Book: Saved by the Spell by Tanya Huff
Reviewed by Rallie X
Rating: 2.5/5
This was such a deeply disappointing read. I loved Tanya Huff's fantasy writing ( Sing the Four Quarters still inspires how I approach music and magic in D&D) so when I received this ARC I was beyond stoked. But as I was reading I went back to check several times just to make sure this really was the same Tanya Huff because just. Woof.
The concept is really cool - a magic boarding school but from a teacher's perspective, an enigmatic principle (not a misspelling but I can't say why), a diverse cast of fourteen-year-olds (and a couple upper classmen), and the rise of a hero (and a GIRL she's a GIRL) - but even though it had all the ingredients the outcome was so meh I feel robbed.
One of the worst parts of this book - besides a crumbly ending and a bloated cast with just far more named characters than a 368 page book needs - was Huff's attempt to like... have Abby's internal monologue fit her age (I did the math assuming 4 year college before classroom training and then teaching, Abby is a millennial) and have teenager-accurate dialogue and honestly the "social media peeps" she thanks in the Acknowledgements did not help her the way she thinks they did. And Abby's weird obsession with correcting "can I" to "may I" and apostrophes and grammar (some of which isn't even expected standard anymore, you can absolutely split infinitives) was cheesy and felt very "remember this is a teacher!" in an incredibly boomer way*
I really, really wanted to like Abby, I was willing to give her a little benefit of the doubt as she's one of those "I'm not a regular teacher I'm a cool teacher", and she's not the Hero of the story going on, but she still needs to be more interesting than just random "ooh look at those forearms they're so solid"-type thoughts.
All of this said, there are some cool moments. I did enjoy the in-world meta commentary about what different tracks a Hero's story can go down and how that might impact the story of their Hero. And the Witch of the Woods almost made the book worth it, probably because it dipped farther into the kind of fantasy I know Huff from.
Ultimately, let me save you some time: Evelynn is the Villain but not Bex's Villain, the Principle is a dragon, and dragons and elves opened the magic schools to try to control humans - which is Bex's Villain. The system. Which. It would totally work, but not for this author.
*I did a lot of background checking with all my teacher related claims with high school teachers of different ages. Nobody does this outside of the dad-joke "I don't know, can you" with students they know. Nearly all Abby's quirky teacher behaviors are straight up boomer.