** Burn It Down, Lightly **
At first this feels familiar. Scholomance, Iron Widow—another angry, gifted teenage heroine in the dark-academia mold. But here the author makes an unusual choice: the protagonist is a little racist, and stays that way even against evidence. The flaws aren’t polished out.
The story treats moral injury almost playfully, keeping a lightness even while circling serious themes. By the second half the book takes riskier turns, moving quicker than Scholomance’s trilogy toward the inevitable conclusion: if the system is corrupt, torch it. Yet impassioned speeches don’t magically fix anything, and the attempt to burn it all down produces more death, including both main characters.
The ending lands in Rogue One territory: uncompromising, fatal, but not gratuitous. These choices keep the book on the sharper edge of contemporary fantasy, and an easy book to finish.