Fantasy novel with bright yellow cover, male witch protagonist

Question

I read a book a couple years ago with a bright yellow cover that I’ve been dying to remember the name of.

The main thing I remember was that this was a world where women were witches with different types of powers. Some witches could teleport across large distances but performing that teleportation would exact a physical toll on them equivalent to walking the distance they teleported. To handle this, they would eat a lot and gain a bunch of weight before teleporting long distances. Men were less powerful (or not witches at all) but the protagonist happened to be a male trying to learn how to become a witch. The beginning of the book starts off with the male protagonist aiding his mother in medical missions. I think the protagonist then goes to a witchcraft school.

It was the first book published of that series, not sure if more have been published since. It was published within the past couple of years.

Answer 1

There are two books in this series by Tom Miller: The Philosopher's Flight and The Philosopher's War. Your description is a more-or-less exact match, except that magic-users were called "philosophers" rather than "witches".

Eighteen-year-old Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy—an arcane, female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. Though he dreams of fighting in the Great War as the first male in the elite US Sigilry Corps Rescue and Evacuation Service—a team of flying medics—Robert is resigned to mixing batches of philosophical chemicals and keeping the books for the family business in rural Montana, where his mother, a former soldier and vigilante, aids the locals.

When a deadly accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert rises to the occasion and wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women’s school. At Radcliffe, Robert hones his skills and strives to win the respect of his classmates, a host of formidable, unruly women.

Robert falls hard for Danielle Hardin, a disillusioned young war hero turned political radical. However, Danielle’s activism and Robert’s recklessness attract the attention of the same fanatical anti-philosophical group that Robert’s mother fought years before. With their lives in mounting danger, Robert and Danielle band together with a team of unlikely heroes to fight for Robert’s place among the next generation of empirical philosophers—and for philosophy’s very survival against the men who would destroy it.