The Scholomance is deadly, especially for a loner like Galadriel (El), but things get much, much worse when the school's golden boy, Orion Lake starts hanging around for seemingly no reason. El does not need his help to stay safe and stay alive. Novik's vividly imagined fantasy world is sure to appeal to readers who wished that other fantasy series about magical schools were grittier and a little more deadly.

Magic schools are bullshit. There’s not a story of a magic school out there that isn’t full of evil deeds and shitty teachers. The Scholomance, however…well, no shitty teachers. No teachers, actually. Just kids trapped together in a school full of lurking monsters. Monsters craving a little magical delicacy.

El, our narrator, has somehow survived the school for almost all her tenure, despite having made no alliances and possessing a magic most would consider evil. The closest thing she’s had to a “friend” is Orion, the savior-complex boy who she is certain HAS to die soon. With the way he keeps putting himself in danger to save other kids? It’s just a matter of time and statistics.

But Orion is beginning to make her think: maybe the Scholomance doesn’t have to be every-man-for-himself. Maybe…maybe it can be the way the founders intended: a safe space for young magic users. But the only way to change the school is from the inside, where all the monsters lurk and hunger.

I’d love to see a side-book for this series detailing the monsters of the Scholomance. A little informational thing. Because there’s a LOT, and they’re all fascinating. Different little bits of hell, out to get you.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

The beginning of the book felt slow because a lot of worldbuilding details were given through the thoughts of the main character named Galadriel (El) It also did not help that El was unkind to other people and angry for apparently no reason. You start the book with El’s thoughts and it takes a long time before she actually interacts more with the outside world. When she began to talk more with other students it turned out that Galadriel is not always a dick to others and her actions became more understandable.

El lives in a magical school that is placed in a pocket dimension. For a teenage magician this is the safest place to be because the monsters (called maleficaria) want to hunt mages for their mana. The wards that have to keep the maleficaria out are not perfect. The students need to be always on their guard because mals can hide everywhere in the school. And even a tiny monster can be deadly because weakness attracts more monsters. It took me some time to get used to this setting because I kept thinking that there should be better ways to protect children against mana hungry monsters. And I asked myself why magicians are not extinct if even enclaves (warded settlements) cannot protect children against the monsters. Another weak point in the book is that it suggests that salted liquorice is vile and should not be eaten. That is not true salted liquorice is delicious.

Despite these problems I recommend you to keep reading. After roughly one third of the book I became engaged with the story and it was hard to stop reading. The good part is that after a slow beginning I began to like El. The worldbuilding details never really stopped being inserted into her thoughts but it felt more natural and based on the developments she had to deal with. The setting became more believable later on in the book because the story implied that the nonsensical parts were relevant to the plot. The book ended on a mild cliff hanger and I look forward to read the second book to find out what happens next. I would rate it four out of five stars. Which means for me it’s a highlight of the year but I still can see some flaws that might be off putting for some readers.

Okay I know that this was published years ago and I've had it on my to read for a while. When I got it through netgalley, it jumped up my TBR list immediately. I understand why this was such a big deal when it came out!!!!

I loved Novik's other novels so I was very excited to see what this other series would be like. This was very different but still awesome! I think the comparisons to Harry potter were great. Loved it!

This book was so incredibly fun, which was pretty impressive for a book with a dark/depressing setting. I haven't read any other books with this kind of magic system and world, it felt very fresh and unique to me and I loved it!

Our main character El is so amazing. I love her grumpiness, but ultimately heart of gold. She deserves the world (and she has the power to take it). Her in combination with Orion, who is such a golden retriever energy person, was very fun to read. I also really loved Aadhya and Liu.

I was in a reading slump before reading this book and it got me out of it so fast, I can't wait to read the sequel now as ADE set us up for what I'm sure will be a very good story in book 2.

"READER, I Ran the fuck away"

This got me hooked, I loved it. In the beginning I struggled a bit with the writing. It read like rambling and I struggled to pick up what was happening. But this is also how my brain rambles. So eventually I learned to like it.

I loved being in El's head, she was delightfully annoying- and I enjoyed every second of if! I laughed, chuckled and the ending had me gasping. I immediately started on book two.

Before I begin this review, I want to thank Net Galley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for allowing me to access A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik.

Novik created an enticing tale of the dangers of going to a wizarding school filled with teens, monsters, and magic but no adult supervision. Everything and anything that could possibly go wrong does, especially to the leading lady, El, who tends to rub people the wrong way as she tries to survive the ups and downs of being a teen in a magical high school on top of combating monsters, aka mals, who like to gobble up students without much warning.

This book had me flipping through each page, wanting to know what would happen next. It was funny and engaging, and the characters had their own personalities and a lot of growth. I loved the concepts of the monsters and magic mixed in with a chaotic bunch of teenagers just trying to survive.

El is a character that you need to get to know before you like. At first, she comes off as very rough around the edges when it comes to making friends or even seeming at all caring towards other people, but as the story progresses, it becomes evident that El is actually very logical and caring. The conditions of the school don't give her or others a lot of choice regarding how they act to one another. I thought this dynamic was interesting, and seeing how El slowly revealed more of her personality to others and made friends was nice to read.
I also liked all the other characters, though I will admit that I felt like El was inside of her too much. I would have liked to see more of the characters and them spending time with each other.

There really wasn't much to the plot other than just survive. All the characters remained in the school all the time, but Novik still managed to keep up an engaging story despite the lack of plot for a good bit of the book.

As far as the worldbuilding goes, some of the story didn't quite make sense. My biggest question is, why were the students there without any teachers? Perhaps this was explained in the book, and I just missed it. The author does provide a lot of details and explanations for the world. Plenty of them, I thought, were quite logical when thinking about them living in a world that seemed to have a lot of inequalities and monsters running around.

The book's writing was very much focused on the main character's inner thoughts. While this can often be overdone, I think El was intriguing enough for it not to take away from the story and even added to it a lot in a compelling way. The author's writing style also seemed to do a great job embodying El. It flowed, was funny, and detailed.

Novik created a compelling story! It is well worth the read if you love strong female leads who are rough around the edges, YA fantasy books with a splash of humor, and monsters at every turn.

I will be posting this review to my blog on September 22nd.

I love having existential crises at bedtime, it's so restful.

genre: YA Dark Academia
pages: 336
writing: single POV
rating: ★★★★ [4/5]
spice: none

At the Scholomance school for magically gifted, there is a rule for everything:
Don't walk the halls alone.
Don't turn your back on doors.
Don't eat your food without checking it.
And don't trust anyone.

Galadriel 'El' Higgins knew when she accepted the offer to attend the Scholomance for her magical education, that her chances of survival depended on forming strong alliances. Unfortunately, El is not the most likeable character and most students give her a wide berth assuming she's a maleficer, a sorceress that pulls their magic from other people's lifeforce. With students being attacked daily by demon infestations, El's unique powers could be the key to survival if she wouldn't be at risk of killing her fellow students in the process.

This story was an absolute rollercoaster, as in, I barely knew which way was up or down throughout the chaos that was this school. The beginning unloads a ton of world building and it felt really heavy trudging through all of this new info.

The writing style is wonderfully dry and I came to love El's snarky and sarcastic humour and bleak outlook on life. Especially when it comes to her self-proclaimed enemy: golden retriever-type Orion Lake. He's hailed as the patron of the weak, except El is anything but weak and annoyed by his apparent saviour complex.

There are no teachers, no adults. The student body has to form their own organisation and alliances while the school itself assigns everyone their personal curriculum. It's almost as if by establishing dozens of rules, the school itself is trying to confuse you and is actually actively trying to k!ll you.

The ending immediately bumped up the rating for me. It's a wild ride, but if you're up for it you might just enjoy it.

I decided that Orion needed to d!e after the second time he saved my life.

"You feel like it's going to rain. You know that feeling when you're a mile away from anywhere, and you didn't take your umbrella because it was sunny when you left"

The MC in this book is just so relatable! I loved it so much. The ending means I have to immediately find the next book because I NEED to find out what happens next. I thought the world building and monsters were so creative,”. This is my first Naomi Novik novel but definitely not the last.

First, thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC (although this book has been out a few years now, so I'm not completely clear on why an ARC was being offered, but I don't complain about being offered free quality books to read!)

I'll start by saying I absolutely loved Uprooted and very much enjoyed Spinning Silver, both also by Naomi Novik. I was aware of this series, but the plotline didn't interest me that much, so I hadn't investigated it until I saw it pop up offered as an ARC and figured it was a good opportunity to try it. I'm so glad I did. My last few reviews, I've had to start with something along the lines of "I liked this less than I hoped/thought I would," but I'm happy to say, that this book was the opposite for me, in that I liked it MORE than I expected to. I'm not a big "dark academia" fan, and after Harry Potter became so popular I felt like the whole "wacky magic school" trope really got overdone. This is very much NOT Harry Potter, though, with a nice, dark Darwinian vibe to surviving (literally) in magic school, and older, more mature (but still very much teen) characters to start the series. The school itself is nearly a character and acts of its own volition to affect the outcomes of students in very interesting ways that I won't spoil here.

If you're reading this on Goodreads, then you can read the book summary for yourself above, but know that El, the main character is a cynical, bitter, angry teen, who does heroic things more because the alternative to doing them is too horrible for her sense of morality. Her conflict really is a great one - she's so good at dark magic that she has to actively resist using it, as it'd be too easy for her to accidently kill someone - or many someones. I, as the reader, was just as tempted for her to just given in and start using her powers as she was in places - more so, even! It's a maddening conflict in the best way.

I have only two small criticisms. First, El is clearly a smart character, and sometimes she goes so far with her anger as to be incredibly foolish and detrimental to her own survival - she even comments on this herself. That being said, there are plenty of people who are aware of their own flaws but still keep getting tripped up by them, so it's not completely unrealistic. Secondly, I know it's what some people live for, but I really, really hate the YA/forced love interest trope, which does rear its head here, though at least it's not a love triangle.. Even though this book is about teenagers, it didn't have a YA feel (which for me is a good thing), except in the romance angle. (I'm actually not clear on whether this book is considered YA or not. My library has all Novik's books in the adult section, but I've seen this trilogy listed as YA in other places.) That said, Novik handles it better than most and the little romance there is thankfully does not form the basis of the plot and is more of a background/side issue. Admittedly, it'd be weird if a story about teens didn't address crushes and who was dating whom, so it's not like it's out of place.

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to, as I generally prefer stories about older characters and am not a big "academia setting" fan, in general. I thought Novik took a familiar plot of "outcast at school" and gave it a clever, original, dark fantasy update. It's a worthwhile read, and I will finish the trilogy, though if you've never read Novik before, I'd still suggest trying Uprooted and/or Spinning Silver first.

Thank you NetGalley for ARC. I enjoyed this book , the story line was good and kept me interested throughout the book. The characters were good

This book wasn’t for me but I know that is more a subjective thing and I think other people would really enjoy the story.

I didn’t enjoy the magic system or the characters either really. I didn’t understand the magic system and the writing felt repetitive a lot of times, which made me fall out of the story. However as I said, I think others will enjoy the book and this just wasn’t my cup of tea.

I really enjoyed this read! I've been getting back into this genre and I'm glad I got to give this one a go because I've heard many good things about it. The writing was a little different than what I'm used to, but I found it more intriguing and wanted to keep going. I'd definitely give the rest of the books a try too! The concept was really cool, and it kind of gave me the vibes of a new generation's Harry Potter.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing for allowing me to read this digital copy of A Deadly Education for free in exchange for an honest review!

Dang it. Just… gosh darn dang it. I was so excited to get to read this. I’ve been on a hard YA Fantasy/ Dark Academia trip lately and was really looking forward to enjoying this book.

Only to DNF it at 42%

The premise of the school is fantastic. A magical school where kids with magic live for four years and have to fight their way out for graduation. It’s practically survivor for witches and wizards. The main character is a prickly outsider who has a dark prophecy tied to them. The potential best friend/love interest is a white knight who for some reason decides to stick around the main character and be their knight in shining armor. Sounds like a set up for an incredible story, right?

But I could not get over the writing. I usually do not mind 1st person storytelling. I actually generally do not care whether I’m reading in 3rd person or 1st person. But I do care when 1st person is 95% internal monologuing that is nothing but complaining and woe is me. Sure the MC is as teenager but, I’m 40% into the book and still know next to nothing about this world and the school or heck, where the book is even going? I’m also generally feeling confused. The MC constantly repeats herself that she needs alliances to survive graduation and yet she is actively rude to everyone she meets then plays the “woe is me no one likes me and I don’t know why” card and claims that all her hardship she’s experienced in the school is everyone else’s fault. The book is a stream of unending thoughts that regularly repeats itself, gives little to no explanation, and tells the story rather than shows it to me… or at least what little story I got from the first 40%.

I’m actually feeling exhausted and tired just reading the ongoing tirade of how bad the MC has it and how dangerous the school is. The idea of continuing the book just makes my brain hurt so, in a spirit of “reading is supposed to be fun” and “everything will not be my cup of tea and that’s fine”, I chose to DNF the book.

After some reflection, this book did take me awhile to really get into…

It is a very cool concept - a school that is trying to kill its students - but the world building was lackluster and exchanged for random info dumps and exposition throughout. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either.

I did really like El (FMC) and Orion (MMC) and look forward to learning more about them. I also liked the development of relationships and the end left me intrigued enough to read at least the next book in the series. Oh, and magic. ✨ I’m likely never saying no when there’s magic involved.

This wasn’t an ARC, but thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the copy.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ if you love Harry Potter and are an adult read this. Loved. Thank you NetGalley! Highly recommend

Unfortunately, the writing style is not for me.
3 stars, as I need to be somewhat neutral

~ I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own ~

Amazing dark academia, intriguing and different. Definitely one of my favorite reads so far. I did like the theme and setting, will recommend if you like dark academia settings and a bit of suspense.

I enjoyed it. The chapters ran on a little too long for my taste at times. However, the story and characters were interesting and like-able.

A Deadly Education is the first book I've read by Naomi Novik. The only thing I knew about the book is that it has a magical school as the setting. It was a fun read, but it has many flaws.
A Deadly Education follows Galadriel, a wizard attending a magical school called Scholomance. The school is dangerous; there are plenty of monsters, called mals, roaming around and hiding in dark corners. The stairways and the dormitories rotate annually. Students must study the school's blueprints to reinforce Scholomance's architecture. Galadriel is a loner. Making friends is difficult when other students avoid her like the plague. Well, all except for one – Orion Lake. Orion is a hero no one asked for. He saved Galadriel's life twice, but she hated every second of it. Despite Orion's effort to befriend Galadriel, she keeps her distance and acts rudely. During the school year, the number of Orion's heroic acts grows exponentially as the situation with mals becomes dire. Perhaps Galadriel will have to team up with Orion and other students to save their lives before it's too late.
Let me start with the good things about the novel. A Deadly Education embodies the magical atmosphere. It has a strong sense of place. The Scholomance is a character, and we get a dizzying amount of lore about its mechanics. The protagonist, Galadriel, or El for short, is unlikeable. She is broody, self-centered, rude, and even snobbish. She knows she is a powerful wizard, and it influences her thoughts and behaviors. The narration is in first person, so we spend a lot of time with her thoughts. I understand why people would not like her and stop reading the book. I liked her as the protagonist despite her prominent flaws. El experiences mild change by the end, which I appreciate. The plot is murky and meandering - it does not have a clear goal, but it improves in the latter half. The pacing is faster, with more action and less exposition, and the characters develop relationships.
The worldbuilding and the magic system are this book's strongest suits. However, the exposition explaining those two aspects is clumsily written, unorganized, and overwhelming. The whole first half is bursting with information about the Scholomance and the type of magic students use. It overburdens the reader. Don't get me wrong, it is endlessly fascinating and creative, but it could have been more elegantly dispersed throughout the story. Whenever something is about to happen in the plot, we face three pages of information and a flashback before the action occurs. That gets tiring.
Another flaw is a complete lack of character-building. That is the fault of the writing (first person), and I am willing to overlook it. Orion, the most present character after our protagonist, has little dialogue due to being interrupted by El. However, after finishing the book, his passivity seems more intentional. I will not comment on the alleged romance between El and Orion. The chemistry is nonexistent.
I wanted to mention that my review copy has some grammar mistakes. I know this book was published in 2020, but I do not know if this version is updated or original. I have not underlined every sentence where I found mistakes, but I have noted a few. Some sentences were awkward and missing words. I am not a native English speaker, so it could be my misunderstanding because I have not seen anyone else complain.