Bodies of Magic

By Freya Marske

An instant USA Today bestseller

Grey's Anatomy meets A Deadly Education in this dark academia fantasy from USA Today bestselling author Freya Marske.

At the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr, every mage with the healer's gift has five years to master their power and to prepare for the infamous Grand Exam--a five-day trial whose results will determine their entire future.

The list of exam rules includes:
- You will perform five practical cases.
- Your exam group is chosen at random.
- You pass together, or fail together.

It does not include:
- On the first day, your exam group will find a classmate's dead body in the exam hall.

And as they will soon discover, this particular group all have something to hide... and all have a connection with the dead girl, a brilliant scholar who would have been first in their class.

Five scholars. Five secrets. Five days in which to solve a murder, pass the most important exam of their lives, and uncover a secret larger than all of their own combined. One with the potential to change the world.

Are you ready?

Let's begin.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250341655
• ISBN13: 9781250341655
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Twisty magical murder mystery

You really gotta feel for these unlucky students, not only have they been working so hard for years to be healers and finally are on to their big final exams but then in their testing room the dead body of a fellow scholar is found and they have to figure out who did it and why on top of acing their exams. But it makes for a fantastically magical dark academia murder mystery! And as other readers have stated, it has the same feel as the Tainted Tea in terms of how real the the city and Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr feel with lots of intricacies in politics, governmental structure, corruption, human prejudices and the characters, complicated and human but still likable and easy to root for. The characters are also not cookie cutter, with each one standing on their own with their own desires of what they want during the exams and after, if they end up passing, or even surviving the schemes of the one who murdered Isabel. This was a great audiobook to listen to and I love that when you listen to audiobooks you learn how people's names are pronounced because ones like Moyna Apprice, Estiene Marcelle, Alys Tixerrant, Jehan Fortier, and Clement Savoye look interesting but I would not have been able to figure out all the pronunciations. Love this group though and I think it would be awesome to have more stories set in this world following their careers! The narrator, Saskia Maarleveld, does a fantastic job with the names and making this world feel real and the twisty murder mystery that must be solved and has greater consequences than the scholars know. I am really glad I got the chance to listen to this. Love the author and many thanks to Macmillan Audio for giving me the chance.