It's a fairy tale for adults in the same vein as Harry Potter and the Netflix series "Wednesday."

It's funny that at the end of the book Naomi Novik thanks a friend of hers for telling her that her audience for this book was people in their 30s... and she didn't believe her. Naomi, I am 38 and I was thoroughly engrossed- as I was with your other books Spinning Silver and Uprooted. You're the master of world building and storytelling in the fantasy genre. ( )

in realtà ⭐2 e mezzo
della Novik mi ricordavo uno stile migliore ( )

This got better as it went along, but generally it just didn't manage to hold my interest very well at all; the characters were mostly one-note, the backstory wasn't explained clearly, and it mostly seemed to be the same thing over and over. ( )

I’ve heard this book compared to Harry Potter, mostly because it’s a magic school, so I’ll make a HP comparison: A Deadly Education is hundreds of Slytherins and one Gryffindor stuck in an underground bunker where they have to survive monster attacks every single day while learning magic. Once a student enters the Scholomance, they cannot leave until graduation and all they have is what they brought with them. This means that everything has a price, and everything can be recycled into something else. There is no such thing as kindness in the Scholomance, everything is about survival, alliances, and getting ahead.

The magic system is interesting and thorough. Mana is built by human effort and can be stored to be used later. Malia is dark magic and takes no effort, but it steals life from things (and people) around it. This system sets up a class divide between those students who are part of an enclave and enter the Scholomance as a group. Their enclave ensures they have what they need going into the bunker and they have a shared magic store that any of them can draw on. They also have a safety in numbers that doesn’t cost them anything in return and an ensured future ahead of them once they graduate.

Galadriel, or El, doesn’t have any connection to an enclave and must barter and scheme her way through school. She’s incredibly powerful, but her affinity is for dark magic and while others cheat with dark magic, she can’t because she would end up killing people around her. El is a hard-edged angry individual and while I can’t say that I liked her, I was interested enough to follow her. The side characters and how El grows to care for them is my favorite part of the story. In between all the fighting monsters and scheming there are some emotions other than anger and those are the moments that made this book.

My main complaint about the book is how much telling is going on. This is a complex magic system and a very detailed world, so it’s understandable. But so much of the book was El just explaining things to the reader and it did get bogged down. The characters were also very much “types” and sometimes character actions, especially El’s, got to be annoying. We know you’re angry! Can you maybe make logical choices anyway! That being said, the moments when El becomes more nuanced were worth waiting for, they just were few and far in-between until the last third of the book. The last third of the book is what turned it from a 3-star to a 3.5-star that I felt like rounding up. Both of the issues mentioned I hope will smooth out in the second book since the world and characters are established.

Despite my issues, this was a fun, monster-filled read. A Deadly Education is exactly the book my teenage self would have loved, and there is some nostalgia to reading such an angry protagonist and monster violence in a book. Although it doesn’t quite line up with my tastes anymore, I read it quickly and couldn’t wait to find out what happened. I’ll definitely be reading the second book when it comes out.

*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an electronic ARC in exchange for an honest review. ( )

1st read: October 2020
2nd read: October 2021

A Deadly Education is one of my all-time favorite books. I love it even more after reading it for the second time. I hope The Last Graduate is just as good.
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A Deadly Education is an instant favorite for me.

The characters are great, especially El. El is both tough and sensitive. Her thoughts are by turns, funny, pragmatic, and heart wrenching. She's been through a lot and she is still an amazing person who I want good things for.

The writing is great, not flowery or overly descriptive. The world is interesting and in-depth, even with the story being exclusively in a school. I enjoyed it start to finish and I can't wait to read the next book in the series. ( )