Lit Witches: A Fantasy Book Podcast
'It's not just dragons and castles' - 'Blood Over Bright Haven' by M.L. Wang and the rise of dark academia fantasy
16 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What themes of dark academia are explored in 'Blood Over Bright Haven'?
This podcast is recorded and produced on Cammeraygal country. We acknowledge the traditional custodians and the first storytellers of this land and pay our respects to elders past and present. This is what fantasy does so well. It's so good. This is why reading is so important.
And they say it's just dragons and castles. No. The dragons are having philosophical debates.
They are.
They are.
Hello, and a very warm welcome to Lit Witches, the podcast for fantasy readers, writers, and all things in between. I'm your host, Adelaide Jensen. Today, I'm joined by Shania Stazen and Talia Moodley. Welcome to the podcast.
Hello. Hello.
Are you excited to be here today? Oh, very much.
Very much excited. Shaking with nerves as well.
Shaking with nerves. Excited. Shaking with excitement. Well, Talia is my fellow Fullmetal Alchemist fan, and she is someone who thinks you're a total fool if you like the original version of a brotherhood, which I agree with, Talia. Thank you. Sinead is really like my fantasy partner in crime, but at this point, it's become a gang.
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Chapter 2: How does the setting influence the narrative of 'Blood Over Bright Haven'?
It was high school settings and now we're into like the smuttier university settings of like romanticism.
And I think Vampire Academy especially, like I think that would hold up. I'm scared to revisit it. I think it would. I really do.
Yeah. I need to know, would you prefer to be a Maroi or a Dampierre?
Oh, I feel like I have to say Dampier because I had such a like idolization of Rose. Honestly, Adelaide, there are lines at the end of the third book. I can still remember reading it. I think I read it in year six and I borrowed it from the school library. And I honestly probably shouldn't have been reading it at that age, but it's fine. It was post-Twilight. Join us for a live reading.
Anyway, I digress. No, like next time, it's obviously going to be atomic. Now it's got to be with you two. I've said it on mic. It's going to happen. I also knew that you would pick that because the other two are far more deadly. And there aren't as many like hot vampires. Yeah, well, that's part of the appeal too, isn't it? All right, that's enough about Vampire Academy for now.
But let's start talking about Blood Over Brighthaven. Blood Over Brighthaven is a standalone dark academia novel set in the city of Tehran, an industrial utopia that's separated from the outside world by a magical barrier. That barrier protects its citizens from the deadly blight. In Tehran, Siona fights against a deeply entrenched patriarchy to become the first ever female high mage.
Tumil, our other main character, is one of the Quen, people from outside the barrier who put their lives at risk to get inside the city of Tehran or die trying. ML Wong originally self-published Blood Over Brighthaven in 2023 before it was traditionally published in 2024. As always, the bulk of this chat will be spoiler free and then we'll get into some more detail in the after dark section.
I will say there is a few really big, there are a few really big reveals in this book that we're going to try not to talk about really obviously, but there may be some oblique mentions to it that we unfortunately cannot avoid. But I hope you will enjoy it anyway. So, so far on the podcast, we've mostly talked about fantasy and romantasy and we've not yet talked about dark academia.
So do you read much dark academia?
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Chapter 3: What role do magical schools play in fantasy literature?
It establishes, like, this whole...
fight against the patriarchy that Sienna is experiencing it establishes like something as simple as how does a spellograph work how are we coding for magic in this universe and so I think they're really useful devices yeah that's a really useful point as well that it sets up a lot of world building without just being straight like just telling you what's happened because you can be like I'm in a lesson and they're explaining the history of the world or I'm in a yeah whatever
Yeah, well, because that's a problem that you often run into with fantasy books, kind of more on the higher end of the spectrum, because how do you incorporate world building that's not in such a kind of clunky or obvious way? Because if you have a character that's already so established in the world, they're not learning about the magic system or learning about their society.
They're just wandering through the world, off in a battle, and then suddenly you get this kind of back text history of the world so that you as the reader understand. I think the schools do really help it feel more seamless to the reader as well.
Yeah, definitely. And I think that this kind of dark academia can more easily go deeper into like societal issues for that reason, whether it's used as kind of a light way as like a convenient vehicle to get you through the story or whether it's used to like really explore these sort of deeply entrenched issues.
And obviously when you brought up RF Kuang, like Babel and Katabasis did that in very different ways. They're like, let's look at society from the perspective of a university. And then almost it's interesting people like to sort of categorize these dark academia books as being almost on the more literary side because they're more issues based. What do you think about that?
I don't like it. I feel like issues-based fantasy is everywhere throughout this genre. And some of my favourite series could be called issues-based and they're very much not dark academia. I just feel like... the fact that it's in a school doesn't now make it literary fiction. And it also doesn't take away from what the rest of the genre is doing in similar spaces.
Like, one of my favourite series is, like, the Between Earth and Sky series by Rebecca Roanhorse. It kind of deals a little bit with, like, similar issues of, like, power and world building and how that all relates, like, empires and how they fall and villains and how they're made. And that, like...
relates to real world like there are real world world building empire building things that have happened in the past that it relates to and no one's being like this is a literary series yeah I think it's like it's such a thing as well um with the genres I think if there are people that aren't as familiar with reading fantasy I can see how dark academia as it pertains to fantasy is more appealing because it doesn't seem perhaps as I guess out there as a complete different fantasy world like there are kind of those familiar touch points in terms of a school
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the ending in 'Blood Over Bright Haven'?
And then they, you know, are trying to make it into Tirin, into this domed city so that they can be safe, where they are then completely treated like lower class citizens, not really citizens at all.
It's like slaves by any other name, to be honest. And it's... Because he does make it, but it's also very visceral. She doesn't cut back at all there, confronting the reality of how brutal it was outside the bubble, which I thought was great. It really makes you feel it and see the reality from the beginning. It's very gory.
It is very gory. And I think that's one of the things I really enjoyed about this novel, is how gory it is. And even when there is the big surprise reveal at the end, it's done in like... the most gory way possible. Like, that image is just kind of, like, seared in my brain.
And I think it really drove home, like, the human cost of some of the things that are, like, working in the mechanisms of this society. But also, Sinead, just to actually take it back to... You kind of made that point about... Like showing gender through Tomlin and Siona's relationship. I actually read, so I was reading a bit of like what Emma Wong has actually said about this.
And she had originally had their roles switched. Interesting. So Siona's character was going to be the male and Tomlin's character was going to be the female. And then she made the decision to change it around because she thought it was a more interesting exploration of gender.
That's so interesting. It's really interesting that you picked that up. Because it's exactly that, right? Because Siona is, if you...
had kind of a male character be like she is I feel like you wouldn't be as struck by her ambition and her like thoughtlessness in some ways but it is just showing that you know there's such a full spectrum of men and women and any other kind of you know thing that falls under the umbrella um that that's yeah you can flip those that's really interesting that she that was actually intentional yeah not to confront our own biases or anything but would we have questioned so much his ambition if it were her ambition if she were a male character that's what I mean I don't think so yeah yeah I think it would have just been like oh yes of course that's the kind of
you know, ambitious male character. Yeah. I also wanted to take it back to what Talia said about the religion thing because I thought that was really interesting that so much faith explored there and she really uses it, Siona uses it as a crutch to kind of fall back on every time she's, like, questioning her own reality.
She's like, no, but this must be the way because this is the way I was taught. And how do you think that was done well? Like, do you think it was done well?
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Chapter 5: How does the magic system reflect real-world issues?
at the system and it's great when you finally see her and Siona meet on the page because yeah it is just these kind of like two opposing forces where Tomla I think again is a bit more gentle in the way that he approaches it even though he has his breaking point but Kara just yeah she was like a fury which was brilliant well she's also been living in the system since she was a child she's been working since she was like five years old because there's no other way for them to survive doesn't Siona at one point ask her like why aren't you in school she's like I'm working are you
What do you mean? Like, she just never takes a second to think about what she says, which I guess is why she's such a great character because you're like, how are you like this? And you're like, oh, this is actually pretty realistic, isn't it?
I think it's interesting as well and what you say about Tomil trying to keep their culture alive with Kara because they are the last two of their, like, particular tribe because they all tried to cross the river. Everybody else died. And sort of the reflecting society and history, if you will, in this book and how they used cultural erasure to really repress the Queen in other ways.
I do think that's actually very important because there's so many ways that genocide manifests and cultural erosion is such a big part of that as well. And I think it's so powerful and like Tomo at various stages feels so guilty for this, but like he has kept like the Kaldon ways so alive in Kara and he's
like he says that he's done it like very selfishly because he couldn't bear to see their tribe die out like that and because um well because if he like if he had raised her to be more turinish then she would have been quite a different person but she would have been safer and so this does put her in danger but he like can't bear to see the end of everything that he's ever known um and so i think like that just sort of speaks to like um i mean we live in a version of turan um
And it sort of speaks to like the First Nations issues that we hear about just daily and regularly. And so it is really powerful to see that on the page as well.
Yeah, I think, well, let's talk about that a little bit more because I think it is like this could be reflective of so many different things. But as Australians, you can't help but read this book and think this is so true. Like, as you said, of the way they treated First Nations Australians when, like, colonisation happened.
And it's like that use of religion, that use of, like, you know, cultural erasure and different ways of propaganda to just really grind down this. And genocide.
Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What are the political implications of the characters' actions?
And then Tiryn is presented as this utopia and you're with Siona on the fight to kind of, you know, show the inept men that she can do magic. And you're kind of trying to be with her to find this clearer way of sourcing energy so that you can actually see where you're drawing the power from. Because the whole, I guess, thing is that they can't see the other realm.
It's just these kind of vague shapes and blurry things in the typewriter. And then she unlocks this way to see it in vivid clarity. And then you see the Quen dying and you see Tommel's reaction to him putting the pieces together. And it's just, it was one of those moments where I was like, this is why we read. It's so good. Yeah. Thoughts?
Yeah. First of all, diabolical. Second, I...
thought it was such a clever spin on like the fantasy blight um so for context when I got this book um back when it was released I think I had like read the description and then completely forgotten about it by the time it had arrived and I opened the book up and in that first chapter it said blight and I almost threw it across the room because I was like I'm over the blight yeah
It's such a common fantasy trope. And I think anyone that's been reading the genre for at least a little while would, from day one, first page, be like, so Tyrande's causing this blight, obviously. And so that doesn't feel like such a reveal. But just the absolute gore and closeness of the killing related to the blight and the mechanism of it, I think is just really...
this sounds weird to say with it being such a terrible thing, but like fresh in like a fantasy setting. And so I really enjoyed that. And I think it just really drove home how terrible this like machine that Tehran is and how uncaring it is towards just anything else besides what it deems as progress. And like that Toml sort of says at some point, like that,
this is a city that takes, it takes and it takes and it takes. Yes.
And it just really drove that home. And also the fact that it was the magic. Like I think that that as a fantasy reader, you know, you never expect the magic to kind of have that kind of cost. Like I think that was a shocking aspect too because it is kind of this thing that you have probably, you know, grown up loving.
But in this kind of context, I found that that being the twist rather than it kind of being, I guess, the rulers of the city, like the high mages doing something outside of it. The fact that it was literally this, that is so inherent to the genre that we love that is now having this cost was a great way to do it because it shocks the reader too.
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