Zodiac Academy: On the Cursed Day of Christmas, by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti | Free Audiobook
Zodiac Academy: On the Cursed Day of ChristmasAudiobook
Twenty-four nights of Christmas, and a box of ornaments nobody should open
Solaria does not really do quiet holidays. The trouble here arrives in a box of enchanted Christmas ornaments, and the difficulty is not the decoration: a Vega monarch sealed malignant spirits inside them centuries ago, and the only thing protecting the rest of the world is that nobody smashes the glass. Someone always smashes the glass.
The book is built as an advent calendar rather than a novel with a Christmas scene bolted on. There are twenty-four chapters, one for each night in the run-up to the holiday, and the story picks up after the events of Restless Stars, so it is a genuine return to this world and its people rather than a seasonal detour. Familiar cast, a countdown structure, and something malicious scratching at the decorations: the shape of the thing is a treat written specifically for listeners who already live in these books.
I have read enough Christmas specials in long-running fantasy series to expect the worst: the cast in party hats, a plot that politely waits until January, and a hardback priced for the gift market. This is a different animal. Twenty-four chapters, one per night of advent, and a genuine festive threat involving hexed ornaments and the spirits that were sealed in them by a Vega monarch, which is a much better idea than it needed to be. Bridget Bordeaux and Jake Bordeaux narrate it as the two-hander they have been developing across this series, with the relaxed timing of people who know exactly how sarcastic these characters are allowed to be.
The structure is the cleverest part, and it is worth saying why. A chapter a night sounds like a marketing gimmick until you actually do it, at which point it turns eight hours and forty minutes into a month-long ritual that fits the season instead of competing with it. I listened to most of it that way, one chapter with the lights off, and the pacing is built for it: each instalment ends with a hook mild enough to let you sleep but sharp enough that you come back the next night, which is a discipline most serialised fiction cannot manage.
The festive element is treated as a real plot rather than an aesthetic. Enchanted decorations, a box nobody should have opened, and the specific horror of an heirloom that has been waiting politely for centuries for somebody careless enough to break it, all of it inside a series that has spent years teaching its audience that ancient magic is usually a trap. It is genuinely tense in places, which I did not expect from something with tinsel on the cover, and the countdown gives the tension somewhere to go.
It also lands as a proper return to this world. The events follow on from the end of Restless Stars, so the characters arrive carrying everything that has already happened to them, and the book trusts the listener to remember it. That is both its greatest pleasure and the reason it is not an entry point: for someone who has read the series, this is a visit home with the whole cast in the room, and for someone who has not, it is a well-produced festive fantasy they will enjoy without understanding half of the jokes.
The narration carries the festive register without ever turning anyone into a caricature, which is the failure mode for this kind of release. Jake Bordeaux in particular gets the dry, impatient half of the dialogue and lands most of the humour, while Bridget Bordeaux handles the more emotional material without letting it tip into sentimentality. Nothing about the production is lazy, and the sound is clean enough that you can listen to a chapter in bed without adjusting anything.
If there is a limitation, it is the one built into the concept: this is a book that only fully works if you have already spent a long time with these people. Nothing about its execution suffers for that, and the price of a festive special is always that the audience is the audience. It does what it set out to do with a competence the genre rarely bothers with, and it will be on my seasonal rotation again next year, which is the only verdict that matters for a Christmas title.
If you want the series proper, Cursed Fates (Zodiac Academy, Book 5) is already on this site, and Shadow Princess (Zodiac Academy, Book 4) is the earlier volume, both in their dramatized editions rather than the standard recordings.
Zodiac Academy: On the Cursed Day of Christmas is a festive return to Solaria: an advent calendar of a book in twenty-four chapters, one for each December night, built around a box of enchanted ornaments with malignant spirits sealed inside them and a countdown to the holiday that nobody is going to enjoy peacefully. It follows on from the events of Restless Stars. 8 hrs and 40 mins, read by Bridget Bordeaux and Jake Bordeaux.
It is a treat for listeners of the series rather than an entry point, so if Zodiac Academy is new to you, the earlier books are the place to begin and two of them are linked below. With the free listening trial you spend the credit on whichever title you like, this one included, and you can cancel in a couple of clicks if festive fantasy is not what you need this month.
Whatever you pick up during the trial stays in your library afterwards, even if you stop, so a holiday special is a sensible way to spend it, and one you can replay next December. Playback speed, a sleep timer and resuming exactly where you left off all come as standard, which matters here because the whole point is to stop after one chapter. All that is left is to press play and start the countdown.
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