Three Meant to Be (Past and Future Branches 1) by MN Bennett

[Ulysses]

Three Meant to Be (Branches of Past and Future, Book 1)
BY M N Bennett
Published by the author, 2023
Five stars

I have been fascinated, in the post-Potter world, by the inventive imaginings of worlds in which schools for magic exist. M N Bennett’s new take on this notion is striking, and while there were moments when I got quite confused, his commitment to his psychological approach to story and action held onto me and left me filled with emotion.

The thing is, this is the story of a high-school teacher, Dorian Frost, not a student. But it is also the story of a dozen of his students, his first-year class, whose minds he delves into in order to both understand them and, more importantly, to understand and shape their magic.

Moreover, this is not a semi-hidden school lost in fog-shrouded mountains; it is in Chicago, and it is in an America where everyone has magic, and thus governments (city, state, federal) are concerned with regulating, controlling, and quantifying magic. As is always true when this is the case, access to and practice of magic are not equally distributed. It is, as in everything else, the people in charge who decide which people are more equal than others.

Dorian Frost is a thirty-something former Enchanter with Chicago’s main magical oversight agency. He has retreated to teaching at the Gemini Academy, an elite secondary school whose goal is to train young people for a career in the “magic industry.” Cynical and withdrawn, Dorian pretends to not care, having fled the limelight and pressure of his public magical career after the death of a close friend. This grief is never far from his thoughts, and he shares it with Milo Evergreen, his longtime friend and current celebrity enchanter in the city.

The twist is that Dorian actually cares a great deal, both about Milo and about his twelve students. The author follows in great detail as Dorian, a powerful telepath, delves deep into the minds of his students in order to forestall a grim future vision that he has inadvertently shared with the clairvoyant Milo. To save a young life, Dorian finds himself using his memories of Finn, the close friend he and Milo loved and lost. It is a complex and sometimes disconcerting kind of narrative, but in the end M N Bennett mostly pulls it off. As Dorian comes to know his coven of twelve teenagers, the reader gets to know him. Bennett treats magic as a group of highly technical skills, and treats the reader as if we are supposed to automatically understand it all. It can get cumbersome, but the powerful emotions that drive each character hold our attention and help sort things out.

I’ve already ordered the second book in this series. I want to know these folks better.