I started this book on Saturday morning after waking up with a headache and a general disinclination towards productivity, and I finished it that night around dinner. It’s marketed as adult fiction but felt more suited to YA, which I haven’t read in a long time. I didn’t mind, though, mainly because my total lack of expectations allowed me to appreciate this novel for what it was, not what it was probably supposed to be.
I was immediately sucked into the story by the voice of the protagonist, Galadriel, or “El,” whose anger drives the narrative and highlights the unfairness of her world. At “Scholomance,” a deadly magical school, unsupervised young wizards are slowly picked off by terrifying creatures before fighting their way out of a bottleneck of monsters at “graduation.” El, who has an affinity for mass destruction, and who is told as a child that she holds the potential for great evil, but is determined not to fall into that fate, is isolated by her ineffable “bad vibes.” She is angry, rude, ungrateful, judgmental, and a raving bitch. She is also the only good character in the book.
While I genuinely enjoyed this story, as demonstrated by the fact that I happily breezed through it in a day, I was perpetually frustrated by several of the writer’s choices. Novik attempts to fill her world with a racially diverse cast of characters but stops short of giving them actual personalities beyond vague stereotypes. The “diversity” comes across as superficial and, at times, straight-up damaging.
Additionally, the book tries really hard to be dark, but in vibes only. From page one, possibly even line one, it is clear that the world you are thrown into puts very little value on human life. Students die left and right. But at the same time, the book isn’t creepy or disturbing enough to make it FEEL dark. The combination of superficial characters, casual killings, and the feeling that the overpowered protagonist is never in any real danger alienates the reader from the world more than it draws us into it. To me, the mark of a good “dark” book is that it makes you care before it breaks your heart. No matter how many monsters A Deadly Education throws your way, none of them leave an emotional impact.
The other main issue I had with this book was the sheer volume of exposition and background information clogging up the chapters, making the plot feel congested and slow. I didn’t mind until near the end when the action-packed climax of the story was interrupted multiple times by unnecessary info-dumping. The writing style wasn’t my favorite, but it wasn’t technically bad. It didn’t feel plot or character-driven, but somehow I got to the end, and looking back, there were definitely 300 pages of something.
At the end of the day, this feels like a story with potential but is ultimately held back by its author’s unwillingness to add real depth to the world. While I enjoyed the use of first-person limited because of the insights we got into El’s character, it also made it very difficult to see beyond her, ultimately limiting the degree to which the reader can invest in the world.
A Deadly Education is not terrible, but it wasn’t a great book either. I don’t regret buying it, but I am unlikely to invest in the rest of the series. I am tentatively open to reading some of Novik’s other work.
This is my first negative review of a book for my 100-book challenge, and I honestly wasn’t sure if I should post it. I don’t like ripping into other writers’ work. I don’t think that just because a book isn’t for me, it isn’t potentially perfect for someone else. There are plenty of books that I know are well written and much loved that I cannot stand, and there are many, like this one, that I enjoyed but also have some major issues.
Overall, this book is a solid 4/10. If the concept of Lord of the Flies at Hogwarts intrigues you, you might like it better than I did.
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