A review by jkneebone
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

adventurous dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

The Scholomance: a school for magic with no teachers, set outside of normal space. Students are inducted as freshmen, and - if they survive the next four years - they fight their way through a hall of monsters, or “mals,” on graduation day. Surviving, of course, is easier for some than others. Our narrator El is one for whom it’s more difficult. El has a natural talent for big, dark magic - the kind of magic you power by draining something or someone’s life force, which she refuses to do. She’s a loner at the Scholomance until a chance encounter with resident school hero Orion Lake sets her on the path of developing unlikely friendships and alliances.

I don’t have much to say about this book except: IT IS AMAZING. GO READ IT NOW. If I hadn’t come down with a bug the day after finishing it, I would have already gone out and gotten book 2. Naomi Novik’s world building is always killer, and she outdid herself creating the Scholomance. I was agog at all the new details that kept coming to light, even in the final chapters of the book. Everything made perfect sense, and made the Scholomance as a setting so real and so horrifying. But I’d be remise if I didn’t also mention how much I loved El. As a narrator, her dry wit is hilarious, but beyond that her character - by which I mean her personality and mettle - is unlike any I’ve read recently in fantasy. I don’t want to spoil for those who haven’t read the book, but:
something about the fact that she is already propositioned to be dark, that everyone distrusts her based on that fact, that she wants to see herself as a badass dark witch when she can’t bring herself to use malia even when her life is at stake?? Something about that is 100x more compelling to me than the character who is supposed to be good having to choose not to do the easier and darker thing. I feel like that’s the usual fantasy hero plot - Good Guy has to fight the urge to give in to the bad guy because it’s easier/they have something the hero wants/the hero is doubting their cause, etc. But in El we have a hero who isn’t even being tempted by evil, who is so stalwart in her desire to do what is right and good that she chooses the harder path everyday, performs impossibilities and doesn’t even take credit for them, and thinks of everyone weaker than her before herself?? I’m obsessed.


I can’t recommend this book highly enough! If you are a fan of fantasy especially you have to pick it up. I can only hope the rest of the series is just as good! So excited that I still have two whole books set in this world to read!
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