Schloss Tannenlicht: A School Story (White is Never Neutral Book 1)

 Schloss Tannenlicht is a coming-of-age school story about friendship, quiet rebellion, and the traces that love leaves behind.

Royal by birth yet pushed to the margins of his own life, Christophe is sent to Schloss Tannenlicht, a remote boarding school in the pine forests of northern Germany. Here, tradition rules the corridors: boys are sorted and ranked like chess pieces, rituals are older than the teachers who enforce them, and anything tender must learn to pass as ordinary.

In chapel and sacristy Christophe meets Francis — a choirboy of feathers, field notes, and careful poise. Their bond grows in shared hymns and stolen minutes, a friendship at once reverent and disarming. When Francis dies on a windswept island while searching for a raven’s egg, loss redraws the map of the school; Christophe carries a grief that feels too large for the narrow beds and polished floors that must hold it.

Then Friedrich arrives.

Half-wild and unsanctioned, Friedrich appears at the frozen boundary of the grounds like a question the school never meant to ask. What begins as a secret between two boys becomes a way of telling the truth. Together, Christophe and Friedrich test the rules that made them, lighting candles others tried to snuff out and learning how desire, loyalty, and courage can share the same small space.

Spanning snowlit rituals, contraband field notebooks, and a final chess game where the cost of each move runs far beyond the board, Schloss Tannenlicht is a hymn to first love, chosen kinship, and the risk of letting oneself be fully known.

This is the second edition of the novel. Schloss Tannenlicht is presented here in a fully revised edition, reflecting substantial changes to structure, language, and character. Originally published as Castle Firlight.