Beyond the Curtain by Marie Lunga follows Liam Smyth, a wizard living in exile in Lapland, working at the Bureau of Magical Aid Purveyors, where his day consists of mediating between magic and global politics. Sixteen years ago, Europe vanished behind the magical barrier known as the Curtain, where magic is no longer hidden and non-magical people exist under wizards' governance. When the first non-magical refugees emerge from beyond the Curtain in Belarus after sixteen years, their arrival threatens to unravel a carefully maintained secrecy and forces wizards and survivors alike to confront what was sacrificed to save the world.

I really took my time reading Beyond the Curtain by Marie Lunga, and I’m glad I did. This isn’t a book you rush through for plot twists or spectacle, even though the magic and political stakes are genuinely compelling. What stayed with me most was the sense of weight behind every decision the characters make. Liam, especially, felt real to me with his constant self-questioning, his grief, and his quiet refusal to fully harden himself in a world that almost demands it. I found myself sympathizing with his hesitation just as much as with his moments of resolve, and that balance made him feel deeply human rather than heroic in a conventional fantasy sense. There were moments when the pacing was slow, but I felt that the slowness was intentional. By the end, I felt engaged, challenged, and curious in the best way. This novel is definitely one I would recommend to fantasy fans.

Beyond the Curtain by Marie Lunga starts sixteen years after a magical barrier known as the Curtain has shrouded Europe, when two people are found outside the Curtain and claiming to have crossed from within. Bureau official Liam Smyth is assigned to manage their case under international scrutiny. Inside the Curtain, Ølsa Nyrbo is drafted into the Wizarding Realm’s Army and placed among others marked for restricted service, where their assignments shift according to undisclosed criteria. In the Crescent, a non-magic zone hidden behind the barrier, a Gatekeeper named Halina regulates illegal crossovers and negotiates with groups seeking to interfere with the Realm’s surveillance network. As events accelerate on both sides of the Curtain, breaches, disappearances, and contested authority begin to expose how these three are connected and how fragile the division has become.

It is easy to talk about imagined worlds as an escape, but Beyond the Curtain asks something more demanding of its reader. Marie Lunga presents a society shaped by rules, borders, and decisions made far from the people who must live with them, and she does so with an attention to civic life that feels familiar. Ølsa Nyrbo’s journey inside the Curtain brings this reality into especially sharp focus. Ølsa is a young woman whose autonomy has not only been physically stripped away, but through an erasure of her memory, her body and mind are under total control. Through Ølsa, Lunga asks: What does it mean to find oneself when compliance is framed as virtue? This branches out to the resistance leader Nora Sheridan and deftly comes full circle. I recommend Beyond the Curtain to readers who enjoy intelligent and action-packed fantasy and who appreciate detailed world-building in a society where those in control will do anything to justify themselves.