A Deadly Education: A Novel (The Scholomance)

It's nice knowing that books about witches aren't dead. The main idea of Naomi Novik's new novel, A Deadly Education - - - a new series with the second book already slated to release in 2021 - - - is about a school of magic that is focused on survival. Of course, this may bring about similarities of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, but this story is no way the same, A Deadly Education is a much darker witch school story with young murderers and also monsters that eat the students alive.Yet this dark and morbid story is about a young girl who has been foreseen to possess powers that could destroy millions of people as our main character, and she can be quite off-putting at times. Her personality - - - a need to be liked, but refuses to allow anyone to like her, her need to show that she is always the smartest person in the room, and her blatant rudeness to a young man that saves her life more than once - - - makes it hard, as a reader, to root for this character. She does have moments of dark humor that made me laugh, moments of sarcasm that were pretty good, but she quickly assumes that everyone hates her and wants her to die before making it to senior graduation.Galadriel is her name, but she prefers to go by El, and both of her parents were students at this Scholomance. She begins by talking about different kinds of witches there are at the school, including ones that use malia. Malia is a form of magic that takes it's mana from living things, including people. One such student she knows that uses malia is Yi Liu. El describes how malia of this sort slowly kills the one using it by telling the reader that Liu's eyes are turning all white, and her nails have gone completely black (and it's not polish).Early on, readers are told about enclaves at the school, usually rich kids whose families have had more survivors from graduating classes than others. Students who are not part of these cliques know that it is very important to try to get an invitation to join one before senior year because your chances of survival are higher with a group than by yourself. El spends most of her time debating whether she wants to be part of one or not; her shifts in decisions are quite annoying. After she is saved by a student named Orion Lake, who is an enclaver from New York, she quickly decides to use him to obtain a seat in his enclave: " I couldn't blame her, really. It wasn't stupid to want to be pals with Orion if that looked like a real possibility. Aadhya's family lives in New Jersey: if she got into the New York enclave, she could probably pull them all inside. And I couldn't afford to alienate one of the vanishing few people who are willing to deal with me. "Throughout the story, El becomes angrier and angrier every time that Lake saves her from being killed (which ends up almost being ten times), but one such time that he isn't able to, readers finally get to see what her powers have taught her, and this is practically the only time that we do: while an attack is happening in the library, El decides to go after Lake and help him save other students, but you can easily get lost in the library due to the shelves constantly moving, or you can be eaten because of the dark areas the shelves create; this is when a giant creature appears called a maw-mouth: "My whole body was clenched and waiting for it, and in the next flare of deep-red light I met half a dozen human eyes watching me, scattered over the thick rolling folds of the translucent, glossy mass that was just bulging its way out of the vent, many mouths open and working for air. " El tells us that the only way to stop a maw-mouth is to give it indigestion. "I stopped, and I used the best of the nineteen spells I know for killing an entire roomful of people, the shortest one; it's just three words in French, a la mort, but it must be cast carelessly, with a flick of the hand that most people get wrong, and if you get it even a little wrong, it kills you instead. " She does it correctly and the maw-mouth is defeated.El believes that she saved a majority of the students from being killed by defeating the maw-mouth, but when she goes to breakfast the next morning, she finds out that a student had been 'poached' by a senior student. Every student's dorm room has a wall or spot that is nothing but a black abyss, where if anything that enters it will disappear forever. 'Poaching' is an act that has happened at the school before, and it's when a student pushes another student into the void, usually to take over their dorm room because the former's is unsafe. Oddly, this isn't surprising that it happened, when life at the school is life or death, people, especially teenagers, will make rash decisions without adults being present - - - yes, there are no teachers at this school, and everything seems to appear out of thin air.The novel finally picks up pace when the wall leading to the graduation hall, which contains two maw-mouths for the senior class, is starting to break away, threatening to release any and all creatures into the school: "If a hole opened up to the graduation hall before the senior dorms were closed off, the seniors went from being the whole buffet to the toughest and most stale entrees on the menu. "When the students decide to work together to patch up the hole, they soon find out that the senior students don't want it patched up: " 'But we also don't want to let you buy your lives with ours. That's what I hear seniors saying. Not, let's rip open the school, but why don't we make you, your class, graduate with us. Your class are the ones Orion has saved the most.' Chloe flinched visibly, and a lot of the other kids at our table tensed. 'So? Are you all willing to do that, graduate early, to save the poor little freshmen? If not, you can stop ' - - - she waved a hand in a spiraling circle, making a gesture of drama - - -'about how evil we are because we don't want to die...' "The atmosphere in the story makes the threat of death in the school very real, but Novik's main character isn't well-written; there are side characters that I found much more interesting than El, and were better written. Lake is even a better character - - - especially when readers find out why he has a need to save people - - - I honestly believe it would have been a better story from Lake's point-of-view. Also, the amount of explaining that Novik does in the novel really breaks up the flow of the story, sometimes stopping right in the middle of an important scene just to explain something about the school.I will be reading the sequel when it comes out because I do want to know what happens to a lot of the side characters and their senior graduation, but I can only recommend this book to people who love stories about witches and the occult. As for horror fans, I don't think you would get your fix from this novel.

A very, very different book than I’m used to reading with so much monologue and not much talking until nearly the end.El is the kind of girl you want to root for, despite or because how everyone avoids her or suspects her of being pure evil.Orion is the epitome of awkwardness and full on propriety. A complete polar opposite of El. The story was a nice switch from all sunshine and good feels most books seem to be, which was a refreshing break. I was also pleasantly surprised that this Ms. Mobil, is the very same who wrote His Majesty’ Dragon, which I loved! Still need to finish the series BTW!At first I was reluctant to read it, but the story does grow on you and it’s interesting to discover the kids everyone assumed were naturally good, we’re anything but. Give this book a whirl and it just might surprise you!

I have been in a reading slump for awhile, not able to concentrate on any books that I started. This book helped get me out of that slump. I LOVE El. She gives off “looks like they can kill you, but is a cinnamon roll” vibes. (Although, yea… she could probably still kill you). I found trying to imagine how the school was set up a little hard for me, but fascinating. Can’t wait to start the next book!

“It’s like Harry Potter! But with no teachers, the students can’t leave the school, it’s more like a prison, monsters are constantly trying to kill the kids, and multiple people die.”I was excited for the concept, and the world is indeed interesting, but the execution is a bit clumsy. It is definitely more romance than fantasy. The writing tends to wander from tangent to tangent in the middle of a scene, forgetting that one character was in the middle of speaking until two pages later.Despite all attempts, the book is firmly YA. If your protagonist is a 16 year old girl who’s main problem is that they are “too weird,” your novel is YA. Would recommend for ages 14-18.The romance plot, or rather the persistent focus on the romantic interest, really spoils the intriguing world. Other, more interesting characters are fleshed out over 200 pages in, and their diversity and personalities are far more compelling.All in all, decent. Perfect for a misunderstood teenage girl who is having trouble making friends and wants an escape.

This book has a decidedly teenage voice, which can be a bit irritating, but it also has an a lot of fantastic elements including an entirely novel view of magic and the predators that would attract, a diverse cast of students and monsters, and plausible relationships. The plot is pacy and you can't predict what is going to happen next. It also has themes about privilege and in and out groups that work really well. And characters with different motives and shades of grey, rather than goodies and baddies. So I really wanted to like it.However, the plot device of setting the school in England was executed in such a lazy way that it doesn't work at all. This is utterly and cringe-inducingly an American author writing about how they think an English school would be. It should be completely obvious that it takes more than one British profanity and a few place names to locate a novel in England. Yet in the Scholomace we have references to juniors, seniors, freshmen and sophomores (and no mention of secondary schools, sixth formers, GCSEs or A-levels), we have students working towards graduation from the school (a term we use for university) and they have "shop" (where we have design technology). Nobody refers to the British school system, or is at all confused by these words. There is no other British slang apart from one word Amazon won't let me include (it begins with a w and rhymes with banker) and nothing Welsh beyond one use of cwtch. Why set it in England and not in some virtual space in the void if you haven't done any research about English education? It wasn't necessary for the plot - so it seems just to have been designed to court comparisons to the Harry Potter books (which were, of course, written by someone who went to school here). Perhaps like the accidental racism that missed their diversity read, this issue just needed more active input at the editing stage.Secondly - and I realise that this might be an idiosyncratic bugbear - loads of people die and nobody reacts, grieves or is traumatised. Like Vampire Diaries, the cast just go on with their life regardless of the kid dying on the next table, the two kids falling over dead next to them, or the partially digested body hidden in the beanbag they just sat on. They kill each other for various reasons, and expect half of their peers to die over the course of their time in education, and half the remainder during graduation. This is accepted because the survivors of this school consider the odds better than wizard kids have in the mundane world. And for hundreds of years, we are asked to believe, nobody has done anything to improve this, despite them being a world community of tens of thousands of wizards who rely on this one school to educate their children. And this massive collective trauma has had zero impact on either individual wizards or the community, in terms of their mental health. We don't even see anyone with injuries or disabilities, mental or physical, as these are charmed away. I get that its just another suspension of reality, like creating mals and mana and a void - but it misses a whole dimension of the human experience (and for some readers will just be a glib reference to something that's had a massive impact on their lives). Even revisiting circumstances related to the loss of her father hardly ripples the surface for the main character emotionally. And, like Harry Potter, we have the miraculous gifts of the central characters that mean they can do things no prior wizard has ever achieved. At least they don't get it entirely easily.If this was a worse book these would be fatal flaws. As it stands, these glaring issues with localisation and lack of emotional depth take the shine off something that still makes an entertaining read. For an author who has created incredibly sinister and immersive worlds like Uprooted, and tackled weighty issues with more depth, it is a bit disappointing to miss out on the fantastic book this could have been. But maybe that reflects my high expectations of Novik.

This new novel from Naomi Novik might be described as the anti Magic School story.The Scholomance, inspired by a real Romanian legend, is not the cosy, nurturing, adventures before bedtime school from so many other novels. Chances are, you will not make it out alive.The protagonist is half-Indian, half-English Galadriel or El, or is probably going to destroy the world one day. Maybe. If her grandmother's prophecy comes true anyway.El's nemesis (in her own head anyway) is Orion Lake, a more traditional hero and Chosen One, and with these two Novik has fun taking apart the Chosen One trope.Deadly Education is more of a series of episodes than one story. El gets up to various misadventures but it lacks a strong central plot.It has lots of amusing snark from El, and her interactions with Orion are generally quite funny, however other characters are not fleshed out as much, which then leads the story to lack extra dimension or depth.The worldbuilding itself is done in broad strokes, so we must rely on our impressions of other examples of the Magic School trope to fill in the blanks.While I enjoyed El's voice, so many chapters were filled with lots and lots of exposition, and often none of it would become central to the story. This started to become a bit tiring.Generally an enjoyable book but probably doesn't live up to its hype.

Powerful, snarky, witch Galadriel (daughter of a free-spell, yurt-living hippy) meets paladin Orion (from a privileged enclave in New York) at a Hogwartesque magic high school.The school is Infested with Monsters Great and Small.Watch TRAPDOOR old UK tv series to get general idea.The Name Of The Wind university Alchemy and Artifice magical system work well with a strong emphasis on languages, old and new, for the infinite range of textbooks.There is much trading between students with only limited resources.The students from the elite enclaves lord it over the rest with superior equipment and much higher survival rates.The poorer students compete to gain favour from the enclavers, and increase chances of survival.BEST SCI FI/FANTASY BOOK OF 2020.I love that the school was founded by industrial Mancunians for that ratchetty, clanking steampunk background.Seriously, watch Trapdoor for sprinkles on top. You won't be disappointed.I can't recommend highly enough.

Absolutely Brilliant!This pre-ordered Kindle edition popped up this morning, and I have hardly stopped reading all day!Naomi Novik is a fantastic writer, and one of the things she does amazingly well is tone; the Temeraire books caught the feel of Regency speech and thought; Uprooted and Spinning Silver each feel like fairy tales, and different kinds of fairy tales at that. This book (series? Oh, please, make it a series!) is funny, gritty urban fantasy, and it's wonderful. Here's the well-worn magic school trope, this time married (in timely fashion) to automated teaching. Role-reversals abound -- the main character is trying desperately NOT to turn into a villain, while the natural-born hero is also a bit of a prat.Along the way there are trenchant observations on privilege and oppression (again, timely) in a cut-throat world.And yet, it's so much fun! Also an amazingly convincing magic system (along with a good reason for the monsters not to attack mundanes). There's a really novel school structure (moving staircases are only the beginning). And the most terrifying graduation ritual of all.Highly recommended.

Oh wow! This book was so amazing and got me well and truly out of my reading slump.For starters, this felt like a much more grown up version of the magic school theme. Of course, we have had Harry Potter and Hogwarts, but A Deadly Education is so utterly different. For starters, I love the fact that there is a cost associated with the performing of magic. Unlike in HP, you don't get something for nothing and the characters don't have an endless supply of magic that they can just tap into when they feel like it. They have to either build mana or steal malia, which makes the whole idea much more interesting. I also love that this book has a darker feel to it. It's not about going to cool lessons and learning how to perform fluffy spells with a group of friends; it's about staying alive and making it all the way to graduation, avoiding all the mals roaming about the school, who would like nothing better than to eat the students.As a character, I think El is fantastic. She starts off as a cold, calculating character who hates everyone and views them only in terms of what she can get out of them, but we gradually get to see her grow and develop, forming some fantastic relationships, with some equally wonderful side characters. The relationships in the book feel organic and like they develop naturally and I love that they don't start the same way as so many relationships in books. I also adore the fact that El is so relatable in her crankiness. I figure we all have moments where we feel like we hate everyone and everything and it was so refreshing to read about a character like that.There is a lot of info dumping in this book, but it had me so hooked from the very beginning that I found I didn't even mind the large level of information throughout the book. It's certainly not a light or easy read and requires a lot of concentration, but I loved it from start to finish and that little cliff hanger at the end was a great addition.This was my first Naomi Novik read, but I will certainly be looking into her other books.