Lucas Blogs About A Deadly Education

Don't graphic designers know that bloggers will be taking crummy, screen-glare-ridden pictures of these books?

So, what's this book's deal?

A Deadly Education is the first entry in a new fantasy series called The Scholomance by Naomi Novik.

Oh, she wrote that Spinning Silver novel you blogged about a couple of years ago.

That she did. You'll recall that I liked it.

I do recall that. So is this another one of those fractured fairy tale type stories?

No. This is more of a take-off on the magic school genre.

You mean like a parody or pastiche?

Hmm, maybe that's not quite accurate. The setting or characters are necessarily meant to invoke any pre-existing fantasy stories or series, but I also think that Novik is taking aim at some of the tropes of the magic school genre. But let's talk about the novel itself. We're introduced to our protagonist, Galadriel — yes, named for that Galadriel — or El, complaining about Orion Lake, the most popular boy in the Scholomance. Not just because he's the son of powerful and influential magic users from the New York enclave, or because he's conventionally attractive, but because he's really, really good at killing monsters and in the Scholomance, that's a pretty indispensable skill.

Leaving aside the fact that you casually used the Bakshi Lord of the Rings to reference the main character's namesake, what's so important about killing monsters?

Well, the monsters, or maleficaria in the book's parlance, just fuckin' love eating young wizards. Nobody knows quite why, but teenage wizards are apparently more attractive prey than adult wizards. So, the Scholomance is built in a pocket dimension and has all sorts of traps meant to keep the mals at bay long enough for the kids to learn enough magic to defend themselves. Unfortunately a lot of the machinery that keeps the mals at bay has either failed or is gummed up with dead mals or has fallen into such a state of disrepair that the students can't fix it.

What about the teachers?

Oh, there aren't any, the kids are on their own. It's sort of like if the island from The Lord of the Flies had a self-directed magic studies program. Anyway, we're getting bogged down in the setting. Orion is great at killing monsters and saving other students from them. Which is kind of a sore point for El because the times in which he's saved her life prevented her from demonstrating her own capabilities. Something she'll definitely want to do if she wants to form an alliance for graduation.

Why would she need an alliance to graduate?

Because graduation is a mad dash out through the sea of mals that's taken nest in the cavern connecting the Scholomance's void to the outside world. Anyway, I think you get the picture: the Scholomance is a monster-filled death trap that offers magic students slightly more protection than the outside world and hopefully teaches them the skills they'll need to survive. As an educational system it seems a bit of a mess, but as a setting for a fantasy adventure it works pretty well.

Is that all you're gonna say about the plot?

We'll get into that in a minute. So, an obvious point of reference for this book is something like Harry Potter, with the twist that the main character hates the heroic character's guts. Not because they think it's wrong to be a goody-goody, per se, but because they think he's a showboating glory hog. You also find out in the course of the book that El is also the subject of a prophecy, but it's a bad one. As a child her great-grandmother foresaw her becoming a figure as beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night just like Galadriel in Bakshi's Lord of— 

Again, people are not familiar with that version of Lord of the Rings.

I mean, the dialogue isn't that different from the one people do know, the point is that she's got an aptitude for destruction. Which is kind of a problem because the Scholomance doesn't just try to teach you magic that you need but magic that you're good at. So if El needs a spell to, say, clean up the oozing remains of mal that Orion Lake just killed, the school might instead give her a spell to engulf a city block in mortal flame. 

I take it that she does not want to do that?

Decidedly not. But let's move on to Galadriel herself. Because she's the narrator your enjoyment of the book may depend in large part on how much you enjoy spending time with her.

Ah, a callback to our conversation on unlikable characters.

Can't sneak anything past you, can I, Hypothetical Reader. It's maybe a bit unfair to call El unlikable, in spite of how widely disliked she is in both in and out of school. She is prickly and more than a little sarcastic and judgmental, but that's pretty standard for teenage protagonists. And an important part of her journey as a character is how she learns to be vulnerable and accept other people's help. It also helps that one of the things that makes her prickly and anti-social is the inherent unfairness of the hierarchies of magical society. You know, that there are magical elites who hoard resources and dangle a few jobs in front of outsiders to get them to compete for the distribution of said resources. This extends to the Scholomance itself where enclave kids can easily find strivers to take on their repair shifts and help with their homework in exchange for a shot at entering the enclave themselves.

And she's probably also worried about that whole "prophesied to be evil" and "really good at destructive magic" thing.

Yeah, that plays a pretty big role as well, particularly as she does put off what you might describe as a "bummer vibe" which another character describes as being like it's about to rain. Or something like that.

A very precise example.

Look, I didn't mark the quote, but you get the idea. In any case, El is an engaging narrator and the reader can often see the ways in which she makes life harder for herself by closing herself off from other characters, so it's satisfying to see her change in perspective over the course of the book. It's also nice that although she does befriend Lake, she doesn't go all moon-eyed for him. And the stakes are high enough to get you invested in her story without becoming so over-the-top that the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

I don't know, school full of child-eating monsters does seem a little over-the-top.

Your mileage may vary. In any case, Novik has created a great, flawed protagonist, put in her an interesting and unique setting, and gave her an engaging voice and story.

Sounds like you're about to cram a "but" in there.

Um, yes, but maybe we could find a less weird way to say that.

I smell a "but."

Not better. But the one big complaint that I have about the book is that the action frequently has to pause so that El can exposit at the reader.

Speaking of weird phrasing.

Well, it's just that there's no audience surrogate character. El is already in her Junior year at the Scholomance, so she knows the ropes. And her peer group is all juniors, so it would be weird if any of them needed the world explained to them. But the audience still needs it explained, so there are definitely times when the story has to stop because El has to explain something.

I gotcha.

And that might be why it took me about a month to read this relatively short book. Then again it might also be down to quarantine fatigue and the fact that lately I mostly just read on my breaks at work.

Who knows?

Damned if I do! Oh! One last thing that stood out about the book was the fact that the cast of the book is actually as diverse as you would expect in a story about a magic school that takes students from around the world. Although Novik doesn't dive deep into everyone's heritage, Galadriel's parents are Welsh and Indian (even if her name is Sindarin), and the named characters come from all over the world, something made immediately apparent by their names. There's also the fact that an important factor in the finale is finding students who've studied the right languages to perform certain incantations. It's not a huge part of the story,  but I do appreciate that the diversity of the characters reflects that of the world we live in.

Well, it is nice when fantasy settings have verisimilitude.

It is. Anyway, it's a pretty good fantasy book, a fun take on the magic school genre, and it has a pretty kickass cover. So you know, if any of that sounds like your jam, check it out.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, Del Rey  hardcover edition, 2020, 320 pages, pairs well with food that hasn't been tainted by maleficaria

Links:

Here's the author's website, if you're into that kinda thing.