TiffyBelle@bookwyrm.social reviewed A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
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 …
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 that it's entirely autonomous and seems to have a mind and will of its own at times. The setting was brilliantly described and left me with a sense of wonder. I was particularly fascinated with how the library and book acquisition worked, and how you actually had to work to keep books "happy" otherwise they might leave.
👍 Deadly mythical creatures: The maleficaria or "mals" that were described in the book were both interesting and terrifying. I feel a whole bestiary could be composed of the various types of mals in the book, each with their own quirks and backstory of creation. I love me some scary monsters, and this book delivered. I hope there's more in the later books and we're able to learn more about them!
👍 Intriguing magic system: The magic system and how magic is used feels like it has a decent amount of depth here. One must be careful of rationing one's mana and can't just free-cast spells willy-nilly. Learning spells also relies on getting the right books or trading for them, meaning that both mana and spells themselves are an important resource with which to trade and barter. The distinction between good "mana" and malevolent "malia" as spellcasting resources was also interesting, both coming with their own drawbacks. I can tell the author put a fair amount of thought into the magic system here.
👍 Politics and status: The book centers around "enclaves" of powerful wizards and how some kids are part of the privileged set of "enclave kids" and others, like our main protagonist El, are not. This fundamental idea is the basis for how relationships and alliances are formed within The Scholomance and I found the politicking surrounding this an interesting plot device. It provides some interesting and logical motivations for people doing some fairly unsavory stuff that make sense in the world that's been created, even if you disagree morally. I enjoy aspects of stories that add some moral greyness.
Now, while there were some things I really enjoyed there's a reason that I was only able to give this book a three star rating and not more. Here's the things I enjoyed less:
👎 Exposition: There were SO many "info dumps" in this book. This is one of my main issues with the book, actually. This novel was lacking the magic and enchantment you FELT when learning about Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, etc. because in the HP franchise you were taken on an adventure around these places through a lot of descriptive demonstration about what was happening around the characters. In The Scholomance, most of the information was imparted in long stream-of-consciousness-like prose from El's thoughts. It wasn't the most interesting way to learn about the world and it felt like a slog to get through in parts, even though the material was interesting. It would have been way more interesting showing us how the world worked through story.
👎 Character work: As a result of our perspective as a reader being fixed inside the head of Galadriel, and there being such an emphasis on the aforementioned info dumps about how the school worked, we actually learned very little about the other characters in the story. We obviously learned about El and a little about Orion Lake, but the cast of other characters felt like a bunch of interchangable names to me for the longest time. It was genuinely hard for me to remember any of the other characters because really the only thing we did know about them was their name and maybe their standing on the social hierarchical ladder and that was all. We were given very little room to learn about characters and their quirks organically through the story, because most of it was just expositions. I'm hoping for better character work in the other books in the series, where we can get a deeper sense of their personalities now that the ground rules have been set in the first book.
👎 The Scholomance: So, I'm aware I listed the school setting itself as a positive. But the way it worked also had negative aspects to it. I think the lack of faculty and staff here was a unique twist on the "magic school" setting, but I think more was lost than gained from the lack of teachers, staff, and structured lessons. The dynamic between pupils and teachers adds a level of depth to these types of stories and could have played very well into this story about different enclave factions, privileged treatment, etc.
👎 Plot holes: Kinda willing to largely give this a pass since it's the first book in a trilogy and I'm making the assumption that things become clearer in the future books, but I left the first story with so many questions about why some are they way they are.
👎 Inaccurate British school writing: As someone that went to High School in the UK, I could tell right away that the author was from the US attempting to write about British school culture. There were just so many tiny references throughout that wouldn't really have made sense in a British school, none more glaringly than when the concept of the school's "valedictorian" was brought up. That's just not a thing in UK schools. I also got the impression she was trying to make El speak like she grew up in the UK in how she phrased certain things too, but ultimately it just made the prose confusing as it was clearly inauthentic to anyone that actually grew up in Britain.
Despite the things I disliked about this I will be reading book two in the series, The Last Graduate. This novel left me with enough interest to want to continue the story and the cliffhanger at the end was incredibly juicy! I'm hoping some of the negative things improve as the series progresses.
This was my first read by Naomi Novik and I'm on the fence as to whether I enjoy her as an author off the back of this. I'm unfamiliar with her previous work, but I did struggle with the writing style here and it was mostly the concept of the story that has me interested in reading on rather than how it was written. We'll see how I feel after book two.
