BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
(Print: 9/29/2020; 978-0316272476; Hachette Books; 336 pages )
(Digital: Yes.)
Audio: 9/29/2020; 9780593287422; Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group; Duration 11:06:06 (11 parts); Unabridged.
(Film: No).

SERIES:
Scholomancer Book 1

CHARACTERS: (not comprehensive)
Galadriel (El) Higgins – Student at a school of magic
Orion Lake – Particularly popular fellow student
Aadhya – Fellow student
Jack Westing – Fellow student
Liu – Fellow student
Chloe– Fellow student

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
This was another book I selected from a Goodreads annual list of top reads. I’m not generally a fan of fantasy, but wanted to try genres that I normally wouldn’t, to be sure I wasn’t missing something. I liked the underlying story of someone who has lead a difficult childhood and feels like a misfit and still has the fortitude to stand on her own without trying to garner favor by any means possible. But, overall, while I’ve no doubt that this book is great for it’s audience, for me—an obnoxious protagonist, too many monsters and too many battles spells: not-so-much.

AUTHOR:
Naomi Novik (4/30/1973). According to Wikipedia, Naomi is “an American author of speculative fiction. Novik won both the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 2016 for her novel Uprooted.[1][2] Her novel Spinning Silver won the American Library Association's Alex Award in 2019,[3] the 2019 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel,[4] and the 2019 Audie Award for Fantasy.[5] Spinning Silver was a 2019 Hugo Award for Best Novel Nominee, a 2018 finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and a 2019 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fantasy.[6] Other novels by Novik were nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2007, 2016, and 2019.[7]

Of her best-selling Temeraire fantasy series, the first book, His Majesty's Dragon, won the 2007 Compton Crook Award for best first novel in the science fiction and fantasy category.[8]”
NARRATOR(S): Anisha Dadia. According to IMDb, “Anisha Dadia is known for her work on Linda LeThorn & the Musicbox (2012), Team Toon (2013) and Dead of Night (2013).”

GENRE:
Magic School Fantasy; Epic Fantasy, Dark Fantasy

LOCATIONS:
Magic School

TIME FRAME:
Current

SUBJECTS:
Magic spells for killing monsters, Magic spells for chores, Magic books, School life

NARRATIVE STYLE:
First person

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 1: Soul-Eater
“I decided that Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life. I hadn’t really cared much about him before then one way or another, but I had limits. It would’ve been all right if he’d saved my life some really extraordinary number of times, ten or thirteen or so—thirteen is a number of distinction. Orion Lake, my personal bodyguard; I could have lived with that. But we’d been in the Scholomance almost three years by then, and he hadn’t shown any previous inclination to single me out for special treatment.
Selfish of me, you’ll say, to be contemplating with murderous intent the hero responsible for the continued survival of a quarter of our class. Well, too bad for the losers who couldn’t stay afloat without his help. We’re not meant to all survive anyway. The school has to be fed somehow.
Ah, but what about me, you ask, since I needed him to save me? Twice, even? And that’s exactly why he had to go. He set off the explosion in the alchemy lab last year, fighting that chimaera. I had to dig myself out of the rubble while he ran around in circles whacking at its fire-breathing tail. And that soul-eater hadn’t been in my room for five seconds before he came through the door: he must have been right on its heels, probably chasing it down the hall. The thing had only swerved in here looking to escape.”

RATING:
3 stars.

STARTED-FINISHED
4/20/21-5/3/21 ( )

I feel like Naomi Novik saw all those memes about Hogwarts being an absurdly dangerous place for the students and thought: “Well, what if it’s even more dangerous school but at the same time the safest place they can be?”

Now let me be clear. This is not me comparing it to Harry Potter because honestly, besides both having magic school, there aren’t really similarities.

Why people attend this murderous school is best to be discovered bit by bit, so I am not going to talk much about the story. While important, I think this book is more about the characters. Especially our main character Galadriel grows a lot through this book. In the first chapter, I didn’t like her much. I was thinking, how am I going to enjoy this book when she is such a bitch? Constantly being rude. BUT, I think her behaviour is explained quite well and you slowly discover that there is more to her than it seems at first sight. She definitely became one of my favourite protagonists, especially after that one library scene...

And then this outsider girl gets entangled with the popular guy and the resulting relationship again became one of my favourite ones. We get such different personalities and the ways they deal with life in this murderous school, that the exchanges are sometimes super hilarious.

Then we get the magic. I especially loved that each person has a certain affinity for class/type of magic. It really makes for very different approaches to fighting/surviving. Also, the spells are in different languages, so depending on where the student is from, they can also have some very different kind of spells. It’s all quite complex and quite a fresh take on what could at first glance look like your usual incantation magic.

The magic school itself is certainly a thing to talk about. It is in a way this AI that tries to prepare students by making it for them as hard as possible. You accidentally read some foreign word in the library? I am so glad that you chose to study a new language! I will now give you class work and spells in it. You better learn it fast, or you will be stuck not learning anything new.

And what is the danger? Monsters. Creepy hard to imagine monsters that develop the best strategies to get some people eaten. Again, just thinking about that library scene... that was nightmare fuel. Like I am not sure I would even want to see an adaptation if it ever came out.

Now for some negatives in this review. I can only think of one.
We learn and are repeatedly told there is like 4000 students in this school but then our characters keep having problems with going some places alone and looking for others to accompany them. Wouldn’t many groups aim for the same place at one time? Why is the school so empty, I know it’s big but still... Yeah, I didn’t really feel like there were so many students. Even the classes seemed quite small from descriptions. Sometimes it felt like the actual number of students there was bit of an afterthought.

If you want a book with murderous school and scary monsters but at the same time enjoy MCs snarky commentary and hilarious situations, this is one for you. ( )

Soooo…this book 🤔 well, it started with so much info for the world building that I thought my head was going to explode 🤯 If you like world building at a slow pace (like me) this is not for you. Also, the main character, El, is quite annoying at the beginning. She’s got this angry girl attitude and she’s so sarcastic and smart alecky at the first (it was waaayyy overdone in my opinion) I was ready to DNF the book. It’s a real talent to create a narrator that makes the reader feel like they are annoying them 😂

BUT at about the halfway point the book took a turn and began to show some promise. I felt like it stopped trying so hard to be “cool” and stopped trying to be a darker Harry Potter book. It started to show more depth to the characters, some relatable emotions, a little more maturity.

Overall, this screams YA and maybe that’s why it didn’t vibe with me so much, but I enjoyed the ending ENOUGH to probably read the next one (I also hate not finishing series that I start 🙄). ( )

I was somewhat dubious going into this one. I read five of Novik's Temeraire books, and while I enjoyed them a lot initially, by the fifth one they were wearing on me for a variety of reasons. So, I was quite pleased with this book. The concept is refreshingly original. The plot is great. The characters are vivid and, in most cases, quite enjoyable.

I have to say, I found immense pleasure in Galadriel ... her constant need to keep from, oopsie, accidentally laying waste to everything in sight. Even though the stories are nothing alike, she reminded me of Lucy in T.J. Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea, another character that I loved.

Definitely worth a read if you enjoy fantasy. ( )

An enjoyable twist on the 'magical kids go to magic school' idea. It did seem a bit odd to me that we never really see or interact with any kind of teacher - i mean, they talk about going to classes and stuff, but.... is there ANY adult supervision at all? You'd think we'd see something about that?? - but overall I really liked the idea. ( )