Heir of Light (The Academia Chronicles, 2) by Michelle Sagara Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy mystery, urban fantasy
Series: Academia Chronicles #2, Chronicles of Elantra #18.5
Pages: 495
Published by Mira on May 27, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
There is always a price to be paid for power and justice.
With the Academia now awakened from its centuries-long slumber, Robin, a student who hails from a prestigious family, must own up to his destiny. As heir to the Gardianno seat, a highly coveted position within the human caste court, Robin stands to inherit great power when he assumes his birthright—but at what cost?
Under the guidance of a formidable Barrani lord named Teela, Robin wrestles with his newfound duties and the societal complexities that come with the privilege. Soon, however, it’s apparent that others feel entitled to the seat…and they’re willing to do the unthinkable in order to get it.
With Teela and his best friend, Raven, at his side, Robin is ready to battle for what is rightfully his. But when the Halls of Law consider reopening the investigation into the baffling murder of his parents, the truth could lead Robin right to the heart of danger.
My Review:
It’s difficult to encompass this book in a review, because a) there’s a lot of book, and b) it’s kind of the tip of the iceberg in that Heir of Light is beautifully set in the world of the long-running Chronicles of Elantra – and there’s a LOT of that world to explore.
This particular story is set in a tiny corner of that world, the recently re-discovered Academia, and the story is partly about that rediscovery but mostly about the impact of that rediscovery on one single student in it. Not because of the Academia itself, but because the discovery that Robin Gardianno, the heir to one of the founding families of the human caste court of Elantra, is alive and more or less well and managed to survive the murders of the entire rest of his family.
A crime that someone – or several someones – among the human nobles covered up when it happened. An oversight that one or several beneficiaries of that crime are absolutely trying to rectify in the present.
Robin, for his own self, was happy to have been hidden. He’s still underage, and he’s spent more of his life in the worst parts of the city than he ever did as a child of privilege. He’d be happy to just be a student, and then a scholar, now that the Academia has been restored.
But the perpetrators and beneficiaries of his family’s murder don’t merely want but actually NEED Robin dead, so that they can pilfer the magical legacy of his family. They’re either not aware, or more likely don’t believe or don’t give a damn, that destroying the ‘artifacts’ that the Gardianno have protected for millennia will literally unbalance the world.
Robin, however, does care. In order to do his duty he’ll have to take a crash course in how to do EVERYTHING to impress, to fake having power until he actually does have it, to protect his friends, his allies and his world from forces that will otherwise destroy it – even though he has to sacrifice his hard won peace and safety in order to even try.
But then safety has always been illusory for Robin – even before he knew what that meant. So it’s just another day. A day when he’ll have to fake it until he makes it, dodge assassins, give his oath to the Dragon Emperor, and discover that he still might have a bit of his original family left even as he protects the family he’s made along the way – and they also protect him.
Escape Rating A: I just spent an entire day in Elantra – and it was marvelous.
First, that’s literally true, as Heir of Light is a 500 page book, so it’s about 7 hours of reading for me. I did spend the entire day there, because once I started I couldn’t stop – and didn’t want to in the least.
One of the things I love about the whole Chronicles of Elantra series, of which the Academia Chronicles are a small part – in spite of the length of this entry – is that 20+ books, between the main series and so far two subseries, the world that Elantra inhabits is fairly fully baked. Not that there aren’t plenty more stories to tell, and not that there aren’t still corners to be explored, but the foundation of this world is well-fleshed out and just has oodles of depth.
Even when a new corner IS exposed – as is the case in this subseries – it’s set in the context of the whole, and there are plenty of links to the parts of the world we already know to ground it in.
I’m particularly highlighting this fact because the book I read the day before was the first book in what I hope is a new series by a debut author, and it was fascinating and I enjoyed it but the world it’s set in is far from fully realized or explained, yet. There were at least three major stories being explored in that one book but they were all rooted in backstory that couldn’t be fully explored or explained enough – at least not for this reader – and the contrast between that and Elantra felt pretty stark.
So a whole lot of that ‘A’ rating feels very personal. This is a world that I love, and I was so happy to be back. At the same time, one of the things I adore about this subseries, and the previous subseries, the Wolves of Elantra (beginning with The Emperor’s Wolves) is that I can go back and feel right at home without remembering every single detail of the whole entire series – because there are a LOT and it’s easy to get lost in the later books in the main series and it generally feels like I am even though I don’t want to be.
This is a direct follow-up to Shards of Glass, so you do need to read that to get into this. But you don’t have to have read all 18 books of the main series – although a selected few might help.
The other thing I love about this series, that was very much on display in this book, is that a lot of it is about process and making that process work. Part of what has made this and the Wolves of Elantra subseries work so well, at least for this reader, is that those subseries introduce a new character who needs to have the world explained to them – so we get the recap too and kind of fall in love all over again.
But also, as we see Elantra from a new vantage point, we get to experience again just how well it functions – even when it doesn’t – and how most of the people in most of the positions, or at least the ones we’re following – are doing their damndest to make a system work that will work for more of the people more of the time if the majority can just manage to let it or occasionally shove it back into working order. (This part is very reminiscent of LE Modesitt’s Imager and Grand Illusion series. I digress but if you like this you’ll like that and vice-versa.)
So in the end, it’s not that humans aren’t gonna human, and for that matter, that Barrani aren’t going to Barrani, etc., etc., etc. but that Elantra has enough people working towards the good in enough places that good has a really good chance of continuing to fight the good fight and shining some light into formerly dark places with a whole lot of help from its friends.
Or in this case, Robin’s friends. Especially because, honestly, marvelously and beautifully, there be magic here.
