The Pitt Fans Are Missing Out On One Of 2026's Best Medical Releases

Published Oct 4, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT Cher Thompson is a Senior Staff Writer at Screen Rant, where she covers everything from explosive reality TV moments to cast interviews about the twists and turns of scripted dramas. With a background in creative writing, marketing, and teaching, Cher knows how to spot both the storytelling genius and the guilty pleasures in pop culture. Her work blends wit with insight, making readers feel like they’re chatting with a friend who just happens to know way too much about TV. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Few TV dramas have generated as much discussion around the realities of modern medicine as HBO Max's hit original series The Pitt, and viewers of the series may be missing out on one of the year's most similar releases. Since its debut in 2025, The Pitt has earned praise for its real-time storytelling and the intensity of its fictional emergency room cases. From a commitment to portraying healthcare workers with nuance and intention to the fact that it refuses to rely on melodrama, the series has become one of the most highly-anticipated prestige TV dramas of the modern streaming era. While the approach The Pitt takes to storytelling may not always translate into other mediums, there have been an influx of projects that have tried to work within a similar framework of the series over the past year. The success of the series has made it clear that there's a strong appetite for stories that place medicine as a focal point, but aren't solely focused on the specifics or the mechanics of it. Instead of another hospital drama, fans of The Pitt should make sure they don't miss out on one of the year's best new releases, Bodies of Magic. A new novel by Freya Marske, Bodies of Magic transports the same fascination with the realities of medicine into a completely different genre. Combining the structure of a medical procedural with a fantasy world and a murder mystery, the story feels both familiar and remarkably fresh for its readers. Bodies of Magic Takes The Pitt's Premise And Bends It Into A Medical Fantasy Although at first glance, The Pitt and Bodies of Magic seem to occupy completely different worlds, their similarities are fairly extensive. While The Pitt is a contemporary medical drama set in a modern emergency department, Bodies of Magic is a fantasy novel set at the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr, where students with magical healing abilities spend several years training before undertaking a career-defining examination. The core appeal of both, however, is incredibly similar. The elements of students learning more about their craft are present in both the TV series and the novel, which makes them more accessible. In Bodies of Magic, the students must complete practical medical cases as part of the infamous Grand Exam, a five-day assessment that determines their future careers. Their challenge becomes significantly more complicated when they discover the body of a fellow student and are forced to navigate both the examination and an unfolding mystery. The fantasy setting changes the tools available to the characters, but the book's structure is rooted in diagnosis, treatment, and training. Bodies of Magic frames healing as a discipline that takes study and practical application rather than treating magic as a convenient solution to be relied on. Despite Its Fantastical Elements, Bodies of Magic Is One Of 2026's Best Medical Stories Bodies of Magic is one of the most interesting new fantasy releases of the year, in part because of how much it uses medicine to create its own identity. Rather than simply featuring medicine as a part of the story, the novel bakes it into its DNA. Marske approaches the concept of medicine differently than the typical fantasy novel, where healing characters tend to treat injuries and illness in a secondary way. Bodies of Magic flips this on its ear, instead building an entire educational and professional structure around magical medicine. Medical expertise is a defining part of the world. As a medical doctor in her own right, Marske's ability to understand the first-person implications of being a student and, at the same time, understanding the diagnostic process is clear throughout Bodies of Magic. The authenticity that her experiences bring to the story separates the novel from other fantasy works that borrow from the larger world of medicine, creating a completely different experience for readers. The book appears genuinely interested in how healers learn, solve problems, and how institutions shape medical practice. For readers searching for alternatives to The Pitt, Bodies of Magic stands as one of 2026's best bets.