2024/150: The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door — H G Parry

Eddie has wanted to hide from the world. Hero had wanted to make it new. Alden and I, in our own ways, loved the old, safe world -- Ashfield and Camford, tradition and beauty, the sunlit days of our childhoods before the Great War.
But the world had never been safe, not for everybody. It had been broken for a very long time, and the war had only shown those cracks for what they were. [loc. 5056]

Clover Hill has grown up knowing that magic isn't for her: it's the realm of the Families, the aristocrats who have magical blood. Nevertheless, when her brother Matthew returns from war terribly wounded by a faerie attack at the Battle of Amiens, she becomes determined to find a way to heal him. She enters Camford, founded by the magical department of Oxford University and in the thirteenth century, as a scholarship witch, somewhat out of her depth both socially and academically. When golden youth Alden Lennox-Fontaine finds her reading a book about faerie magic -- which is banned, and all doors to the faerie realm supposedly closed -- he finds her intriguing enough to draw into his coterie. Clover becomes friends with Hero, Eddie and Alden, and they discover a shared interest in the faerie doors and where they might lead. But the doors were shut for a reason, and their daring experiments have catastrophic consequences.

Dark academia at its best, with a thoughtful exploration of class, privilege and prejudice. I've encountered some elements of this world, and this plot, before: for example, in The Golden Enclaves and a plethora of other works where the happiness of the many depends on the suffering of a few. There are plenty of novels about 'a school for magic' and the intense friendships that outsiders can form: there are plenty of novels about hubris. For me, this novel succeeded because of Clover's voice, and her (impulsive and sometimes immature) personality. The pace is slow and considered, the characters diverse in a period-typical way (Clover's mentor, Lady Winter, is from Madras; one of the characters is gay, one is bisexual; working-class characters as vividly drawn as the aristocrats). Though much of the first half of the novel (set in 1920) takes place in Camford, the second half sees Clover visiting London and Paris.

One minor complaint is the lack of Brit-picking: nobody in 1920 would think of anything as 'the size of a fifty-pence piece', and there are occasional unBritish turns of phrase ('you didn't have to come meet me'). Overall, though, I enjoyed this very much, and am now keen to read Parry's other novels.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 24 OCT 2024.