A Deadly Education
Ratings510
Average rating4
Unusual and exciting! A fun, new kind magical school. I can't wait to see what happens next!
Take a basic adolescent novel about fitting in, friendship and crushes and then make all of that real: if you don't have any friends, you will literally be eaten by monsters. If the golden boy reciprocates his crush on you, it will literally save your life. That's the premise of Deadly Education and it's kind of a fascinating one.
I think Novik's characters were well-developed, especially to explore the way that adolescence can feel so life-or-death. Sometimes school fantasy can feel twee, but I felt like Novik's monsters felt real, serious threats and this was done well.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
Do you want to be a mighty wizard?
Do you want to join a group of like minded sociopathic individuals to get on and join the elite of the wizarding world? Then:
Welcome to A Deadly Education!
(Or how to win friends and influence people, so that the nasty things don't eat you)
Right, let's get the obvious out of the way. This is a magic school for witches and wizards and this is not the sole property of he who shall not be named. Okay? Phew, glad we got that sorted.
What we have here is a tale of friendship against adversity. The old romantic mismatch. A kind of Harry met Sally situation in which the good guy is annoyingly good and the damsel is constantly distressed at being regularly rescued by the good guy, even though she is some mega evil witch that has a prophecy attached to her (whoa, stop it! We got those comparisons out of the way in the first sentence. Didn't you know that in quite a lot fantasy stories, there's a chosen one with a prophecy attached? Well, don't you? Jeez anyone would think that this is a HP reference. Well it's not! Okay?).
Glad we got that out of the way!
The story revolves around Galadriel (or El for short) who is a pupil at the Scholomance, a school for witches and wizards whose first lesson that they have to learn, is to get safely through breakfast before they become breakfast. The Scholomance is a magic school that is populated by magical teens that have been whisked away from their parents and have to board in a school that has a vast array of different ways to kill you in some horrible way. From flesh eating maggots in the porridge to demonic corridors that will strip the skin from your bones, there is an endless way to get yourself killed. Add to that psychopathic students who will happily kill you for no apparent reason, this makes my days at school seem positively balmy in comparison.
On top of that, you have to have political skills that are reminiscent of a medieval court. Where you have to form alliances or trade something of worth in order to fix your door, brush your teeth or even get a shower This place is tough beyond belief and our hero, El is always letting us know how dangerous, how tough and how many different ways to kill you there are. On every page. Okay, okay we get it.
This school is flippin dangerous!
Surprisingly, El does not have many friends. However, this changes when the handsomely, charming popular kid, Orion Lake, starts to take an interest in her and forces his friendship on her, whether she likes it or not. However, as the story progresses we see that even though they are at the opposite ends of the popularity spectrum, they both share similar experiences and are both equally isolated.
In a Deadly Education, Novak's wizarding school is not all jolly hockey sticks and full of quaint little traditions that hark back to a corner of England that is stuck in the innocence of yesteryears. It's filled with scary monsters and super creeps. It is the dog eat dog world of a capitalist society where the more power and influence you have, the more likely it is that you will survive. It juxtaposes the world outside, which again is not filled with a lovely, cutesy world that resides in the past. In Novak's world, being a wizard is a dangerous lifestyle which attracts the monsters that live under your bed so that they can kill you and eat you.
Once you get past the myriad ways in which you can die, be eaten or be killed and then eaten, you get to the heart of the story. Which is, survive. Simple as that. Everything is geared towards surviving the experience of school and hopefully get out of there. That is if you can get past a cornacopia of nightmarish beasts at the graduation ceremony that are hell bent on doing all the things mentioned earlier.
Why anyone would want to be a wizard in A Deadly Education is beyond me. I would use the same tactics that the mundanes (the non - magical community) use. Don't believe in magic. Simple as that. The mundanes do not believe in it and that saves them from the monsters. Otherwise, it looks like you are in for a life of looking over your shoulder and elevating yourself to the rank of paranoid sociopath.
On the whole, I enjoyed A Deadly Education and the story of the snarky main character and how she manages to get through everyday and how her world expands from a world of one to her development of ‘friends'. This is a fantastic setup for the rest of the series, it sets up the world, the characters and is just the start of the story. Will I be reading the next one? Hmmm, I think I will, I wouldn't mind seeing what happens to El and the gang.
DNF@20%
I rarely DNF books this early but I just don't enjoy the writing at all. Can't speak for the quality of the book as a whole since I stopped so early on + the setting sounds like a lot of fun.
DNF. It was such a struggle to get to page 100 but after every reading session I still wasn't sure what I just read.
I once saw a post on Tumblr that said something along the lines of ‘don't judge a book by its cover is a great saying that applies to all aspects in life except for books'. I tend to agree with this statement. When I browse through my local Barnes and Noble there are times where I will buy a book or series simply because its cover is so interesting. In recent times this has led me to some fantastic reading experiences, as it caused me to get N.K. Jemisin's ‘Broken Earth' trilogy last year as well as this one, the first book in Naomi Novik's ‘The Scholomance' trilogy. I'm not exaggerating when I say that A Deadly Education is one of my favorite books ever on a pure physical sense. Its cover art and jacket are absolutely fantastic and I couldn't stop admiring them even while I was reading it. Few books have given me as much joy just by holding them as this one. I have never really gotten into audiobooks or e-books and it's books like A Deadly Education that makes me very happy about my loyalty to physical books. I feel like I'd enjoy the book a decent amount less if it didn't feel so good to hold and look at. Even if the book itself was awful I'd probably give it a decent rating just for the physical aspects of it. Fortunately, A Deadly Education has a lot going for it even outside of its aesthetics. To put it simply, this is a damn good fantasy book written by someone who knows how to tell a compelling story. The book is written from the point of view of Galadriel (El for short) Higgins, a junior at The Scholomance, a school for wizards and witches. While this may sound like a Harry Potter rip-off, it's very much not. The title of the book very much sets the tone for what type of setting The Scholomance is. This is a place where mere survival is not something that is just given and you have to work for any advantage you may get to aid you in this simple task. The setting alone makes A Deadly Education a very unique fantasy book. It's far more adult than something like Harry Potter (I'm not saying that Harry Potter never gets adult, but the depictions of violence here very often veer into something out of a horror novel), but its protagonist and characters mean that it never becomes a true grimdark novel. The result is a really interesting mix that Novik makes work to an incredible degree. It's not a book that gives you everything right off the bat, El is a junior who has always been magical and thus does not need everything explained to her, thereby giving the reader less exposition. I will say that it took me around 50 or so pages to really start enjoying the book but after that I was totally hooked. This is a book that is the definition of a page-turner as every scene is gripping in some way. It's just a damn good time. The book wouldn't be nearly as fun without Novik's wonderful collection of characters, who you very much want to succeed and overcome the horrors of their setting. The one thing I had heard about A Deadly Education before I read it was that its heroine was great and those ratings were correct. El is the perfect protagonist for what Novik is trying to accomplish here. She is in many ways a teenager but her view on the world is more jaded as a result of the environment she's grown up in. What's amazing about El is that she doesn't feel like she's edgy for the sake of being edgy. El feels like a human being that this world would naturally produce. Her narration is incredibly fun to read and some of the best moments of A Deadly Education come from her wit. That's not to mention Orion Lake, a very fun take on the golden boy archetype that naturally exists in a school setting. The book is almost as much about Orion as it is about El, and he provides a very fun deuteragonist to El's protagonist. Really this book is full of really excellent characters and I loved learning about many of them throughout the book. I'm so glad I judged A Deadly Education by its cover. I eagerly look forward to reading its sequel. Novik is quickly shaping up to be one of my favorite authors and I'm so happy she has so many more books that I can check out.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the author's previous work, I was quite let down by this offering. I just could not find a way to latch on to the characters and situations, finding it a tough slog even in the few pages I managed to get through. It was not the author's way with words or even writing style that turned me off - it was simply a completely off-putting situation (at least, for me). I imagine there will be many who will enjoy this book, and more power to them, but I'm moving on.
(three and a half really, the other half goes to the audiobook narrator which was fantastic!)
So first of all, the controversy. I'm not american really (hispanic I guess), so maybe I'm not as involved in this, but I did not find this book racist at all. Also, this is a fantasy world created by someone's mind with someone's rules, and so if in this world, dreadlocks are a bad idea (and she explains why) it's her world building, nothing against dreadlocks or whatever other thing, maybe in a certain world people can't wear purple or can't braid their hair, or whatever. It is a choice in your worldbuilding and I think you should be allowed as a writer to build your world as you will. She probably didn't even realize that that particular detail would send haters all over the place. Mind you, she was clearly trying to be inclusive.
That aside, the book has a very interesting premise. A school with no teachers, in which you try to survive everyday by learning new spells. And our poor protagonist, all the spells she gets are, well, inappropriate at best. And she is very unlikeable, but entertaining, and does grow by the end (only a bit though). And you have her befriend the popular guy and the side characters are also interesting too. The developing friendship between her and the popular guy, while strange and at times annoying, it's endearing by the end.
However, some have described this book as an ikea manual. I get it! There is quite a bit of infodumping, and for that I think the audiobook helps a lot. So the world is interesting, the premise holds promise, and the story (when progressing) is also very good. I think these series has potential and I hope the internet didn't cancel it ;(
If you like a slithering story, can take a bit of infodumping and like school settings and a bit of battle royale, this can be the book for you!
It's clear that this has a YA focus but it falls into the usual pitfalls of shallow and simplistic characters and fast paced story. The main character seems to switch from mood to mood every line in an attempt to mimic hormonal emotions of a teen but it's so constant that it just feels dizzying and disconnecting. Quick read though, pretty good when compared to Harry potter c:
In this series, the Scholomance is a school where magical children are sent to learn their craft. It was built in the Void and is intended to be safe, but there are some issues with the wards. It has become overrun by Maleficaria (mals), which are basically all manner of magical monsters. The FMC, Galadriel “El”, is studying to become a sorceress at the Scholomance. Her abilities are more destructive than helpful, and to top it off, she has a dark prophecy hanging over her head. During the course of her education she has been saved by the MMC, Orion, on two occasions, which irks her to no end.
The Scholomance is sentient, in that it moves around based on certain events, but there is the added problem of the magical monsters that it houses. They are able to hunt the students, but Orion has this incessant need to protect them, and he’s unnaturally good at it and at staying alive. This results in the students all having a bit of hero worship, and we learn that he can’t stand that everyone fawns over him. El’s animosity toward him is a breath of fresh air for him, and thus a reluctant friendship begins.
Throughout this story there are high stakes, due to the nature of the school's mals, and there is this budding friendship between the main characters. Orion metaphorically cracks El’s armor, which leads to a plethora of other characters coming into the mix. Hope becomes a tangible thing for her, because she has always felt like an outcast and this newfound popularity opens the door for real friendships to develop.
This is a definite coming-of-age story, with a lot of other complexities mixed in for the two main characters. Orion is faced with the unintended consequences of his actions, and El faces down her own preconceived notions of who she is, and what she can do to change her story. The plot is well thought out and interesting, and there are times where El is a bit irritating, but it’s intended to be part of her overall growth as a character.
There are friendships and rivalries deeply rooted in the typical high school cliques, but they are relevant to the story and to the outcome of this first book. Each side character seems to bring a unique skill to the team that begins to develop and, in that, it becomes a bit too convenient for me, but it is still good storytelling. This first book is not super long, only 338 pages, so I feel like the story’s pacing could have benefitted from a bit more build up.
If you’re a fan of magical schools, this is a good read for jumping into this type of world without being overwhelmed. There are moments where you may need to re-read for clarity, but overall it’s a pretty straightforward plot with a budding friendship that you can’t help but root for as you watch El and Orion banter.
Originally posted at www.youtube.com.
Overall enjoyable read but didn't fully grab me. The world building & magic mechanics is really great. I definitely loved learning about the world and how it operates, but wished for a little more action. The climax felt a little rushed & not as exciting as I had hoped.
EDIT: Feel I need to add that reading this book is well worth it to read the series as a whole. I felt each book got better and really loved the 3rd book.
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.
Feels like a darker Harry Potter if you're thrown in near the end of the 6th year.
The occasional references to real-life things (Lord of the Rings, Disney, televisions) took me out of the narrative and world building a bit.
Lead up to the climax felt very rushed and a little too simple but I'll probably still read the next one because there's enough mystery and questions left unanswered while still having a satisfying ending.
The girls and I headed to Iowa for a visit this weekend, so I had a project of finding a good audio book that would be acceptable to all and fit in the time frame we had. And this book was a great success all around! I have read at least one other book by this author and had really enjoyed it, and I know I've had this book on my TBR for a while.
In what is now a delightfully standard set up, we find ourselves in a school for magical children. This school floats in a void, and there are no adults present. It has been built to protect the teens from evil magical beings, who are very tempted by what seems like their magical puberty. While the school offers some protection, it is still pretty tough in there, and the kids learn directly from the school while preparing to fight their way out when they “graduate.” Our protagonist is an outsider who is trying to figure out how to survive the next few years ahead.
While the bones of the plot are perhaps not the most original, the details are absolutely great. I loved the description of the slightly sadistic school and our delightfully sarcastic protagonist. The mash up between life-and-death struggle with what feels like really normal high school issues of who likes who is done very well. The book is YA but did not feel “too young” for me to enjoy as an adult. It is another series (why are they all series?!?!?) but after I get through the rather alarming pile that has suddenly appeared at the library for me (why do all the holds show up at the same time?!?!?) I will be putting the next two books high on my list to get through.
3.5/5
This was another book that unfortunately falls in the “cool premise, mediocre execution” for me, although there were times when it peaked to fall into the “borderline good” stage, hence the extra half-star.
My biggest problem was just the exposition dumps. There was so much exposition to slog through.
In my opinion, Novik has made a legitimately fascinating world, on paper at least. I love the idea of Harry Potter but deconstructed and showed how legitimately deadly a world like that would be to magical children. There were times when maybe Novik toed the line of ridiculousness a bit too much, but I didn't mind too much. If anything, it almost added to the dark humor of the book. Harry Potter is an idealized magical world (at least in the early books), Scholomance is the exact opposite and is borderline grimdark.
Unfortunately, Novik's strategy of worldbuilding is to have El, the narrator and main character of the book, grace us with exposition dumps. Paragraphs and paragraphs of exposition dumps. I loved the world but hated reading about it. Scenes would stop because a character would introduce a new aspect to the world, some kind of new creature or rule of the magic system, and then El would have to stop and explain it to the reader in full, pace-halting detail. When it feels like the story has to grind to a halt and half a chapter is dedicated to exposition, it's no longer engaging to me. It's tedious. Really, I feel like that's the main issue I had with the book. Weave the exposition into the story in a less heavy-handed way, and I feel like this would easily be a 4 star book for me.
Galadriel (El for short) was annoying at first, but I actually warmed up to her by the time the book ended. She gave me petulant child vibes. She puts on a front of being rude to everyone. She's snarling at Orion constantly, she snaps at her classmates. She thinks about how she can blast Orion into a bloody pulp, how she can level the school with her magical powers, how she can take on Orion in a fight, but never actually does. A lot of her thoughts, especially in her interactions with Orion, boil down to “I wanted to [insert physical hostile action here] to Orion, but ended up not doing it.” While I maybe thought her development and the character arc she goes through might have been a bit sudden and it would have been nice to have the seeds of it sowed earlier, it was still a nice character arc to see develop.
I don't know if any character outside of Galadriel and Orion in last act of the book were really all that engaging, but they weren't overly dull or tedious to read about. Novik didn't fall into the usual boarding school tropes that are in so many other books. She could have given us the same exact character tropes we see in boarding school books: the fish-out-of-water main character, the good-without-question allies of the main character, the obligatory mean bully, shallow love interest put on a pedestal. It's a breath of fresh air, and I commend Novik for it.
Also, confession: Part of me thought Orion and El was cute. Yeah, it's the kind of silly where it's like “El is constantly rude to Orion and in real life, this would be a toxic relationship” but...I don't know, man. It's a romance trope guilty pleasure of mine.
So, do I want to read the rest of the series? Maybe Novik got out all of the exposition dumps in the first book and it'll make the other ones better for me to read.
I'll be real. If I do read the rest of the series, it'll just be to see where El and Orion end up. I hope they kiss again.
Yes, it is YA but there is a certain bite to it that recalls Gideon the Ninth and that gives it more depth than i could have hoped for.
This book was interesting to say the least. I will say that I found it to be really … heavy. The world and the magic system are pretty complex and odd in this book, so it makes sense that so much time is spent of describing how it all works. But there is SOOOO much detail. It isn’t just the first couple chapters and then sprinkled in as needed. Nope, its constant and consistent the entire way through. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t necessarily categorize it as a “fun” read. It was dark, moldy, and uncomfortable at times. So why did I still kind of like it? The characters. I loved the fact that the main character El is destined to be a villain, yet still tries to be good. I loved how sarcastic and rude she was to everyone even if she was saving them. I also loved Orion, the embodiment of a cinnamon roll, who has such a one-track mind of being a hero that he’ll save the one girl who doesn’t want him to multiple times. Their relationship (odd as it was) along with all the other cool side characters is the reason that I kept reading and why I will probably read the next one. While I wish the author understood that sometimes we as the reader don’t need to know every micro detail all the time, I do want to know what happens to everyone and if they graduate this deadly school.
Una premisa muy interesante y que llama mucho la atención, pero una ejecución bastante atroz. Así es como describiría este libro.
¿Un libro sobre una escuela de magia donde existen monstruos que quieren matar a los alumnos a todas horas? ¿Dónde hay que firmar?
Voy a ser sincera, el libro tampoco es horrible, pero tiene unos cuantos factores que han hecho que no me gustara:
1. La forma en la que la autora te suelta párrafos y párrafos y más párrafos de información sin venir a cuento. No me mal interpretéis, el worldbuilding me encanta en los libros, pero solo si está bien hecho. En este libro por desgracia no lo está. Te mete páginas enteras de relleno que no viene a cuento y hace que te aburra.
2. Los capítulos son extremadamente largos. Esto no tiene porque ser malo per se. Pero en este libro, son largos e innecesarios. Esto juntado con el punto anterior hace que no quieras coger el libro y ponerte a leer.
3. Hay palabras, o en muchos casos, nombres de monstruos, que se repiten demasiado. Esto en el sentido de que en un mismo párrafo te puede mencionar el nombre del monstruo cinco veces (capítulo 6 en concreto). Se hace agotador y repetitivo. Ya nos hemos enterado de que está peleando contra un milfauces, de verdad, no hace falta que nos lo digas 13424534 veces. Busca otras formas de llamarlo, omite el sujeto, descríbele de otra forma, etc.
4. Lo mismo esto es solo una impresión mía, pero hubo momentos (sobre todo en el principio) donde estaba tan perdida que me daba la sensación de que estaba empezando la trilogía por el segundo libro. Te meten ahí de lleno, dando por hecho que sabes todo sobre el mundo, la escuela y los personajes.
Lo que me ha gustado del libro:
1. Orion. El mejor personaje de toda la historia. El resto o son irrelevantes o no me caen bien.
2. El final. Tiene un buen cliffhanger.
Por estas dos cosas le he puesto 3 estrellas y no 2.
Aún así, aún que el final te de ganas de seguir leyendo por saber qué pasará, para mí no vale la pena. No creo que siga leyendo la trilogía. Me da bastante lástima porque esta trilogía lleva en mi TBR bastante tiempo y tenía ganas de leerla. Pero siendo sincera, no creo que sea para mí.
I had a great time reading this! It's deeply unserious in the way that Percy Jackson books are also deeply unserious, you know what I mean? Like, the exasperation from the MC makes you want to take everything as a joke but it isn't actually. I really enjoyed it!
I know there was some controversy on this back when it came out about representation, and its probably safe to say that it didn't nail it head-on - mainly because it isn't very representative at all. But I enjoyed it nonetheless, and I don't think the book does any active harm either.