After a quick detour to post the list of the 2026 Hugo finalists, I’m returning to my reviews of the 2026 Nebula Awards short-listed works in the Best Novel category. To see the complete Nebula finalists list, go HERE. I’m on a mission to read and review all seven of these books in the Best Novel category before the Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) announces the winner at the Nebula awards ceremony on June 6, 2026. It will take place at the SFWA 61st annual conference, held this year in Chicago. I’m reading the novels alphabetically by author. If I have time, I’ll read a few others nominated in other categories.
The short-listed novels for the 2026 Nebula Awards:
When We Were Real, by Daryl Gregory (Saga)–see my review HERE
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK)—see my review HERE
Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK)–see my review HERE
Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)–see my review HERE
The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh (Tor; Orbit UK)–reviewed in this post
Sour Cherry, by Natalia Theodoridou (Tin House; Wildfire)
Wearing the Lion, by John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia)
The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh (Tor; Orbit UK)
This enthralling fantasy novel of dark academia introduces the reader to a quaint English boarding school–a feeder school for such prestigious universities as Oxford and Cambridge, and steeped in the teaching and practice of magic. The lead teacher, Dr. Walden, exudes confident command over her beloved students as well as the powerful magic that pervades the place, saturating its dormitories, historic buildings, and ball fields, and especially its luscious green and golden landscape. It’s an alt-Oxbridge parallel universe where magical studies are taken for granted as an important part of the school curriculum.
The magic, in fact, saturates Dr. Walden herself. Dark forces get loose, but Walden is sure she has everything under control. When a commanding knight of magic assigned as the school’s head safety officer challenges Walden’s assumptions, Walden finds herself both affronted and secretly smitten. But even though Laura, the knight, does not share Walden’s social status or Oxbridge education, and even though she is not quite as well-trained in the wielding of magic, she stands her ground, earning Walden’s respect–and stirring something deeper.
If you love dark academia, you will love this beautifully written novel with its powerful and believable characters and its intricate, meticulously described system of magic. (Don’t know what dark academia is? HERE is a good quick explanation.)
Hot off reading a different novel of dark academia, K.J. Kuang’s Katabasis (see my review HERE), I was fascinated to note that two novels in this fantasy sub-genre are finalists for this year’s Nebula Award, while a third, Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author (HERE is that review), sets a few major scenes in an all-too-realistic toxic academic environment. While Kuang’s novel is more schematic and obsessive, Tesh’s The Incandescent evokes the feeling of an entire community and all its workings. Both are about brilliant, awkward people feeling their way out of isolation and toward love.
As a (retired) teacher myself, I particularly enjoyed the focus on the teacher-student relationship in Tesh’s novel. It felt very real. And I was blown away by the magic system. In many fantasy novels of this type, an intricately worked-out system of magic often overwhelms other elements of the reading experience: the characters, the building of the plot toward climax and resolution, the very quality of the writing itself. In many of these novels, the magic system paradoxically yanks me straight out of the illusion the world-building is aiming to create. That is not the case with Tesh’s novel. The magic in The Incandescent is woven so skillfully into the whole that I believed Tesh’s world–and the magic that powers it–every step of the way.
Tesh’s novel Some Desperate Glory won the 2024 Hugo award for best novel and was a contender also for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. See my review HERE. Some Desperate Glory, too, is set partly at a school–in that case, a Spartan-inspired academy for turning out super-soldiers. While I enjoyed that novel and admired its ingenious ending, I found it a lot less convincing and ultimately not quite as well-written as this one. The Incandescent (the title refers to the blazing intelligence of the students, among other set-ablaze persons and items and bodily markings) is really superb.
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