A Deadly Education

The Scholomance is a high school for mages, and our protagonist Galadriel “El” is a junior there. It quickly becomes clear that the Scholomance is not really a “school” in the traditional sense; it's more like a prison crossed with a military academy, a brutal crucible where only the strong or connected survive. It's unfair, deadly, cruel, just the worst, really. Still, it's better than the alternative: the world is full of evil things who find magically gifted kids an easy meal, and Scholomance was created to give them a fighting chance at survival.

If you've seen this book recommended before it's probably been followed by “It's like Harry Potter, but __”. That's an overused comparison, but in this case I think it's warranted. It's like Novik read Harry Potter and decided to do the exact opposite wherever she could.

It's not a bad idea, but it was taken too far in the other direction, and resulted in the proverbial baby being tossed out with the bathwater. All the genuinely good parts of Harry Potter, such as the whimsical nature of magic, the comfy social situations, the fairy tale feel of it all, are all swapped for much more unpleasant versions.

The wizarding world of the Scholomance really sucks. That could have been an interesting wrinkle in a different context, but this is a YA book, so our protagonist is legally obligated to respond to even horrific events with a resigned sigh and snide comment. It's a very scary and stressful setting, but one that is being filtered through the lens of a cynical YA high schooler. It's not a great juxtaposition.

Despite this, I actually liked El as a character; she was dealt a rough hand, vaguely similar to Frozen's Elsa (almost surely the author's inspiration), and she contrasts well with the rest of the characters. Her cynicism is warranted. I just very much wish I wasn't in her head the whole book. It's written in that pseudo-diary format every YA book loves, and close to 80% of the book is El's internal monologue reacting to both past and present with the same detached “yep, just another day in Magekiller High School” tone.

The worldbuilding is especially clumsy: she'll namedrop a common thing in her world, gives you maybe a few paragraphs to piece together what it is from context, only to then painstakingly explain the entire thing and its history and its related wikipedia entries in the middle of dialogue or an action scene.

There were many parts I liked. It had a lot of interesting things to say about privilege and education using magic as a metaphor. Its magic system was novel, an intriguing combination of language and intention and belief. But I won't be continuing the series, and it's hard to recommend this to anyone, even those with interests in magic school settings