FORMAT/INFO: Bodies of Magic was published by Tor Books on September 15th, 2026. It is 464 pages long and available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Bodies of Magic is a melding of medical school drama with twisty murder mystery that kept me thoroughly hooked from start to finish. Set during the week of the Grand Exam, five students find themselves solving the murder of a fellow student while also taking the tests that determine whether or not they graduate from magical medical school and become full-fledged healers.

This is one of those juicy murder mystery stories where everyone has their own secrets - including our five students who are investigating the crime. As the tale shifts its POV amongst our heroes, we get teases of what those secrets are and how each secret might be a motive, meaning any of our main characters could be a suspect. I really enjoyed peeling back those layers and revealing the truth of what was going on in everyone's lives.

Perhaps the best part of the book, however, is how it used its world-building and magical healing to interrogate the very real world problem of physician burnout. In this story, a plague struck in recent history that killed off many of the magical healers. As a result, the remaining healers are overworked and vastly underappreciated. What's more, anyone born with a magical healing gift doesn't get a choice in their career path; if you can heal, you are immediately drafted into medical school, saddled with debt for the schooling, and shipped off to a region to work until you pay off that debt.

It's not too hard to draw parallels between our world and the problems of this fantasy world. But by placing all our real world problems in a slightly different context, it does give the reader a moment to pause and see those issues in a new light. Just because we tend to accept school debt and overworked doctors as a fact of life doesn't mean it's something we SHOULD accept.

I did have a few issues with the book. The first is that the writing doesn't always do a good job of signaling right away whose POV we are following in each chapter. While each character has their own chapter header symbol, there's no real way of making that connection at the beginning of the book. I fully read the second chapter for multiple pages without realizing the POV had switched. Having talked to a few others who read this book, I know this was a common issue and not an isolated incident.

The other is more of a personal preference, and that is that I wish these characters were slightly less horny. There are points where the story leans into the soapiness of a network medical TV show, with different characters hooking up (or trying to) over the course of the book. I just felt these elements were jarring against the overall much more procedural and serious tone of the story.

Bodies of Magic is an excellent addition to the ranks of fantasy murder mysteries, a definite recommend. It's an intriguing tale that also has a lot to say about the medical profession and how we treat our own healers. I had a delightful time with it, and look forward to reading more of the author's works in the future.