A Deadly Education

A Novel (The Scholomance #1)

hardcover, 336 pages

Published Sept. 29, 2020 by Del Rey.

ISBN:
9780593128480

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (12 reviews)

A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.

There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.

El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

5 editions

Cool concept that lacks magic.

3 stars

This has been a series on my reading list for awhile and it comes up repeatedly in suggestions for good fantasy novels so it was one I felt I had to read. As someone who has previously enjoyed the Harry Potter series it was also easy to draw some parallels here and a sense of intrigue. A darker, deadlier Hogwarts? Sign me up!

I went into this novel very enthusiastic and wanting to enjoy it, which is why I'm almost surprised I can find myself only giving this opening book of the series three stars; three and a half tops.

That isn't to say this was a bad book, though. There were many elements that I did enjoy, such as:

👍 The Scholomance: I think the world building in terms of the school were some of the best parts of this book. The Scholomance is unique in the sense …

A Deadly Education

5 stars

Aw, this was a lot of fun. I enjoy the author’s other work and I’m glad that I enjoy this one too - and have a series to look forward to! On my library audiobook app it’s titled ‘A Deadly Education: TikTok made me read it’ which is very funny to me, I didn’t know it got big on tiktok. It makes sense though, it’s good YA that has (imo) well-executed themes of privilege & how it can be ignored by those who benefit from it, it’s got an undeniably dark academia-compatible setting, and it’s got… like…. a ratfic (as in fiction coming out of the rationalist community, like uhhh HPMOR) vibe, if ratfic identified itself more often as a viewpoint particularly attractive to teenagers as a kind of bad way of dealing with a specific set of probably temporary dissatisfactions than the ratfic I’ve read has. (That is pretty …

Slow burn

4 stars

This book was such a slow burn for me. Coming highly praised, I came in here expecting a traditional school of wizardry tale. But your HP it is not. It's good though, very good.

Told from first person perspective, our narrator is Galadriel, a sophomore at the Scholomance, a deadly place of education indeed. The students learn magic simply by surviving the many horrors the school throws at them. There are no houses or anything the like, but alliances to make sure you survive your senior year. Students have to fight their way out, through masses of monsters.

Galadriel is a loner though. Secretly, she's one of the most powerful magic-users of the school, but she can only use spells of destruction. As the story progresses, Galadriel has to make alliances herself, and figure out if she and the most prolific monster killer of Scholomance, Orion Lake, are dating or …

Review of 'A Deadly Education' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book was such a slow burn for me. Coming highly praised, I came in here expecting a traditional school of wizardry tale. But your HP it is not. It's good though, very good.

Told from first person perspective, our narrator is Galadriel, a sophomore at the Scholomance, a deadly place of education indeed. The students learn magic simply by surviving the many horrors the school throws at them. There are no houses or anything the like, but alliances to make sure you survive your senior year. Students have to fight their way out, through masses of monsters.

Galadriel is a loner though. Secretly, she's one of the most powerful magic-users of the school, but she can only use spells of destruction. As the story progresses, Galadriel has to make alliances herself, and figure out if she and the most prolific monster killer of Scholomance, Orion Lake, are dating or …

Review of 'A Deadly Education' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

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.

Review of 'A Deadly Education' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Anissa Dadia does an excellent job as narrator keeping you interested in a book that starts out featuring an angsty teenage dark mage who is in a terrible place by force. Naomi Novik deserves credit for setting up such a difficult task as an author. But as things progress, and the book wins the reader over, we get to see Novik’s ability to subtly include allegory on a number of real world social ills. That and some very nice language work… plus a very good ending making me get the second volume right away. 4.5 stars rounded up!

Fun all the way through

4 stars

A lot of reviewers complained reasonably that the worldbuilding is pretty unbelievable at times, but I was having too much fun to notice.

I loved the big gimmick underlying the whole book: the protagonist has the talents and affinities to be the most powerful and destructive necromancer of her generation - there’s even prophecies about her! - but she was raised by pacifist hippies and works incredibly hard not to accidentally incinerate or mind-control her classmates, building power not by sacrificing animals but through push-ups and crochet.

It was ok I guess?

3 stars

I've read Uprooted and Spinning Silver and liked those a lot, but this book really clanged for me. I almost gave up on it a few times, but persisted through to the end and found it to be mostly okay. It's a pretty interesting concept for a book (I didn't realize until I was finished that the Scholomance is from folklore) and I could imagine the next book being ok, but I can also imagine that I might not bother reading it.

avatar for tk@lire.boitam.eu
tk

rated it

5 stars
avatar for emmadilemma

rated it

4 stars