The Incorruptibles #1 by Lauren Magaziner; New York: Aladdin Imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division; © 2025; ISBN 9781665-968669; 387 pages, $18.99.
SAN DIEGO – Jewish author Lauren Magaziner has been writing fiction since she was a 4th grader in Philadelphia in a class taught by Adam Bloom. He asked his students to produce 3-5 page creative writing assignments each month, and Lauren, working out a tale about the Holocaust, eventually turned in 30 pages. Bloom, impressed, encouraged her to keep writing. She did, specializing in stories for middle school students, ages 10 to 14, that were published in such series as the 4-volume The Mythics and the 3-volume Case Closed.
Now she has embarked upon another series, The Incorruptibles, which in a future world powerful sorcerer families rule over ordinary humans, except for those few resistance fighters, known as “Incorruptibles” or “Incs” for short. The novel takes us to an academy in a remote mountain locale where middle school pupils as well as those in higher grades are taught skills necessary to oppose the sorcerers.
The protagonist is Fiora Barrowling, who we understand to be a Jewish girl, whose parents were killed by sorcerers. Through the good offices of Quinn, a team leader at the school, Fiora is given two months to prove herself worthy of becoming an Incorruptible. Otherwise, she will join her Uncle Randal in a city occupied by ordinary humans under Incorruptible protection.
The plot explores the process of acculturation to a new school as well as Fiora’s hate/love relationship with a female cabinmate, Mel, and her friendship with two boys who also live in the cabin, Cameron and Onyx.
Beds are placed at the four corners of the cabin and there are two bathrooms in each cabin, as well as a private room for the leader or “captain” of each group, in this case, Quinn, who is a young, unmarried woman. Students at the Academy are a multi-ethnic collection of binary and non-binary genders. Cabin groups are botanically named; Fiora has become a “Thistle.”
When they are trained, cabin mates participate in raids on the sorcerers, typically missions of sabotage and harassment. However, so often are these raids anticipated by the sorcerers that the Incorruptibles begin to suspect that a spy is living among them.
Magaziner weaves an exciting yarn in this introductory book to her new series.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.
Obviously it’s not a book about the Trump family.