#Abi reads The Philosopher's Flight

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The Philosopher’s Flight

*I received an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Blurb: Though men are considered useless at empirical philosophy, a female-dominated branch of magic, Robert Weekes dreams of being the first man in the elite Sigilry Corps. So he jumps at the chance to study at Radcliffe College, where he hones his skills and strives to win the respect of his female classmates. Robert falls hard for Danielle Hardin, a disillusioned war hero turned political radical. However, Danielle’s activism attracts the attention of anti-philosophical fanatics. With their lives in danger, they must fight for Robert’s place among the next generation of philosophers — and for philosophy’s very survival against the men who would destroy it.

The Philosopher's Flight is weirdly good, but also... not that good? Stick with me here.

The magic system is super there (it's just... very there. It's there, guys.) and the complexity of the characters was unexpected and cool. Unexpectedly cool, you might say. All the moving parts of the novel were developed nicely, from Robert’s dream of graduating and joining the corps to the fight against the Trenchers who want to outlaw philosophy (that's the Magic, except here we call it by the name of something entirely different, because reasons, I'm sure Tom Miller has them). Plus Robert falling for Danielle, which was actually kinda great, all while Robert just wants to be taken seriously as a male Philosopher.

But within the plot were the things that gave me mixed feelings about the book. Its slowness at many parts (it has pockets of action, but overall it's not fast-paced), and the fact that honestly... I wasn't there for the politics. Now, that's not the book's fault. The blurb didn't lie and say there wouldn't be politics. It's just that the thing that drew me to the book in the first place was the "female-dominated branch of science".

I wanted the reverse narrative.

You know that story, the one where a girl wants to enter in a male-dominated field and must go up against massive amounts of sexism and roadblocks to succeed? I wanted it flipped. I was tired of "everyone is sexist and everything is terrible but watch this girl fight tooth and nail to prove that one (1) girl can succeed anyway!". I thought it would be fun to watch a boy have to do it instead. But I got cheated, because The Philosopher's Flight is fairly historical. Meaning that while this fictional field of magic is majority-women, the world is extremely misogynist.

Women cannot vote during this time, rape threats and slut-shaming abound, etc. Not condoned by the narrative — I'm not saying this is a sexist book: it's just set during a sexist time period. Robert's position trying to succeed as a male Sigilrist didn't actually flip the script (though there were many times that his struggles paralleled those such as, for example, Kel's in First Test). If you're thinking of reading this book, read it because you want a story of sciency-magic grounded in history, not because you think this'll be a cool reversal of the story you already know. In many ways, it's still that story.

There were more male characters in the book than you'd expect from the blurb, so it wasn't quite as women-heavy I wanted/expected either.

Some heads ups about other content: there are quite a few instances of era-accurate (I assume?) racism, homophobia, and transphobia. There were mentions of gay women at the college, which was nice, but it would be nicer to have major gay and trans characters. Racism was probably addressed the most directly, with Danielle being mixed race, the racism she faces and the worldbuilding somewhat addressing what a country who has both magic and a history of slavery would look like.

So here's where we stand: sometimes the pace and historical setting of this book made me want to give up on it, but it has some real strengths in its worldbuilding, emotional resonance of Robert’s struggles, and treatment of moral/political grayness (not to mention I actually really liked the romance, and the descriptions of food made with magic. Sorry, made with Philosophy). It's not for everyone, and maybe not for me specifically, but it wasn’t bad.

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i’m excited about The Philosopher’s Flight because it’s the inverse of “girl in a sexist world must prove she’s as good as the guys in a male-dominated field” which tbh i’m tired of reading about. “teenage boy desperately wants to succeed in a highly respected female-dominated field and will have to prove he can keep up despite people assuming he’s automatically less qualified because of his gender” (and not in a “lol guys can’t be babysitters” or whatever. it’s a field of magic that in another book might be written as automatically male-dominated but in this book it’s all women) i think it’ll be cool

[the-knights-who-say-book]

ugh. the main reason i was excited about The Philosopher’s Flight was because of the prospects a female-dominated field of magic (that would probably be assigned to male-dominated in another book) would offer to subverting sexism in historical fiction, yet the book still manages to hold on to plenty of that sexism. even if it's addressed as something wrong, it's not what i signed up for, you know? i was excited about a male character being in the position of trying to break into a highly-respected field he would normally be locked out of because of his gender because it would be different. so when the book still manages to portray women as undervalued and struggling to assert their value in a sexist world that wants them to shut up and be weak... it doesn’t matter that the main plot about Robert wanting to be a Philospher subverts expectations, because the worldbuilding at large is already boring me

[the-knights-who-say-book]

i’ve been making some Serious notes about the gender-swapped narrative in Philosopher’s Flight and i’m thinking about rereading First Test by Tamora Pierce in order to compare the two books in another essay! i’m in the honeymoon stage of brainstorming for it so i’m really excited

there’s still time for the book to go wildly off-track and make it incomparable to First Test tho so i shouldn’t get too invested in the idea of a comparison essay just yet