A Deadly Education

This story follows Galadriel, a student in a school for magically gifted individuals where danger is common place. With no adults in the school, students must be responsible for their own learning while avoiding the mals- creatures drawn to magic that cause only harm and destruction. Students are forced to walk a fine line between finding allies to support them while also competing in the cuthroat environment. Unfortunately, Galadriel more often than not finds herself a loner due to a mix of how others perceive her and her less than desirable social skills. When a fellow junior throws off the balance with his actions, Galadriel and the entire school find themselves at even greater risk than anticipated. Even worse, Galadriel worries that her classmates actions might ultimately destroy her chances for success both in school and beyond.

This story takes the premise of Lord of the Flies but creates a very unique and interesting social structure. The characters are perfectly flawed and relatable, and the plot has good pacing. I am excited to see where this series goes next.

I'm so glad I finally got around to reading this. I love magical school settings, and this did not disappoint. I got some Wednesday vibes from El and that made it even better.
Dark academia, a magical school where monsters jump out at you when you least expect it, characters you love and some you love to hate. If those things sound good to you, read this book! Also, that ending! I need to know why!

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an e-arc.

Dropped at 57%
Could not take this writing style anymore.
What is the purpose of that deadly school though?

This book is a lot of rambling and not enough actual conversations had between the characters, i tried really hard to keep pushing through but i marked it as DNF 52 pages in.

I'm going to give my review of the whole series, because I feel like you should know what you're getting into. The first book is fantastic (if you ignore the infodumping). The second book is still good, but the plot holes start to show. The third book shouldn't exist. It adds nothing and doesn't fit with the other two books. I couldn't even bring myself to finish it.

This was a DNF. Exposition in the middle of multiple action sequences is not a writing style for me. I prefer organic world building to info dumps.

Yeah, you really get about 25% of the way through the book before you stop hating the main character. Even then it's much darker than I anticipated. Not for children.

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

Best described as a dark version of Harry Potter where students go to a school actively trying to kill you. Loved this story, which already has details sticking with me more than Harry Potter. The magic system and lore is far more diverse. 

Another spin on the magical school, except the inhabitants of this one are actively trying to kill the students. Great opening volume to a series that I'll definitely read more of, and that I'll be recommending to like-minded readers of YA fantasy.

The first half felt kind of slow for me, took me a while to really get into it. Second half was fun and the ending made me want to keep going in the series.

I thought the world building was incredibly creative at times but the overall style of writing from El's POV could get a bit rambling. Overall it was nice though and the relationship with the love interest was funny and cute at times.
I also thought it had some interesting things to say about privilege through the lens' of these characters in this world. Without spoiling too much the very end of the book certainly has me eagerly putting an immediate library hold on the sequel.

THis. I need more of this type of magic society that's soaked through with dark elements and horror aspects. Also give me more female antihero leads that are antisocial and hate everything because I can understand them better and prefer them to a mary sue.
The snarky relationsship between MC and ML breathed some fresh life into me after the last few stale romance stories i read.
Also let me tell you again how much I adore the magic system with a school that feels more like a living, breathing entity like an spc that a place of learning.

2.5 stars for the book, 4 stars for the series. Very rough start. Missing a lot of context needed early in the book. Difficult to get into but once you are in it gets interesting.

Abandoned after first chapter but I will concede that I am probably the wrong audience for this book; it would more likely appeal to mid-teens. I usually love YA fiction, but I just could not get past the arrogant whine of the main character. I flipped through to spot read to see if her entitled attitude would dial back and then realized I wasn't invested enough in the hints of the story to come presented in chapter one, so back to the library for something different.

Good one but it would be nice if the main character had been more than “I'm so angry” and “I'm definitely not dating this boy”... She had like one proper dialog with her love interest and the build up wasn't satisfying.

World building was great, magic was great, please more character depth and development

A Deadly Education
Naomi Novik

CAWPILE SCORE
C-8
A-8
W-9
P-8
I-7
L-7
E-9
TOTAL-8/10

CAWPILECharactersGaladrial is a great character has the power to kill easily. But doesn't want to. Goes Pure Mana, everybody is always super shocked. Grows and changes, Orion Lake—What is his deal. Likes to kill mal's. somehow gains power from it, that's something he should be sharing. Ends up dating El without telling her.Todd being added felt out of place, maybe he does more next book.Aayadh-Artiface focused.Liu- gets a cleansing burst by accident. Stops going malficerAtmosphereI felt the way that El felt being both afraid of people and afraid not to involve herself with other people. The feeling the school gives off that you're going to die, but maybe you can survive and if you do, you'll be stronger because of it.WritingGreat writing. Beautiful map of school in the cover.PlotI felt like I heard there was going to be a reveal that never happened. So I guess I just misunderstood what was going on.The students have to graduate and school is tough because everything is trying to kill you. Have to repair the cleansing machinery in the graduation hall or the seniors will empty out the hall and let them kill everyone else.InvestmentSuper invested in this book. I really wanted to know if El was going to go darkside or not. Wondering how they were going to survive the story. LogicEverybody acted according to the way they presented. I liked the way we learn everything, but man forcing everybody to learn a new language just because you've seen it a couple times is extreme and a little brutalEnjoymentLoved this book. It was a blast to read it. I love magical school books.MiscEl Kills a Maw mouth by casting the most dangerous Kill spell over and over again. I'm guessing she kills the main one in graduation hall next book.The Prophecy she'll bring destruction. Hopefully something more evil comes around she can fight.Her moms a mage famous hippie for her mana crystals
I will be talking about it on Libromancy https://libromancy.podbean.com/ on 09/18/22

4.5

Ok, so the Scholomance :)
Something just does it for me, with this book. Even on second read, when I know about this world and I don't need all the exposition, I enjoyed every second of it. Following El around is a brilliant way to experience this story, and to explore this world. As grumpy and angsty as she can be, I adore her sass, and her humanity as she struggles to find her place in the world, and come into interaction with others. And for me, the worldbuilding really works. Since I like my fantasy worlds to be internally rich and consistant, I don't mind the exposition dumps, I actually crave them, especially from El's scathing point of view.
Naomi Novik as an author was definitely on my list of top discoveries for 2022, and she remains up there in 2023 as well. Delightful read, as usual!

there are some scenes from books that i think about often. the scene where El kills the mawmouth is one of these scenes. i love this book, El is one of my favorite genres of main characters ever. same vibes as Nora Stephens from Book Lovers. Will probably reread this book again before the year is over.

A school that tries to kill you, with a hot dude around every corner protecting you from the school that is trying to kill you.

This book surprised me. At first I wasn't too keen on the voice, but as we moved into chapter 6 things started to pick up.
I still feel as if this story lacked something in the ingredients. It repeated itself a bit, with monsters trying to kill the Main Character Galadriel (El) and while the stakes increased, I like a story with more layers.
However, the ending was good. The Characters journey did make me want to continue.

To put it simply, I enjoyed it enough to pick up book #2 immediately after finishing.

I really liked the story althought the world building was all a bit vague to me. I don't really like the giant whole chapter lessons that the book gives about the world. It take you totally out of the story, as does the adressing of the audience which is weirdly done about three times totally out of nowhere. 

I like the story of El getting friends and learning of a new way to live but all that shit about Orion wasn't great to me. Especially given the ending, where her mother says to not trust him. I have the vague feeling that the second book is just going to be pining and confused romatic squabbles which I really do not care for. 

Well, this was a fairly mixed bag of a read... A school for kids learning to control their magic, surrounded by hostile creatures and even the school making life as hard as possible for its pupils. Pupils who are left entirely on their own - no teachers, hardly any protection and a deadly competition for resources, power and the arcane...It sounds all so well and, indeed, I was drawn into the book fairly quickly: We're accompanying Galadriel (El) during her penultimate school year which she passes by scolding the local hero Orion Lake (yes... the rest is silence...) for almost desperately trying to get on her good side. Sadly, El's “good side” is something she strongly tries to hide by playing bad ass...»Meanwhile I was well on the way to successfully making myself violently, instead of just modestly, hateful to every enclave kid in the place, probably before the end of term at my current pace.«... and almost to this reader as well. Her treatment of Orion, her social awkwardness, it all felt so very, very young adult (and I'm not sure about the “adult” part in that) that I frequently got annoyed and rolled my eyes at so much fumbling.There's also not much of a plot - gather information, get attacked, make friends, fix a major problem, get the guy - that's pretty much all there is to be found story-wise.The characters are also rather bland and shallow - the in-kids are pretty much only annoying with few redeeming qualities, Orion Lake is the archetypal white knight who comes to everyone's rescue (but with special fervour if a damsel in distress is involved!) and even El and her two friends are about as shallow as a puddle.The writing is adequate for that and, thus, serves its purpose.And despite all that, I still enjoyed “A Deadly Education” - the setting of a magical school somewhere out of the normal realms, an isolated population scheming, some really interesting ideas about monsters and the dark side of magic as well as the showdown at the end; it all appealed to me and made me read on.I might even pick up the next book in the series as well.(Barely) four stars out of five.P.S.: No, El is not Murderbot. They play in entirely different leagues. Blog Facebook Twitter Instagram

For more of my reviews, check out my blog.

Hmm. A lot of people really enjoyed this book, but I'm not entirely certain I did. I slogged through to the end bc I wanted to know if it got better – and it did. A little.

I thoroughly hate books with unlikeable main characters. I hate them. I hate reading about them knowing their jerks the entire time. I'd much rather read about good people – or at least bad people with some good characteristics. When a character has absolutely NOTHING redeeming? Yeah, I've lost interest. It took a looooong time in this book for me to care about Galadriel. I'm talking like....over 75% of the way into the book.

And the whole Scholomance itself? It was a bit much. It felt like every single thing wanted to kill them, and that felt almost ridiculous. AND I MEAN EVERYTHING. The kids weren't even safe in their ROOMS. They had to check their food for poisons, had to check their seats for hiding monsters, etc. What parent would willingly shove their kid into a school filled with monsters that want to eat them?

IDK. Not sure I'll read the next.