well-done. From the start, the intensity was high and basing the book over the course of the exam period of five days heightened the intensity. Every chapter was full of action or information and not once did I feel that pacing was an issue. Further, the murder-mystery aspect lent itself well to this genre. A fantasy murder-mystery is a treat in itself, but the way Marske elevated this mystery to draw in further strands - impeccable.

But my heart belongs to the characters. Although I only knew them for the duration of this book, Alys, Clement, Moyna, Jehan, Estiene and Ysabel wormed my their way into my heart and now have a permanent place in it. For a standalone, the characters were developed quite well and were given space to grow and mature. I appreciated Marske's use of multiple POVs, granting us access to every main character's inner thoughts and motives. Yet, usually when this happens, I find myself drawn to 1-2 characters, but here, I cared for every single one of them. I also found that Marske gave proper justice to each character's arcs - none of them felt rushed or incomplete to me. The best part about their characterisation was how they came together and I'm just a sucker for found family.

The writing itself was straightforward and accessible with an occasional flair that added to the overall experience. Also really liked the use of epigraphs at the start of chapters!

More importantly, at its core, Marske has written a startling commentary and reflection on how burdened the medical system is. I always love how fantasy expresses the reality of our world and in Bodies of Magic, Marske lays bare the complications of getting into medicine and then sustaining a career in this field. This was a great read and I really cherished my time with it.

Bodies of Magic is very different to Freya’s previous books in that this story is largely plot driven and focused around both the murder mystery, and the trials of medical school as opposed to the romance.

Overall, I really enjoyed it! The five POV characters were all unique and interesting - Freya’s phenomenal character work once again shines through - and the world felt real and established. If I’m being picky, I do think having five POV’s, coupled with the timeline of the book only being five days sometimes made it feel as though the plot was progressing quite slowly but that’s really my only critique. Everything felt very fleshed out, the writing was gorgeous, and I would certainly read more books set in this world!! A sequel perhaps? 🥹

(I also think for my personal tastes I wanted a tad more romance. I adore the way Freya writes love and intimacy and I just wanted more more more of it in this book.)

Frankly I would have loved for this to have been a series of books with each one being dual POV and focusing on a different romantic pairing as well as the main plot but maybe that’s just my tastes skewing things 😅

A note on the characters: (AKA my close personal friends)

Alys, you are so wonderful I adore you. Clement, I possibly have a slight crush on you. Estiene, you reminded me of a mash up of Edwin Courcey and Jack Alston and therefore are one of my favourite characters ever written. Jehan, you’re such an idiot but I adore you. And Moyna, thank god for your ending is all I’ll say!!

Oof this book had me somewhat in a chokehold!

I read this one frustratingly slow (damn life getting in the way of my reading time- how dare it!) so my few chapters of this a day I really looked forward to. I kept trying to second guess the story or see where it was headed - I couldn’t wait to see what else would unravel or how their next case was going to go.

It took me a few chapters to get to grips with the world and the characters in the book but once I got the lay of the land, I was so intrigued. I really loved the murder mystery element and the academia vibes - the medical/ healer aspect but coupled with fantasy and magic definitely made it novel for me.

It was split into the five cases of their final year healer exams, with the group stumbling across the dead body of one in their cohort - was it murder, burnout, a cover up? They had to juggle getting to the bottom of a crime AND pass their all important final exams, I mean, that’s a lot for anyone’s plate. I couldn’t get enough and the steady pace really kept me going until the end. I really enjoyed this read!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for this ARC!

“Bodies of Magic” is a stunningly creative fantasy novel. We follow a cast of five characters as they get ready for their final exams. In this case, however, we aren’t talking about pen and paper – instead, these healing mages have to examine five medical cases in five days, only allowed to fail one of them or be forced to repeat their fifth year studies. But what was supposed to be a routine situation quickly escalates into a murder investigation when the five members of one exam group discover a dead body. The body is Ysabel Caudotte, a fellow fifth year student, and the best in their cohort. All five students have a connection to Ysabel. All want to find out what really happened. Can they?

This book was incredible. The worldbuilding is rich and expansive without being overwhelming or feeling like a lecture, and the world it creates feels real and compelling. This book is being marketed as “dark academia”, which I find generally pretty reductive but does fit in this case. It is even used correctly for once! Because this book doesn’t just use its setting in an academic institution as its reason for why it qualifies as “dark academia”, it actually includes the criticism of academic institutions and culture I view as being inherent to this “genre”.

One of this book’s strongest aspects is its characters. We get to go through this world Marske has created in the minds of five different characters, all of which have a distinctive voice and feel real and complex, multilayered. I don’t really want to get into each character too much because I think some of the fun of this book is getting to meet them all yourself, but I do have to speak about Alys. Alys is autistic (this is never specifically said as I am pretty sure this condition does not have a name in this world) and this is represented in a way that feels wonderfully real, including the negative aspects of the condition. In general, there is a variety of representation with these characters. Luxury and poverty, being an outstanding student and being left behind, being native to a place and having roots in other places, different sexualities and different gender expressions. There is also great, accurate representation of chronic illness with a side character which felt very refreshing to see.

The romantic relationships depicted here are also absolutely top notch. Strong chemistry, beautifully written and developed.

I also really enjoyed the murder mystery aspect of this book, which was super well written. It left me in the dark exactly up to the point Marske wanted us to be left in the dark, and it was great fun to follow along as the characters tried to find clues and piece them together. I generally enjoy a fantasy-mystery combination, and this book is a great example of the perfect execution of this subgenre.

This book really dives deep into examining different societal structures, who they serve and who they do a disservice to. Not only within the rich-poor divide, but including those who have different skillsets or who come from a different place.

This is the kind of book you will keep thinking about and run around trying to get everyone to read it. I truly cannot praise it enough. Read it, you will love it.

I absolutely adored this book. As someone who has been to university to study (vet) medicine, the story rang so terrifyingly true for me with the ways the healthcare systems are run, and the pressures put on Scholars and qualified Healers alike, as it is very similar to reality. I could tell the author was from a medical background from the wishes of the characters of an ideal world in Healing, because I too have those wishes. It showed the realities of the work from the side of the Healers and Scholars and how each character coped differently with the stress and pressure of it all.

And the characters, my gosh I love them all so much. I can’t even pick my favourite, I’m here trying to debate if there is one I liked more than the others, but I can’t, they all stole my heart. They were all different and real and layered. All of them have their flaws and they grow so beautifully from them, and seeing them all slowly lower their highly guarded hearts for each other was an absolute joy to read. It really highlighted how much you need good people in your life, and how you can be so much better together than alone.

The magic system was just awesome, truly, and was so well described and not brushed to the side at any point, a true focus of the book. It again showed me how the author was from a medical background with how that magic was so accurately related to body systems and it was so cool to read about. We got more than one chapter simply dedicated to the healing arrays during the exams and I was obsessed by them.

The mystery aspect was brilliant and it kept me guessing right the way through, and also seeing the deeper plot lines all coming to a head at the end was beyond satisfying.

It was just a beautiful book, both in writing, plot, and characters. The pacing was slow, but it 100% worked and I was invested the entire time.

Thank you so much to Net Galley for the arc. All views are my own.

Holy shit that was incredible. This insane and amazing book combined a locked room murder mystery, a magical medical school, politics and hierarchy, and a gang of misfits the likes of whom I haven’t seen and loved since the Six of Crows Duology.

The worldbuilding was both simple and incredibly in depth. It’s focussed mainly on the City of Sieuxerr; children born in Sieuxerr usually inherit the power of healing, and are therefore incredibly sought after, but also lose almost all of their autonomy - they are required to study healing, no matter their own preferences, and even in death their bodies belong to Sieuxerr academy. I felt so many emotions at the world; the unfairness the healers face, the shortage of resources, especially after a mysterious disease gutted the healer population a generation ago and the suffocating expectations that are put upon them.

The book is told from the five POVs of five students sitting their final exams as a cohort - they pass together or not at all. When one of their graduating class is found dead on the morning of their first exam, the group have to work together to not only graduate, but find out what happened to her. I loved all these characters and their mess passionately. There’s Etiene, rich son of a high ranking healer, and Jehan, poor son of an overworked medic, who are madly in love either each other but fighting against it every step of the way. There’s Alys, a beautiful socialite who is expected to simply smile and be pretty, useless and pampered. There’s Clement, whose family hates healers, and is trying to survive whilst grieving their best friend. And finally Moyna, who doesn’t want to be a healer, but whose parents sacrificed so much to make her one.

This is a queer normative world, which I absolutely loved. Being genderfree is recognised and accepted, with one of the main MCs, Clement, embodying this. I loved hearing about all the different regions with different types of elemental mages and the cultures that all band together in the city.

I could talk about this book all day and night; I haven’t been this sucked into a story in ages. I loved the murder mystery element, which had me guessing well into the last part of the book. Marske’s writing is absolutely masterful, and I cannot wait for whatever she brings out next!

Thanks to the legends at Tor for giving me a chance to read an eARC of this via NetGalley. ILY 💕

Read Bodies of Magic for:
✨ Locked room murder mystery
✨ Magical medical school
✨ Queer normative world
✨ Incredible world building
✨ Queer romance sub-plots
✨ Politics of medicine
✨ Flawed but loveable MCs
✨ Immersive storytelling
✨ Alternating POVs

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for this arc! So glad I got this one – I was immediately into the synopsis and initial set up, and it followed through! A cohort of magical medical students, five days of a final exam they can only pass or fail as a group, a lil murder mystery at the same time, what’s not to like?

Ultimately I really enjoyed this. I would hesitate to call this ‘dark’ academia though, if only because, in spite of the murder on the whole it felt lighter and less twisted and tragic than your staples of the genre. Kind of ~new adult, and a bit Leigh Bardugo in vibe... but more Six of Crows loveable group dynamics than the dark/bleakness of Ninth House (or, like, TSH). The plot is well-woven and neatly structured over the five exam days, and has no dearth of culture-building for Sieuxerr and its neighbours in the background. It launched a lot of names and places and elements at you, but in the way I love in fantasy, and an emphasis on history and traditions and foods and festivities made it feel like a world fully lived in, beyond the medical Academie. (Shoutout to the in-world literature extracts at the start of each chapter, I’m a sucker for that stuff.) So while this worked perfectly as a standalone, I would be sad not to read more works within this universe: it could have easily been a series; if not, there’s definitely scope for more exploration.

Most importantly all the characters were extremely fun and loveable, I enjoyed all their POVs in equal measure (maybe this is what gave me SoC flashbacks) and had a great time watching them interact and develop as a group, I can’t even pick a fave. Very queer and inclusive and a genderfree main character (and more), all written with ease and without fanfare! (See Legally Blonde: what, like it’s hard?) Again perhaps a little more fluffy/cute/happy than I was expecting, and less tense, possibly because this had the whiff of a college AU fanfic. That’s not to knock it at all, just a note on style; I was both into the characters and the magical/medical plot all the way through, it was generally a delight! 5 stars.

Superb murder mystery in a magical medical school setting -- LOVED this!

What would I have liked to know, as I went into this book? I definitely needed to know that it had five POVs. Because the first chapter demonstrates the deep level of everyday detail that is going to ground us in the world throughout -- and I, remembering almost nothing from the book blurb, was a bit jolted when we moved to another POV in chapter 2, and I realised I needed to be paying attention to ALL the main characters. It took me a little while to get my head around that, especially since the differences between their interior thoughts and what others are thinking about them are significant and fascinating.

The mystery unravelling is well-paced, there are SO many elements to it. Life keeps going on even when you've got your Finals and A Murder, and I enjoyed that too -- the world never shrinks to just one plot-line for reader convenience.

I kinda want to reread again already. And would absolutely adore more standalones in this setting ... I do love a good medical fantasy, and there are so many themes and possibilities given how magic is set up here.

Very much recommend!

Readers seeking their next dark academia obsession are in for an absolute treat with Freya Marske’s Bodies of Magic.

It features five medical students at a magical academy. When their classmate is murdered at the start of a five-day exam, they must work out what happened before the five days are up. It’s an engaging plot with clear stakes and convincing but never laborious world-building, but as the entire narrative rotates through their five alternating perspectives, this book hinges on their distinct personalities and motivations. Marske nails this aspect, controlling the amount of time we spend in each point of view with precision, If I experienced a pang of disappointment as we left the perspective of one character, I found myself relaxing into the next within a paragraph.

Marske also delivers on the slow-burn romance that dark academia fans are hoping for. With multiple central characters and a pacy plot, the romance is necessarily secondary, but nonetheless offers the exquisite tension of longing, and ultimately contributes to an excellent ending.

Bodies of Magic is a captivating dark academia fantasy set at a prestigious academy for healer mages. There's a gripping mystery, an intriguing academic plot, brilliant and nuanced character development, and some sweet romance on the side, all equally compelling. It just works so well.

The story is told from five different perspectives; five scholars grouped together for the week, each with their own secrets. I really enjoyed all five perspectives, and because they were working together, it never felt like there were too many different threads to follow. I cared deeply about these characters who were all complicated, but likeable and easy to root for. There's also plenty of queer representation, along with implied neurodivergent representation, in a queer normative world.

I've enjoyed everything I've read by Freya Marske before, but this is my favourite yet. Highly recommended to fans of dark academia fantasy.