A Deadly Education

I’m not sure if my rating would be so high had I not listened to this book on audio. The narrator brought it to life with her impeccable use of vocal characterization, timing and an astute understanding of what the ‘slang’ of the story was. A definitely different take on a boarding school about monsters. Just too much fun.

3.5 stars from me. This novel is very dark. Not much to like about the characters or the world. It’s an academy book without any teachers or adults. I didn’t figure out till halfway through that all instruction came from grainy videos. Novik is a better writer than this. The world she created is full of nasty critters who want to kill mages. The protag spends better than 90% of her time creating stopgaps to stymie them, all the while glorying in being unlikeable. The story perked up toward the end of the book, but it didn’t make up for the first part which dragged. A lot. After Uprooted and Spinning Silver, I expected something different. Not that Novik can’t explore other worlds, but I needed a protag to root for. Galadriel didn’t fit the bill.

Wild, delightful, wildly delightful and delightfully wild. A Deadly Education is all of these and more. Raw. The magic Novik describes is raw and hard to tame but oh so lovely and unique. Novik is a genius with words and I could have done with a couple more hundred pages of this book.
And here comes a negative. I think the story could have used more backstory about how magic works, about how spells work. Fingers crossed that the next book will elaborate on these.

Let’s see the characters. Galadriel…I’m pretty sure that in the dictionary it is her picture by the definition of rude. I hated her at the beginning of the book but as I started to get to know her and her past, I actually started hating her a little less. Her attitude towards everyone, especially Orion Lake is understandable at the very least knowing, seeing how everyone treats her.
Orion Lake, the golden boy. He is not what he seems. At all. He is not your typical pretty boy everyone wants. Okay, so everyone wants him but here comes the twist, he doesn’t want them. He just wants to save people. And so that is what he does. He saves Galadriel from a mal and from then on, they start to have a…well companionship.
They are fun to watch because you just can’t tell what will happen between them next.

All in all I loved this story, it kept me on the edge of my seat.

I can hardly wait for the next book.

Let’s just start this off by saying that if I went to Scholomance, I would have been gone within a week. The school has creatures at every turn ready to harm and maim the students. Luckily everyone there is magically gifted and working to hone their skills more by graduation. When the school is out to get you, who do you trust on the inside? There were multiple times I was rooting out loud for El and her group of friends.

I have fallen in enjoyment with the fantasist Naomi Novik. I thought her Uprooted was a gem of a book, so well crafted in terms of her chosen genre, and I also liked her Spinning Silver, another complicated, feminist, and wonderful version of a fairytale. A Deadly Education seemed Young Adult in its focus on the politics of friendships and social groups in a school for wizards—not a subject that really interests me. But Novik just does what she does so well. Such a craftswoman. And this wizardry school is so darkly an analogy for capitalism. I really am full of admiration. (I’ve even started reading her dragon series, reminiscent of the C.S. Forester books about Captain Hornblower. But with dragons.)

I just gobbled up this book. I absolutely loved the idea of the main character (born to be dark, desperately trying to get by without actually tapping into those inherent powers) and her slow and steady accumulation of ‘friends,’ etc. But then I adore flawed characters!!

Fantastically inventive, action-packed, and full of wisdom and dark wit. I loved it!

Originally posted on Tales to Tide You Over: https://margaretmcgaffeyfisk.com/category/reviews/

I finished reading A Deadly Education (The Scholomance #1) last week, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but reviewing the book turned out to be a struggle. When I try to describe it to people I think would enjoy the story, the book sounds like pure horror. It definitely has a dark side, but the characters pulled me in as much as the world. This is a complex, magical, alternate Earth with magic costs measured in mana from effort or in the equivalent stolen from life. The characters face both tangible obstacles in the form of mana- and people-eating monsters as well as ones created by how they were raised.

Those with the ability to interact with magic start accruing mana naturally from their daily activities at puberty. It’s not without cost, however, as the existence of mana attracts all manner of magical, and deadly, beasts. This is only half of the framework, with the second part being the Scholomance. It is a school created in the void to give students a place to learn to control their magic with some measure of safety.

The school’s original design attempted to protect them from everything, but it proved fallible. By the time of the story, magical beasts have taken over the bottom of the school and some breach the other levels each year. Freshman are collected by a spell and apparated into the school cafeteria. There are no breaks, not for summer, spring, or holidays. Once there, school is in session straight through for four years.

To graduate, seniors must fight their way through the largest and most powerful beasts on the bottom floor. Only those who make it out the gate into the normal world succeed. A good year is when half of the graduating class survives.

The above is why it sounds like horror, and those are driving elements so expect some mortal danger. At the same time, all the traditional pieces of a high school drama are present with cliques, social ostracism, and jockeying for position to name a few.

What makes this story different from a mainstream high school drama is not just the magic. Every high school trope has a concrete reason beyond teenage psychology. The cliques are composed of those with membership in one of the enclaves. They have access to more resources and have better survival rates not just after school but during it. The jockeying involves attempts to earn the possibility of a spot in one of the cliques or to make an alliance that might be strong enough to survive graduation. The ultimate prize is an invitation to join an enclave after graduation, as the dangers don’t cease after schooling, but survival runs a close second.

This world is complex, the reasons things happen are multi-leveled, and the characters have many layers with what you first see not always offering the full story. The main cast (with Galadriel and Orion as leads but a good number of others surrounding them) experiences growth as they figure out not just what motivates others but themselves. They make hard choices, and success is not always within their grasp.

Galadriel guides us through the story as an extremely personal narrator. She didn’t seem likeable at first, but she was relatable. I understood her reasons for acting the way she did and could see myself doing the same given her circumstances. The longer I spent with her grumpy, bitter self, though, the more I grew to like her.

We experience things through Galadriel’s perspective, whether or not her interpretations are correct. She comes with baggage after her father’s family rejects her on first sight because of a vision that she’ll destroy everything. One character likened meeting her with the feeling of realizing it’s about to rain when too far from shelter.

Yes, I’m enamored of the description, with this as an example. The writing is pure poetry at times.

Orion is almost her perfect foil. He runs around saving everyone, but he doesn’t want to be the hero. He wants to believe everyone has the same right to live and the same chances, never considering his attempt to change things could have consequences.

It’s up to Galadriel to open his eyes to the truth of life outside an enclave in the rudest way possible. The dialogue, especially between these two, is another reason I enjoyed the read. It hints at more than we know, offering hooks to keep me reading.

The characters were the strongest element for me, though I found the world intriguing. The series also starts at the end of their junior year, implying we’ll see them beyond the graduation gates before the series concludes. I also found impressive how the modern narration here bore little resemblance to the other Naomi Novik book I read recently. In both cases, the voice matched the story.

The book tackles big questions of how life is valued along with the little ones such as whether Galadriel deserves to be liked. It’s powerful and intense with layers-deep characters, mortal danger, and self-discovery. There are as many humorous moments as horrific, and sometimes the two happen at the same time.

The complexity of the world and the effects of blind privilege works as does the prophecy’s impact on Galadriel. Amazing analogies make even harsh truths understandable. And the school is equal parts frustrating and amusing as they deal with the smaller distractions along with the potentially deadly ones.

Had I read the blurb first, I might not have been so willing to try the book. Instead, my son recommended it, and I’m glad he did. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the next one for sure. My library had a copy in eBook, so it’s worth checking if your eBook budget is already tapped.

Galadriel, El for short, is a student at The Scholomance, a school for magical teens. She has the power to flatten armies with a wave of her hand. But she and the other students have to survive the school before they’re released into the world. Hungry monsters, called mals, have an unending appetite for the students and their magic. Most of the mals are trapped in the school’s exit hall, where they eagerly await a buffet of graduating seniors. But some of the smaller mals manage to wriggle to the upper levels where the students spend their time. The mals are always hungry and sometimes impossible to defeat.

But now that El is a junior, Orion Lake, the school’s golden boy and monster slayer, is suddenly paying a lot of attention to her. Previously a loner, El is suddenly building strategic alliances in preparation for her senior year. Because only those with a strong team survive graduation.

I’m going against popular opinion a bit in my review of this book.

Don’t get me wrong; every review I’ve seen is glowing and I don’t exactly disagree. But I don’t fully agree either.

First off, I do love this world. It’s interesting and full of magic and enclaves of magicians (Wizards? I’ve already forgotten what they call themselves). The school with danger lurking around every corner and in every roof tile and even hiding in the food is fascinating. The rules of survival and alliances are numerous and practical and well thought out.

But the majority of this book felt like an info dump to me. There is a lot going on in Ms. Novik’s head. She’s contemplated every nuance of this world from multiple angles. I would normally appreciate that kind of attention to detail. But there are pages and pages and pages of not much happening while El explains how the school works or why all of the kids are half-starved and dirty and afraid of their food. There are more pages about why the monsters are attracted to the school, how it was built, and why no one can fix the huge problem of monsters eating the children. And on and on. It was just a lot of information. I don’t think there was a better way to handle it, honestly, but I hope this turns out to be a long series since most of this first book is world building.

El is a loner. She puts off an aura that just feels evil because of all the power she has. Everyone assumes she is evil. She doesn’t feel the need to correct their assumptions. The outside world rejected her so many times before she entered the Scholomance that she pushes others away before she can get hurt again. I logically understand that. But emotionally? If she treated my friend or brother the way she treats Orion? I’d push her into the void myself. She’s just nasty to him for quite a long time. Supposedly he finds that refreshing since so many others fawn over him and his monster-fighting ability without bothering to get to know him. I can see that to an extent. But El goes quite a few steps too far.

Once events finally start happening with regularity–halfway through the book? two-thirds?–this world truly absorbed my attention. I wanted to find out why monster attacks were getting more frequent. I enjoyed seeing El finally, finally relax her guard a bit. And I really liked seeing her test her powers. As she begins interacting more with other students, I liked learning about them and their backgrounds. And what on earth is going on with that ending?

I felt like this book was quite a bit of work for not a lot of action but I see huge potential now that readers are familiar with the world and can hit the ground running in the next book. Despite my own quibbles (I’m in the minority; look at the phenomenal ratings here), I absolutely do recommend this for readers of fantasy, just be prepared for all of the exposition.

2.5 stars
The first chapters were a lot. Lengthy info dumping, I felt like I was thrown into a dark, creepy school with a blindfold. I think it would make more sense if the book started at their first year, because the readers would be learning about the school along with El instead of getting so many lengthy info dumping randomly.

I started to enjoy the book when El’s interactions with Orion were more frequent. The sort of frenemies relationship they had was great and I really liked it.
El’s somewhat friendship/alliance with Adhya and Liu was another entertaining aspect of the story.
The creepy, dark school setting was amazing and complex.

Additionally, after inserting so many diverse characters and enclaves, it’s very underwhelming how there was little effort to flesh out the multicultural characters and/or aspects. And there were a few paragraphs that definitely made me uncomfortable: the dreadlocks paragraph which in my opinion didn’t add anything to the plot or the world building and another paragraph about an Arabic worksheet that was tone deaf to the core.

I was not a fan of the conversational style of writing, all that inner monologue filled with random information kept distracting me from what was going on. In spite of that, the ending was very intriguing and I’m tempted to continue the series.