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A review by gilroi
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
It's fine.
I don't read a lot of YA, or any really, but every summer I get intensely bookblocked and need to read something out of my usual genre to get out of it. And this did the trick, mostly. It's kind of like feeding on cardboard, there's no nourishment there, but my body can basically digest it. And that's fine! This genre isn't for me! Whatever.
The narration style is kind of terrible for action scenes, which had me skimming a lot of the final 10%. A lot of it felt like it was written in-the-moment as Novik came up with the idea, and it made a lot of the plotting clunky. The prose was fun though and I liked what Novik was trying to say about complicity. This is a good baby's-first-grimdark, or a way to microdose young readers to books with darker, if not particularly more challenging, themes.
I don't read a lot of YA, or any really, but every summer I get intensely bookblocked and need to read something out of my usual genre to get out of it. And this did the trick, mostly. It's kind of like feeding on cardboard, there's no nourishment there, but my body can basically digest it. And that's fine! This genre isn't for me! Whatever.
The narration style is kind of terrible for action scenes, which had me skimming a lot of the final 10%. A lot of it felt like it was written in-the-moment as Novik came up with the idea, and it made a lot of the plotting clunky. The prose was fun though and I liked what Novik was trying to say about complicity. This is a good baby's-first-grimdark, or a way to microdose young readers to books with darker, if not particularly more challenging, themes.