Book Review: A Deadly Education
Naomi Novik’s latest book A Deadly Education was released at the end of September. It’s the first in a series set in an incredibly sinister magical school called the Scholomance. We follow our protagonist El who is in her third year there. This school brings students in as first years and they are stuck there, with no teachers or administrators, forced to watch their backs and fight for their lives for four years in order to hopefully then fight their way out on graduation day. Many students don’t live to see graduation day and even fewer are able to successfully fight their way out of the graduation hall that is completely packed with monsters. The plot follows El as she navigates the sociopolitical structure of the school in order to ensure an alliance for herself to give her a leg up and a better chance at staying alive going into her senior year/graduation. This is a particularly difficult task as she is disliked by pretty much everyone who has ever met her (barring her mother) and not particularly inclined to be nice to people when she doesn’t want to be. Everything about her time at the school is thrown through a loop when the heroic and beloved Orion Lake decides to be her friend whether she wants him to or not.
We learn that some students have an advantage coming in. Their families are part of enclaves based in cities where groups of magical people are able to band together to protect themselves and store up their power (mana as it’s referred to in the book) for when it is most needed. Students that are part of those groups come into the school with people around them to help keep them safe and store of power ready for them to use. Others, like El, must work to build up their stores and be constantly watching out because no one is going to fight any creatures on her behalf. Through this system Novik provides interesting commentary on privilege. A lot of the kids coming in with those advantages don’t realize how hard it is for the individuals to simply stay alive each day or the time and effort it takes to create their own stores of power. Kids who are not part of an enclave coming into the school will do anything to earn a place in one before graduation.
The students at this school have to be constantly on guard for attacks from the monsters found in its depths. They’re found in every nook and cranny waiting and ready to attack anyone that comes by. Students can't even shower in peace. The Scholomance is very weird and so stressful. My main feeling while reading this book was anxiety. Admittedly, not terribly different than how I’m feeling when I’m not reading it; but I would hate every second there. We’re told that life for magical children inside the school is much safer and better for protecting them from monsters than life outside it. That essentially there are an infinite number of monsters constantly drawn toward magical children on the outside and in the school there are fewer of them plus they are learning how to fight them. But it left me with a lot of questions: Why does everything have to be so hard and terrible? is it to make sure they’re prepared for life outside of the school? Why are these monsters everywhere? Where did they come from? How is it that no large groups of people ever banded together on the outside to defeat them?
This book reminds me very much of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There’s the obvious comparison of teenagers constantly tasked with researching and battling a seemingly never ending barrage of mythical beasts, but also a moving portrayal on the toll that type of pressure can take on someone. We see in the later seasons of Buffy how exhausted she is at always being the hero. Novik did very well to portray how incredibly draining it is to constantly be watching out for/ fighting monsters and how the pressure to always be a strong fighter can be crushing.
At first I found El to be grating. She has a frustrating unwillingness to simply be polite and I feel that even small levels of social grace could’ve gone a long way toward helping her achieve her goals. There are a lot of moments where she would make her life much easier if she weren’t so rude to everyone she encounters, but the more you learn about her past and her family the more it begins to make sense and by the end I was definitely rooting for her despite her prickly personality.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I rated it 3.75/5 stars and I plan to read future installments. This book is more in my wheelhouse than Naomi Novik’s other books, but I felt like the quality of writing was slightly lower than expected and there were a few moments here and there that I didn’t love. I think she definitely aspired to include more diversity in this book compared to her previous ones, but she may benefit from some sensitivity readers next time around. Some of the depictions of different languages and ethnicities felt a little off to me. I also hope to see the world expanded upon more in the sequels and more background information provided about how their world got to where it currently is. I really want to know more about the enclaves and the magical community outside the school. Those issues aside, it’s definitely a fun and slightly spooky October read and I’m glad I made time for it this month.
