The elevator pitch for Curious Tides, the new YA fantasy from Pascale Lacelle, pitches it as Ninth House meets A Deadly Education. I'm not familiar with either of those titles. All I knew is that there was magic and dark academia flavor, and those two things put together are generally enough to get me through a book.

Well, excellent news for fellow enjoyers of both of those things: this is good. Really good and interesting. From the worldbuilding to the story itself, it's really compelling, with lots of twists and turns to unravel. Best of all, those twists and turns hold up under scrutiny and re-reading—a real trick when you're balancing two narratives (one potentially mirroring the other), more than a dozen characters at varying stages of life and death, and a branching magic system that even the most knowledgeable characters in the story don't fully grasp.

So, what is Curious Tides? Billed as the first book in the Drowned Gods duology, it's an atmospheric fantasy/drama/mystery/romance(?) taking place at a magic academy in a world ruled by lunar magic. Everyone in this world has at least a drop of magic in them, governed by the moon phase during which they were born and further subdivided into applications thereof. Some can actually manifest their magic in impressive ways—either during their set phase of the moon or by bloodletting—and attend magic academies and go on to high-profile jobs. Our two audience viewpoint characters, Emory and Baz, are attending one such school. But their understanding of this lunar magic is about to change.

See, there may be four moon phases, but there are also eclipses. Magic users born during eclipses can use their magic more freely, and thus are more likely to succumb to the power of their own magic. (This is called Collapsing, and at that point your life might as well be over.) Baz is one such Eclipse-born; Emory, born under a New Moon, is a middling Healer. At least, that's what she believes, until she sneaks into a secret ceremony and finds herself able to draw on all sorts of magic at once.

Curious Tides follows Emory and Baz as they navigate her new discovery, which happens in the wake of many students disappearing and/or dying during a secret gathering. What the nature of this gathering was, and what the doomed students hoped to accomplish, is tied to Emory's new magic awakening. It's also tied to a children's fairy tale with which a few students—including Romie, Baz's sister and Emory's friend—are more than a little obsessed.

That's already a lot to take in, but Curious Tides takes the reader even deeper. As I mentioned, the worldbuilding is stunning, and it's spun out in a way that makes it easy to take in and retain over the book's more than 500 pages. The myths, superstitions, laws, and lies of this moon-ruled setting are all easily accessible to us, and clarified just in time for everything to be called into question. Lacelle's world is vivid and enthralling, taking us from dim dormitories to magical caves to terrifying dreamscapes. It's a compelling read, and one I'll be more than happy to follow into its second volume.

Curious Tides goes on sale October 3.