This week’s question from Fantasy with Friends is all about magical schools:
Do you enjoy books about schools of magic, or do you think they are overdone? Do you have any favorite magical schools or magical school books?
Which obviously immediately presents the massive Scottish castle in the room, hanging over the discussion. It was a hugely popular school story when I was younger, and it still is, and its fingerprints are inevitably all over a lot of the more recent magical school stories. Given the anti-trans views of the author, the frankly racist worldbuilding and character-naming, and the fact that the author uses her money to fund anti-trans lobbying, needless to say I hold no remaining affection for it. Generally I try to avoid interacting with people who continue to support the author and boost the books, because I don’t feel safe with them.
It gets more complicated when it comes to books that feel informed by the existence of that series. There are several published books lately that are apparently serial-numbers-filed-off fanfics, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that. I think… broadly supportive, because I appreciate people taking back their investment and turning it into something of their own. It really depends on how much work has been done to differentiate it from the original source text, and whether it’s fixed some of the underlying issues with it rather than just importing them.
(I’ve also undoubtedly read some without knowing, or at least without knowing before I actually bought it, because I didn’t actually read most of that series, and was never part of the fandom. Some stuff just sails over my head. I wish people would stop assuming the cultural supremacy of that series is so complete that everyone else must be able to recognise it!)
Anyway, to turn the discussion away from That Magic School, I do still enjoy the concept of a magical school story, both the ones that feel informed by the Enid Blyton genre of school story, and the ones that are more American like The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association. I’ve been especially enjoying ones that are told from a more adult point of view, like The Grimoire Grammar School and Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent: it brings a bit of realism to the genre — and frankly, updates it out of the early 1900s nostalgia fest.
It’s also worth remembering that there have always been other wizarding schools, like the school on Roke in A Wizard of Earthsea. That feels to me like it springs from different roots, and I definitely don’t feel like that kind of otherworldly wizarding school is played out as a story, nor so beholden to That Series.
So yeah, ultimately I feel like the subgenre got over-dominated by That Series and responses to it, and I’d love to see more fantasy schools that aren’t essentially based on British boarding schools of the early to mid 1900s… but I’m not averse to the subgenre automatically. Bonus points if you manage to be queer-inclusive!
I hadn’t even thought of the fanfiction books with trad deals, but that’s a good point.
I want to read both The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association and The Incandescent. They look so good!
I was thinking in lower middle grade I sometimes come across fairy tale boarding school books, and those are always fun and definitely in an entirely different vein from “learning to be a wizard.”
Briana @ Pages Unbound recently posted…Do You Enjoy Books with Schools of Magic? (Fantasy with Friends)
I think magical schools should be a staple of middle grade and maybe even YA fantasy – although preferably ones not inspired by That School – simply because readers of that age are in a school setting themselves and I think seeing their own lives reflected in a magical setting can be an important way to discuss themes and topics that are relevant to their lives. That being said – kind of done with it when it comes to adult versions. I’ll probably squeeze out a post later today going more in depth on my thoughts there.
As for re: fanfiction….. Before her anti-trans etc. stuff blew up I used to avoid fan fiction for that fandom (and I still do for other fandoms I enjoyed as a kid like Percy Jackson etc) to preserve the original in my mind – now, however, I find myself with a very complicated relationship to the stories. A very simple relationship with the author – disgust and an unwillingness to give her even 1 pound of my hard-earned money – but my relationship with the story is more complicated since I loved it so much as a child and it was one of the major things that made me as a reader. But equally, I don’t think I could read it in the same way ever again. So then I’m left thinking… should I get rid of my own copies? If I had children, I’m not sure I would want them to read the series and I don’t think I could comfortably reread it now so why keep them? Very tricky!
As for adult fan fiction-turned-trad pub novel based on the story… since I no longer need to keep the story pure and untainted (she managed to taint it all by herself), then maybe I could enjoy it if it’s not set in a magical school – unless like you said, it’s written from the adults’ perspectives; I also really liked The Incandescent when I read it last year.
Keira @Keira’s Bookmark recently posted…[Review] The Forgetting Navigations by Marlee Jane Ward
As a random idea for your copies of That Series: turn them into art. Any kind of art. Black out poetry could be a great way to work out your feelings about it. Or make a paper sculpture or flowers out of the pages (especially flowers with historical queer symbolism, like carnations, violets, roses (specifically connected to the modern trans rights movement!), and lavender). Pulp it and make your own papier maché!
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I, too, see the influence of a certain magical school in so many books now–and I don’t think that needs to be the case. One version of a school doesn’t to have a monopoly on the idea or inform everything that comes after it. Because, yes, there were other magic schools before! I’d love to see more spins on this trope because I love a magical school. But I don’t necessarily like that so many books feel like a Response. Just do a cool magic school and let me live in that world without breaking me out of it to ponder the existence of other books! Or dig into other earlier influences or something. I think there are options so that authors can take new approaches.
Krysta @ Pages Unbound recently posted…Do You Enjoy Books with Schools of Magic? (Fantasy with Friends)