A DEADLY EDUCATION | Naomi Novik
A Deadly Education takes your expectation of what a magic school for children should be and turns it on its head, and then inside out, and then throws some death and murder at it for good measure. The Scholomance is no place for children. It’s dangerous and deadly and when a student enters, they already know that their chances of getting out alive are slim to none. After all, nearly a thousand students are killed within its walls every year. If the monsters that stalk the halls (and the air vents, and the storage boxes, and the cafeteria bain maries, and… you get the point) don’t kill you, you might catch the attention of another student who has gone darkside, and who powers their own magic by draining your life force. Tough luck. There are no kindly teachers to help you. You enter The Scholomance, and, if you keep your wits about you and make the right connections and study hard enough, you might just exit with your life.
Needless to say, I am obsessed.
To me, reading this book felt like I was an exchange student joining The Scholomance for a semester. Naomi Novik tells the story in a way I found very interesting – namely, some plot happens, and then we get a huge wad of backstory as to why that plot is so dangerous. This story doesn’t start from the moment Galadriel (‘El’) enters the halls of The Scholomance. She’s in her second final year, and as such, we haven’t had five books worth of backstory to give us a rich tableau of the school’s history or the mechanics of how it works. Some people may find this way of telling the story grating, but I loved it. I felt like I was running the halls with El while she explained to me why I could never trust the staircases to lead me where I wanted to go, or why I needed to form an alliance to shower more than once a week, or how best to approach a toolbox without getting my head separated from my body. Others might find it tedious; I found it exhilarating.
I also loved how prickly and awkward and powerful El was. Hell is a teenage girl, or whatever the saying is. She wasn’t endearing in almost any way, and still I’m in her corner. I figure if you’ve been told since you were born that you’re going to bring about the end of the world as we know it, you’re allowed to be a bit pissed off and give off weird bad vibes.
Anyway – love love love this book. Eagerly awaiting the second in the series, as well as any other tidbits Naomi Novik sees fit to give us. She is filling a rather large magical school-shaped hole that I gouged out of my heart, and for that I am grateful. I can’t wait to travel further into the bowels of The Scholomance and head into – gasp! – the graduation hall in the next instalment.
Thank you to NetGalley and to Random House UK for providing me with an ARC of this book.
