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. ( )

A Deadly Education is a young adult fantasy novel written in a strong first-person voice. It starts out a little too dramatic for my taste, given the fact that the main character is never actually serious about murdering her classmate (despite what the first line says). It also starts out with a staggering amount of explanations after that first scene is finished. It seems to me that the dramatic opening was seen as necessary to get the readers through the rest of it, but to me it's just misleading. There certainly is a lot of action to be had and maleficaria to be fought, but Galadriel isn't nearly as unreasonable as she might seem at first blush.

If you give the story a little longer to get rolling, or if you actually don't mind the long explanations at all because they're written in such a powerful voice, you may find, as I did, that the rest of the book really shines. The world is detailed and so well-constructed that, while at first I questioned why the school would ever have been set up the way it is, the more I learned about it, the more heartbreakingly reasonable it seemed. The dynamics between Galadriel and Orion evolve in a way that's quite compelling, and, in fact, the relationship dynamics between all the characters stand out as one of the best pieces of the book. I didn't have anywhere near Galadriel's social intelligence when I was in high school, but I imagine if I had this book would be the best representation of that sort of environment that I've ever read.

I also enjoyed world building details such as the fact that the school is said to be the only one for wizards in the world and it actually has students from all around the world. Galadriel is from Wales, Orion is from the USA, but there are characters from Asia and Africa and South America. A major scene of the book involves a group of highly skilled characters who coordinate with each other in Mandarin and can only communicate with the English-speaking group through members who also speak French. All the students here are multilingual, partially in order to communicate with each other, but also because the magic system contains incantations in every language. The more languages a student speaks, the more spells they can gain access to, and I honestly love that approach.

I also love that the main character isn't a lone hero who solves all the biggest problems by herself. From the beginning, it's shown that groups of wizards can accomplish more, and even the strongest characters are vulnerable when they try to go it alone. This is far more realistic and compelling to me than the "chosen one" trope, and I really enjoyed it.

Of course, I think the ultimate question of whether you'll enjoy this book comes down to how you feel about the voice in which it's written. If you find the main character to be rude and annoying rather than empathizing with her and understanding the mental state she's constructed to deal with social isolation and the literal trauma of near-death experiences, this book isn't for you. Likewise, if you can't handle monster-based violence and the fact that characters will absolutely die, both in this book and presumably in the rest of the trilogy, it's best to give this one a pass. I'll also throw in the fact that this book has a bit of romance in it, since it may be known that I normally avoid that.

Personally, though, I found myself speeding along through the early chapters and then hooked on the story, needing to know what would happen next. The narrator reminded me of one of my own characters from a past project, and I did find her sympathetic. Her narration also gave me a few smiles and laughs, so that's a bonus. I think that many teenagers may relate to her quite easily, as well as adults who can identify with being disliked for reasons beyond their control. If you're interested in this book, I recommend reading the first few pages, with the knowledge that the main character doesn't actually want any of her classmates dead and that she does care about other people underneath the emotional armor she's constructed. If you like what you read, you'll be in for a good time.