Blood Over Bright Haven

Blood Over Bright Haven is a dark academia fantasy novel by M. L. Wang, originally self-published in 2023 and republished by Del Rey/Random House in 2024. Like Wang’s high fantasy novel The Sword of Kaigen (2014), Blood over Bright Haven features a young protagonist discovering uncomfortable truths about the empire he was raised to defend.

Blood Over Bright Haven follows Sciona, the first female highmage in the magically enclosed city of Tiran, and Thomil, a janitor from the oppressed Kwen minority who unexpectedly becomes Sciona’s research assistant. As Sciona and Thomil uncover the nefarious source of the magical energy that powers Tiran’s comfortable life, they decide to work together to bring about the city’s downfall, regardless of the personal cost. As part of the dark academia genre, Blood Over Bright Haven is set in an exploitative and oppressive world and examines themes of systemic oppression.

This guide is based on the 2025 Del Rey trade paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, racism, gender discrimination, death, sexual violence and harassment, rape, suicidal ideation and self-harm, suicide, animal cruelty and death, child death and injury, physical abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, mental illness, pregnancy loss, child abuse, cursing, substance use, and ableism.

Plot Summary

Ten years before the novel opens, Thomil, a Kwen hunter from the Caldonnae tribe, and his four-year-old niece, Carra, brave the dangerous terrain of the Crossing to reach the city of Tiran, which is protected from the Blight that ravages the outside world. The Tiranish look down on the Kwen, as their religious beliefs dictate that Kwen sins are causing the Blight. On arriving at Tiran, Thomil claims that the injured Carra is his daughter, and they are sent to a work camp.

In the novel’s present, Sciona nervously prepares for the exam to become a highmage, something no woman has ever successfully done. Her cousin Alba and her mentor, the kindly Archmage Bringham, encourage Sciona. Sciona faces bias in the exam: The male mages go easy on underqualified male students but ask her to do nearly impossible tasks, including levitating an industrial-sized cauldron. Sciona miscalculates the cauldron task at first, destroying the ceiling, but then disobeys orders to get it to levitate perfectly when she can estimate the weight. Although she fears her disobedience has disqualified her, Bringham finds her and tells her that she has passed.

Sciona reports for work. The other mages in her hall, including cruel, misogynistic Highmage Renthorn, mock Sciona. To demean her, they assign Thomil, now working as a janitor, as her research assistant. Sciona befriends Thomil and teaches him magic; left out of the other mages’ drinking tradition, Sciona and Thomil go to a Kwen bar instead.

Sciona and Thomil are tasked with finding a way to expand the borders of Tiran while sourcing enough energy to power the larger city. Their work is interrupted by an explosion in a neighboring mage’s office. Sciona suspects Renthorn of causing it; he is trying to take over the work of other mages to benefit his own proposal for the project.

As Sciona and Thomil grow closer, he teaches her about Kwen history, including the fact that Kwen magic is remarkably similar to Tiranish magic, and that Kwen witches taught Tiran’s founding prophet Leon how to use magic in the first place.

Despite Sciona’s religious convictions about the Kwen’s sins, she uses Kwen magic to enhance the mapping spells she uses to find energy sources. With it, she manages to open a clear Freynan Mirror into the Otherrealm—which Thomil recognizes as not another realm, but the plains he grew up on. When Sciona casts a spell, she siphons energy from a bush in the plains. In horror, Thomil recognizes the ensuing destruction as the Blight that killed his entire family and has driven the Kwen to near-extinction. Sciona rejects this, blames the Blight on the Kwen’s sin, and returns to her lab. However, when she casts a spell while human beings appear in her Mirror, the magic unravels a young girl into blood and bone.

Experiencing psychological trauma and overwhelmed by the reality that the magic she has dedicated her life to is killing those outside the city, Sciona attempts death by suicide. Alba saves her life. Sciona decides to use her grief to change the world.

Sciona returns to Thomil and apologizes. He refuses to forgive her and disagrees that revealing the truth to the Mages will change anything—they benefit too much from the existing system to care. However, when 14-year-old Carra attempts to kill Sciona, Thomil stops her.

Sciona appeals to Bringham, but he reveals that he has always known that magic siphons from the outside world; he believes it to be necessary and good. Shocked, Sciona returns to the library to plan revenge. There, Renthorn attacks and tries to rape her, overcome with lust for power and violence. Thomil intervenes. To prevent the mages from killing Thomil, Sciona performatively fires him as guards beat him.

Sciona writes a spell to expose the truth of magic in a single night. Sciona and Carra dress as young Kwen boys and infiltrate the spellograph machines that power the city, putting Sciona’s spells in place. Sciona also steals the plans for the barrier expansion from the Archmage Supreme’s office. Thomil reveals that Bringham’s factories hire Kwen women because their products cause infertility; Thomil and his ex-partner broke up when they could not have a child.

The next day, Sciona activates her spell. Whenever a spell is cast in the city, a Mirror appears and reveals the life source that allows the spell to work. Mass panic ensues as the Kwen riot. Sciona is arrested. Alba disowns her, calling her cruel and egotistical. Bringham takes Sciona to his estate, where she accuses him of only supporting her career to feel better about harming so many women. He does not deny it.

Sciona is sentenced to death. As she drinks the execution poison, the hall erupts into white light as magic is siphoned from the room. A flashback reveals that Sciona asked Thomil to magically move the Crossing—a region of constant siphoning—to the university. Thomil agreed and the two kissed.

During her execution, every mage on the premises also dies. Thomil and Carra join a group of Kwen and escape the city into the freezing winter. He thinks of Sciona, who has helped him survive and keep the history of his people going.