Book Review: ‘A Deadly Education’ by Naomi Novik

A Deadly Education is the first book in Naomi Novik’s fantasy and dark academia trilogy: Scholomance. The novel is filled with magic, monsters, and unconventional heroes.

The story follows Galadriel ‘El’ Higgins, a third year student who wants nothing more than to be left alone and live long enough to graduate the following year. Naturally fate has other plans. There are deadly monsters inhabiting every room which she must deal with on top of her studies. Then the whole school starts thinking she is dating the ultra-popular and over-the-top heroic Orion Lake who she actually can’t stand. And then there’s the small matter of El secretly possessing enough magical power to wipe out every living thing in the school – monster and student alike – which she’d really prefer not to do.

As a character El is stubborn, prickly, and very anti-social. She shouldn’t work as a protagonist but oddly her unlikability is the very thing that makes her a likeable character who you are constantly rooting for. In essence the story focuses on a main character who really wishes she wasn’t the main character. By pairing the super-introverted El with the dashing extrovert Orion, El has no choice but to step forward and be noticed by her classmates.

Over the course of A Deadly Education we see El grow and develop (however reluctantly) from a loner to a leader. Although I wouldn’t call it a typical coming of age story, the progression that all of the core characters go through during the course of the novel was my favourite part of the book.

The few stories I’ve read with a magical school setting typically start at the beginning of the protagonist’s journey from novice to expert. I felt Novik’s decision to start her trilogy in El’s third of four years at the Scholomance had both its positives and negatives.

First, the positives. I really liked that the story started in a place where all of the characters were highly skilled and dangerous magic users. Death is an expected part of the Scholomance. We learn that any student who has survived into their third year has considerable talent and magical power. By inhabiting the book with characters who are literally capable of anything, Novik builds tension in the story as we and El are never sure who to trust.

But starting at a later point in El’s life did have a disadvantage and it was the thing I struggled most with while reading the novel. Rather than being gradually introduced to this world we are thrown straight into the action. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it did mean there was an awful lot to learn at once. A Deadly Education features a lot of exposition that felt both overwhelming and not enough at the same time. Novik manages to convey a lot of information about her magical world, its rules, the Scholomance, the vast array of monsters, and its human inhabitants in what is quite a short novel. There is a lot to remember and there were times that I struggled to keep all the facts straight while I was reading.

A Deadly Education has not been without its controversies with accusations of racism against the book. The author herself has apologised for including a monster that lives solely in dreadlocks (with the implication that some hairstyles are dirtier than others) when this could have easily been avoided by changing the monster to seek out all types of long hair to nest in (to explain why so many students keep their hair short).

During the first few chapters it did seem to read that El’s unpopularity was due to her mixed-race heritage (half-Welsh, half-Indian) but as I read further I realised that the divide between the students came from class and wealth rather than skin colour. The students from wealthy backgrounds can afford the best resources and attract the best allies. El, who lives in a yurt with her hippy mum in Wales, has always been on the outskirts of society and never learned how to fit in. As a result she has developed a strong dislike for her more privileged classmates and vice versa.

How readers choose to interpret the events of the novel is entirely their own opinion and everyone’s opinion is equally valid.

A Deadly Education is one of those confusing novels where I could never fully decide if I liked it or not. I definitely struggled at the start of the book with the volume of exposition and world building I had to remember. I enjoyed the second half of the novel more as it focuses on the characters and the ever evolving dynamic between the students as they are forced to learn, despite their individual brilliance, how to work together or else die before they reach graduation.

---

Related Posts:

If you enjoyed this review you may also like these reviews: