Dark is Her Nature – Judith Berens (Judith Berens, Martha Carr, Michael Anderle)

Imagine that we live in a world of magic, and that there’s a literary genre called “tech fiction” in which technology is used in place of magic. Imagine a tech-fiction book about a tech school: Students arrive in their teens to learn technology. They are taught to operate basic technology - e.g., using light bulbs. Kids compete, and sometimes shoot electricity at each other. Meals are prepared by a robot and delivered by drones. If there’s a society in the background, it’s tissue thin - perhaps there’s a centuries-old competition between chemists and geologists.

Sorry, flip that around and what you get is something like “Dark is Her Nature”. The thrill of “It’s a school of magic!” and “And there’s magic!” and “With Elves and Gnomes and other magic creatures” wears off quickly, and once it does, there isn’t nearly enough story to carry the book.

There are a number of books - some of them written before Hogwarts was thought of - that make similar premises work. But there has to be a real story, three-dimensional characters, and a background that is more than a grab-bag of recycled tropes.