A Marvellous Light

A Marvellous Light is a historical fantasy novel by the Australian writer Freya Marske, published in 2021 as the first book of the Last Binding trilogy.

The novel is set in an Edwardian England where magic is real, administered, and organised into families, contracts and offices, so Robin's discovery that the ordinary world has a second layer arrives through paperwork rather than revelation. His predecessor in the post has disappeared, and the search for him turns up a curse that has attached itself to Robin and a set of visions of the future that come with it, both of which make Edwin's expertise a matter of survival rather than manners. Marske uses the bureaucracy for comedy and for menace at once, since the society Robin has inherited is one where a binding agreement can be enforced physically and where the people who hold the power have no interest in explaining it. The book's central relationship begins as an obligation between two men who want different things from the same institution, and the trilogy continues with A Restless Truth.