Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia, but magic has a cost—and the collectors have come calling.

An orphan since the age of four, Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, she finds that her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant.

This book is so good that not only one but three(!) colleagues are big fans. Read further to learn what Else, Iris and Tiemen thought about this title.

Else
After I finished this book, I sat staring into the abyss for about four hours and it is still haunting me. I cried, laughed, felt desperate and hopeful and had to reflect on our own world for a bit afterwards. This is just a very good stand alone fantasy book.
The book is about Sciona, a woman who wants to be the first female highmage in the history of the city of Tiran. She has to fight the patriarchy while doing so, and then has to fight her own preconceptions about the world.
If you liked Babel, by R.F. Kuang, you’ll love this book. It has everything; fighting the patriachry, colonialism, capitalism, exploitation of workers, stealing resources and lives for the few to live in luxury, intersectionality, everything.

Iris
A colleague recommended this book to me by comparing it to Babel by R.F. Kuang (his exact words were “Holy hell, this is good – even more intense than Babel“), so of course I immediately had to get my hands on it. I was lucky enough to have access to an Advanced Reader’s Copy before the book was actually out, and I was pretty much hooked from the start.
The comparison with Babel is fair, especially given the focus on academia and the different treatments that people of certain races and genders receive. Elements of it also reminded me of The Betrayals by Bridget Collins and even The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. If those are books you liked, you should definitely try this one!

Tiemen
It is the rare fantasy book that manages to deliver a plot twist that in hindsight might have been obvious, but at the time of reading lands like a sledgehammer in a cabinet of cherished family porcelain heirlooms.
It is even rarer when such plot twist turns the world upside down and makes you wonder together with the protagonist ‘Are we the baddies?’.
Really well crafted worldbuilding combined with a tense and even unsettling plot, makes Blood Over Bright Haven my best fantasy read of 2024.