H.G. Parry is a New Zealand writer, known for her A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians and The Magician’s Daughter. Her latest book, The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, is also steeped in historical research and classical ritual magic, in this case magic based on bargains with a very real, very dangerous faerie realm.

Clover Hill is a lower-class but very intelligent young woman who is lucky enough to be accepted into England’s elite, exclusive school of magic, Camford. There, she is surprised to find herself becoming close friends with a small group of affluent, powerful students. They share her fascination with knowledge and magic, and her love of Camford itself. Or at least they seem to.

All the doors to faerie have been closed and sealed following an incident near the end of World War I, when something escaped through an unwise and hastily conjured faerie door. Hundreds of people were killed by the uncontrolled faerie. Clover’s brother is one of the few survivors, the only non-magician to witness the event. He still bears injuries both physical and psychological from the event. He can only be cured by opening a new, now-illegal faerie door to make a new faerie bargain.

Clover is not quite forthcoming with her new friends about her true reason for studying magic. Nor does she tell them exactly why she goes along with their attempts to figure out how to open a faerie door. But they don’t tell her their secrets either, and those secrets are many. And much more deadly, because the faerie from World War I is still waiting behind the membrane which separates the two worlds.

This is a book about friendship, and the difficulties of crossing barriers of class and gender. It is a book about the dangers of knowledge, and the dangers of restricting that knowledge. It is a book about love and betrayal, and the necessity of sometimes giving up both. It’s also a pretty good read.