It was the festival week of Mathe the First Healer, the most revered time in the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerre. As the town celebrates, the scholars of the medical college study for their exams and "sleep is for summer." The most feared test is the Grand Exam which lasts throughout the week. Five case studies are presented to a team of fifth-year students-they must pass four of them to graduate as healers and if they don't pass, they repeat fifth year. Five random students are assembled as the A team and are locked into an exam room for their first test. What they expect is a patient waiting to be diagnosed and treated, what they find is their fellow student with the best GPA, dead on the floor with a blow to her head. Was this their patient?
Unfortunately, they had no time to mourn her as the real subject entered the room and the exam proceeded. All teens in the kingdom are tested for their level of magic and those who test the highest are sent to the Academy to become Healers, the most valued members of the community.
Fifth-year students are not only well-versed in anatomy and surgical technique, but also masters of the magic that accomplishes the real healing. Their actual patient has arrived and they proceed to discover what his disease is and give him options for treatment-they are correct and have passed their first test, even while they are really thinking of their colleague, dead on the floor.
When the police are called, they are dismissive-burnout and suicide from the pressure of their training is common, and she probably hit her head when she jumped from the balcony. But her best friend knew she had been murdered and convinced the other four on his team to help him find her killer. After all, the same medical detection skills can be used to solve crimes and the added layer of the magic they possess can only help.
Marske, author of Cinderhouse, has written an extraordinary novel of the magic of healing. She takes the five disparate students who are all talented in different ways and have very different personalities, and folds them into a skilled team of detectives who look for answers in the same way they analyze symptoms in a diseased body. Magic is a given in the book and it's a metaphor for the actual healing done right in our world, and the myriad ways it also can go very wrong. The world that Marske creates has many of our world's problems and magic is only another way of dealing with the issues that the students have to face. Who killed Ysabel Caudotte and why? You might find the answers in the stars.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
September 15, 2026
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