a deadly education

Does author Naomi Novik need an introduction? Just in case you are new here, she wrote the enormously successful Temeraire series (Napoleonic wars + dragons), as well as reimagined fairy tales Uprooted and Spinning Silver. Novik also writes fantastic fanfic – I especially love her Harry/Draco HP fic and Jaime/Brienne GOT fic. And while I’ve had a mixed reaction to her published novels, as soon as I heard that her latest title A Deadly Education (in the new Scholomance series) was a take on Harry Potter, with a dark Hermione Granger character, I was HOOKED. I preordered the book 8 months early, convinced my sister to buy it as well… and then when it arrived at the start of the pandemic-altered 2020-21 school year, I looked at it longingly and said… I’ll read that later. Later ended up being after the end of the school year, but I finally did it! And I just want to say that A Deadly Education is enormously interesting and fun, and I can’t wait for the sequel.

 

Lesson One of the Scholomance: Learning has never been this deadly. 

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.

 

What is this book? Short version: it’s the story of Galadriel (or El, for short), who has survived to the end of her junior year at a deadly magical school called Scholomance, and desperately wants to make it out alive – but is hampered by her affinity for hugely destructive magics (and her unwillingness to “go bad”), her status as an outcast, and her upbringing as an indie kid, without the protection of a magical enclave to shield her from some of the dangers of life and school. El’s run-in with Orion Lake, school hero, changes everything. El’s strategy for survival will have to change, and fast, if she wants to make it out of Scholomance alive!

 

A Deadly Education is the magic school slaughterhouse of your dreams – or maybe your nightmares?? The setup of the school, its secrets, history, and architecture, are intricately imagined and described, and that will appeal to the love of world-building for most fantasy fans. There are partial map cross-sections as the endpapers, and illustrations of student rooms at the end of the book as well. Novik manages another difficult task simultaneously – she never info-dumps, and the plot and characterization are fast-paced and deep, respectively. As the reader gets to know Scholomance and its politics, and the world which would create such a deadly school, El is navigating its mal-infested hallways and trying to decide whether anyone’s intentions are pure (she thinks not!). The pacing is fabulous, and the tension ratchets up continuously – sometimes in predictable ways, and sometimes in surprising ones. Novik, and El, keep the reader guessing.

 

What I liked: El. She is constantly (constantly!) making up for her lower status, and it makes her resourceful and clever. I fell in love with the push-pull of her inner monologue, watching her work with/against her affinity handicap, and her either rude or calculating reactions to the other students she encountered. I cheered when she accidentally made friends, and wanted nothing so much as another whole book about her to keep the momentum (and enjoyment!) going. 

 

I also loved the world of the Scholomance itself. The school feels utterly original and yet pulled from the best parts of other magical school stories. It is rich in monsters, be they human or magic-created, and there is room for many histories and stories within the school itself, and in a world populated by those who have survived the trauma of such a school. If the novel wasn’t quite so violent, it might slot in nicely as a YA book – it deals easily with the conundrum of removing parents and other adults to inspire independence in young characters by creating a school that doesn’t require them at all.

 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the valid criticism of representation and stereotypes in this book. Before I ever picked it up, I read excerpts about harmful stereotypes within the book: the way El (a person of color) “hisses” language, of Black hairstyles such as dreadlocks depicted as nests for dangerous mals, and more. A Deadly Education is not perfect. I enjoyed it despite its issues, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that I knew of them before reading, and I kept them in mind while reading, and I still enjoyed the reading experience. This is, for me, an exercise in liking (or perhaps loving!) a flawed thing, while still holding myself accountable as a reader. I’m interested to see if any others also had this experience?

 

In all, A Deadly Education is a ridiculously enjoyable roller coaster ride of a book. I already preordered the sequel!

 

Recommended for: fans of resourceful heroes and heroines who are caustic and clever, those who liked Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands and other tales of magical schools, and anyone who likes their coming of age with a punch and a fantastical edge.

uprooted

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a fool for fairy tales.  I will pick up almost anything with a fairy tale-like plot and like it.  I am very much the intended audience for Naomi Novik’s adult fantasy Uprooted.  And if all that it took to fall in love with a book was a mix of elements from past favorites, I'd be praising this one to the skies. It has the feel of a Robin McKinley book (McKinley is one of my all-time favorite authors, FYI).

I didn’t expect to find myself setting this book down over and over again. Little snags pricked my concentration until I took a break to consider them and jot a note for later. Rinse, wash, repeat.  End result: while generally I adore the sort of book Novik wrote (a dangerous fairy tale), there were bits of it that did not work for me at all. To be fair, there were also bits that were quite special. My abiding love for fantasy was enough to pull me through the book, but not enough in the end to inspire devotion.

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

Note: There will be (extensive) spoilers. 

Agnieszka lives in a valley near a dangerous Wood, where the Dragon, a magician-lord, takes a local girl away to live in his tower with him every ten years.  All her life Agnieszka has known that she’ll have to face a “choosing,” but everyone expects the Dragon to take her best friend Kasia.  Agnieszka herself is an unambitious girl, always running ragged in and out of the less dangerous parts of the forest, so no one is more surprised than she when she is taken by the Dragon instead.  Thus begins the adventure, because nothing (and no one) in the tale is exactly what they seem.

This review was a bear to write, and it departs a bit from my usual, somewhat detached style.  Hold tight, folks!  I’ll go over what made the book hard to read, and issues stemming from that first, and then I’ll go into what I liked (I promise there’s quite a bit – there IS a reason I finished it!).

Difficult item #1: Much of the early action and character-building in this book centers on rape. Agnieszka and her community fear that that is what happens to girls in the Dragon's tower. It's what the royal court assumes is happening. It almost happens in chapter three. It's just so omnipresent – I couldn’t help but wonder what purpose it served – was it going to be likened to some sort of magical violence? Traced to some cultural or historical precedent? Would Agnieszka’s fear trigger some sort of important revelation?  Just: why?  I was honestly confused by it, especially when Agnieszka seemingly (suddenly) dropped all fear of rape 1/3 of the way through the book, despite the addition of even more characters who could have conceivably hurt her. Even the thought of death or being unwillingly and painfully taught magic isn't something Agnieszka focuses on (or indeed the story dwells on) as much as rape. Then to add to that, the Dragon sees attempted rape only as an insult to himself (see a$$hole, definition of).

That brings me to item #2: Interactions between the Dragon and Agnieszka.  The Dragon didn’t ever become less of a d!ck.  That made their relationship (if you want to call it that) one of the strangest I’ve ever read about.  There was not even a straightforward we-hate-each-other-but-really-it’s-love thing going on – it seemed more like a I-think-you’re-a-horrid-excuse-for-a-human-being-but-oh-wait-magic-now-you’re-attractive transformation.  Mind: boggled.  Agnieszka's attitude and motivation changed. She became more complex (transformation from an unsuspicious peasant to a somewhat-more-canny-but-still-deeply-sincere witch). The Dragon?  He achieved a soupçon of flexibility.  He learned to respect an equal as an equal, finally. Well: whatever. It didn't make or break the book for me, and I suppose that's the best you can hope for if a supposedly passionate relationship leaves you feeling distinctly cool.

Item #3 is strictly a nit with how the dialogue was written.  Agnieszka would think a long, drawn out and complex thought (or what the textual clues were telling me was a thought?!), and other characters would answer her in dialogue as if she'd spoken aloud. I couldn't find any trace that the Dragon or others were telepathically reading her mind, so it was just: why. It was odd and it pulled me out of the story.

Final item (#4): Gray characters like Prince Marek and the Falcon who were supposed to be relatable in some way were… not. As best I could tell, I was supposed to have sympathy for those two because they either had great talent or were loyal to one person.  I personally couldn't find anything in them to respect/understand or ultimately pardon.  Ultimately, I didn’t think any of the male characters in the book were relatable.  Which: okay, but strange, since I could see that Agnieszka herself thought they were.

Now, on to the things I liked!  Kasia: a true best friend, with complex feelings and motivations of her own. Novik played with tropes of best friends and I really loved that she turned the “saving the damsel in distress” cliché on its head and elevated female friendship throughout the story. Kasia’s strength (if you want to call it that) was being changed in fundamental nature but not letting it change her spirit. Agnieszka’s was in growing and learning to see a new future and a new relationship with that person.  I want Kasia’s story next.

The story’s first real hook for me was when Agnieszka experienced the terror of the Wood for herself. Until then the evil was abstract, though of course monsters had already been spotted and defeated. It took almost a quarter of the book to get there. I don't know that I would be that patient for any other genre, or for a book less highly-regarded.  The action picked up quite a lot 2/3 of the way through. Up to that point I was in a holding pattern of pick it up, put it down. Pick it up again. It is traditional storytelling, there was a vague sense of foreboding, but the hook came late (unless fear of rape as a catalyst worked for you where it didn't for me).

Another plus: the villain of the piece (the Wood).  What can I say?  I liked it.  Novik does believable malevolence, violence, and genuinely terrible consequences for evil incredibly well.  Speaking of the Wood, I really adored the sense of place that Novik developed in Agnieszka’s home valley.  Yes, it was a backwater, and yes, it was dangerous, but all of the people are held to it.  The world-building was on point.

In all, I’d say Uprooted is a book that treads the middle ground between Emily Croy Barker's The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic and Robin McKinley or Patricia McKillip's YA-crossover fantasy. I very much enjoyed that it was a standalone, and I saw flashes of brilliance, but in the end I came away a bit too troubled to call it a favorite.

Recommended for: fans of adult fairy tales and fantasy, those who crave dynamic female characters, and anyone who liked Peter Dickinson's The Ropemaker.