What a weird, fun book! I went into it knowing who the author was and hearing the buzz around her having a new book and thought, why not give it a try? I'm so glad that I did! I loved this super dark version of a magic school, which held my attention more than just your standard school based fantasy novel. I always enjoy having a female main character that is borderline unlikable, avoiding the easy Mary Sue trope. It wouldn't have been the same. I also liked the writing style, which is different than I am use to. Also, that ending! I should have expected it but I got so drawn into everything else that I didn't. I cant wait for book number 2!

I tore through this one. It was fun, and snarky, and a refreshingly murderous take on the magic school trope. So much fun, and so looking forward to the next installment. Good heavens I love Naomi Novik.

(review on Goodreads :)

A Deadly Education gives us another strong female protagonist from Naomi Novik, someone who is not perfect but who is doing the best she can to stay true to herself. The story takes place during Galadriel's junior year at Scholomance, where surviving the school day is a challenge and surviving graduation takes a team effort. The action and the humor in this story will keep most readers engaged from start to finish. Since it is the beginning of a series. there was a lot of world building and stage setting. However, the story never stopped moving forward and the history of the characters was as action-packed and funny as the rest of the book. Recommended for fans of Harry Potter, Simon Snow and the Magicians.

I really wanted to love this considering how much I love Novik's other work, but there's waaaay too much telling and exposition to the point that I was bored 80% of the time. Also the main character, El, is unlikeable to the point where she's just flat out mean and angry all the time. I feel bad giving this such a low rating but I honestly couldn't get into it.

I. Am. Here. For. This. I loved this so much. It wasn't really at all what I was expecting ( a definite divergence from Uprooted and Spinning Silver), but I loved the characters and the world building in this. It was just so much fun. It definitely had a more YA vibe than I expected and there was a little adjusting to the world and magic at first, since it really just throws you right in. I cannot wait for book 2.

I loved this thrilling, magic-packed new fantasy! Novik brings her exemplary talent for fantasy world-building and writing smart, compelling characters to what is definitely a new favorite series of mine. The narrator, El (short for Galadriel), takes us through her final months of junior year at the Scholomance, a terrifying magic school with *actual* life-or-death stakes. Surviving isn't just about how much power and talent you have, but the relationships and alliances you can (or fail to) build. I adored El and learning about this magic world and school through her eyes. She's a tough and (secretly) thoughtful character who stays stubbornly true to her values, even when those beliefs make her way of life harder. She, and the characters around her, bring up really interesting questions/considerations about good, evil, and survival in a world where most magical things are trying to kill you, and the types of responses and that arise from such a reality. It's great world-building!

I found the magic world really compelling, and I appreciated how it tackled the idea of building/losing magic; there being limits and consequences to using magic made the world feel more realistic and unique. Additionally, while this fantasy features an extremely powerful character in El, she highlights the consequences of holding such power, especially the emotional toll. El's vulnerable moments were heart-wrenching, really endearing her character to me. The secondary characters were great, I loved Orion and Aadhya especially, and it was so great reading about such an internationally diverse cast of characters. There were some moments where El's thoughts were heavy on exposition and magical details, kind of slowing down the narrative, but I didn't mind those personally because I just wanted to learn as much as I could! I can definitely see this being a fantasy crossover title for YA readers and adults.

Novik was so cruel with that ending cliffhanger--I need the sequel immediately!!

After devouring Ms. Novak’s other novels Uprooted and Spinning Silver I couldn’t wait for this. Quite different fro her other novels . This is YA urban fantasy about a misgivings school hidden in a void infested with beasts . World building is incredible and the main characters are complex and show much growth through out the novel

Thank you, NetGalley, for this digital ARC.

This book proves Naomi Novik's talent once again, although it isn't quite as strong as her other novels.

Galadriel (El) is a student at Scholomance, a school for magically gifted youth. The school is a feat of magic itself, floating in a black void; there are no teachers, no breaks, and no such thing as friends in a place where alliances have to be made if you want to make it out alive. Creatures lurk in every corner waiting for their next student victim, and many won't survive graduation, where the final (and only) path to freedom is a battle against the malicious and hungry hoard that sits camped out all year at the school's exit. El is uniquely powerful, a gift (or curse) that she has to constantly keep under wraps; she's strong enough to wipe out any monster in her path...and all of the students in the school. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and El will have to do whatever it takes to graduate Scholomance with her life.

This is certainly one of the most unique magic systems I've read about (and I read my fair share of books with magic). The premise seems contradictory - you don't make friends, but you also don't walk the halls alone; everyone is in constant danger, but the protagonist is super powerful - but it all makes sense and comes together in the world Novik has built. The entire book takes place in a single location, which makes the system and world-building even more impressive.

My biggest complaint about this book is that some of the story gets weighed down by El literally just explaining how things work, like for a while. Direct character-talking-to-the-reader exposition isn't an interesting way to build a world, in my opinion, and I found myself wishing the book would get back to the actual plot. That being said, the last half of the book (and hopefully the sequel(s)) make this not-ideal method of world-building worth it.

El is such an interesting and well-developed character. Closed-off, sarcastic, stubborn, oftentimes downright mean, all for reasons that become more clear as the story unfolds. Her anger gets a little tiresome after a while - we get it, you're a lone wolf - but the journey of her character arc through to the end of the novel is satisfying. Novik uses the side characters to twist some classic tropes into more interesting relationship dynamics.

This is not an "adult Harry Potter." It's something entirely its own, and very different from anything Naomi Novik has written before. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys magic and is up for something a little different and dark.

I’ve heard this book compared to Harry Potter, mostly because it’s a magic school, so I’ll make a HP comparison: A Deadly Education is hundreds of Slytherins and one Gryffindor stuck in an underground bunker where they have to survive monster attacks every single day while learning magic. Once a student enters the Scholomance, they cannot leave until graduation and all they have is what they brought with them. This means that everything has a price, and everything can be recycled into something else. There is no such thing as kindness in the Scholomance, everything is about survival, alliances, and getting ahead.

The magic system is interesting and thorough. Mana is built by human effort and can be stored to be used later. Malia is dark magic and takes no effort, but it steals life from things (and people) around it. This system sets up a class divide between those students who are part of an enclave and enter the Scholomance as a group. Their enclave ensures they have what they need going into the bunker and they have a shared magic store that any of them can draw on. They also have a safety in numbers that doesn’t cost them anything in return and an ensured future ahead of them once they graduate.

Galadriel, or El, doesn’t have any connection to an enclave and must barter and scheme her way through school. She’s incredibly powerful, but her affinity is for dark magic and while others cheat with malia, she can’t because she would end up killing people around her. El is a hard-edged angry individual and while I can’t say that I liked her, I was interested enough to follow her. The side characters and how El grows to care for them is my favorite part of the story. In between all the fighting monsters and scheming there are some emotions other than anger and those are the moments that made this book.

My main complaint about the book is how much telling is going on. This is a complex magic system and a very detailed world, so it’s understandable. But so much of the book was El just explaining things to the reader and it did get bogged down. The characters were also very much “types” and sometimes character actions, especially El’s, got to be annoying. We know you’re angry! Can you maybe make logical choices anyway! That being said, the moments when El becomes more nuanced were worth waiting for, they just were few and far in-between until the last third of the book. The last third of the book is what turned it from a 3-star to a 3.5-star that I felt like rounding up. Both of the issues mentioned I hope will smooth out in the second book since the world and characters are established.

Despite my issues, this was a fun, monster-filled read. A Deadly Education is exactly the book my teenage self would have loved, and there is some nostalgia to reading such an angry protagonist and monster violence in a book. Although it doesn’t quite line up with my tastes anymore, I read it quickly and couldn’t wait to find out what happened. I’ll definitely be reading the second book when it comes out.

I was intrigued by this novel, as I had just read Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and I really admire her as a writer and advocate for fan writing/fanfiction. Unfortunately, A Deadly Education really didn’t do it for me.

Galadriel, the narrator, is a talented magician and social outcast battling ferocious monsters, dangerous classes, and The Popular Kids at the magical high school called the Scholomance. The cast of characters is very diverse; Galadriel is biracial (Indian-Welsh), and her fellow students are from all around the world. I appreciated this detail, and it made the Scholomance a more interesting place than a homogenous school like...other fantasy magic schools...ahem...

However, this novel never captured me. It was EXTREMELY exposition-heavy, with pages and pages of Galadriel explaining the school and the rules of magic to us. This made the story choppy and clunky, and actually confused me more, since I didn’t get a vivid sense of the look and feel of the world, just bland snippets of lengthy exposition. I also became increasingly frustrated with the school itself — students die constantly in common spaces and in their own rooms, succumbing to horrific predators hiding in the sinks, the classrooms, and even in the food. The nonchalant way Galadriel accepts this huge fatality rate is unsettling, and there seems to be little dwelling on the traumatic circumstances these teenagers are subjected to. Part of why I enjoy books about magic is because I want to be in that world myself, and I found myself extremely glad I am not in the novel’s world going to a magical school, which is something I never thought I’d feel.

Overall, this book really frustrated me. There are some good characters and moments, but Galadriel is so coarse and blithe that it becomes slightly wearisome, and the plot is extremely meandering and weak. I really wanted to enjoy this novel, and I hope other readers will, but I did not. Novik is a good writer and it ended on an excellent cliffhanger, so I will probably still check out the next installation in this new series.

[1.5/5: A book about a magic school that you do NOT want to attend. Fans of Novik’s other works may like this, as well as HP fans, and maybe people who like Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow books (which I actually deeply dislike personally) will like this one. It’s dark academia meets fantasy meets monster-hunting meets YA angst, and while it may connect to other readers, it did not resonate with me.]

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I had really enjoyed Uprooted and was looking forward to more of Naomi Novik's incredible lyrical prose when I requested this ARC but I ended up very disappointed. This book, while the premise of prickly protagonist reluctantly teams up with a golden boy hero at the magic school that's actively trying to kill the students all the time, was a slog and a half to get through. Clearly a ton of worldbuilding work went into this story but instead of revealing it all through the plot we just got a whole lot of infodumping from El. Seriously, even some potentially exciting moments of action get hampered by the paragraphs and paragraphs of context being spelled out for us while things are happening. Some people may totally dig that, and I think this will be easy to recommend to fans of The Magicians and The Hunger Games looking for similar vibes, but this just didn't work for me.

If you like stories that take place in magic schools - this book is for you.

If you like stories with ornery yet likable female protagonists who may or may not be evil - this book is for you.

If you like stories where people are in mortal peril every moment - this book is for you.

Dark and twisty, imaginative, and fast-paced - this is a lot of fun. My one critique is that it took me a while to understand the magic system at play - you kind of just have to get comfortable with not understanding and keep moving forward; it gets clearer as the story moves along.

Looking forward to the sequel.

I loved this fantastically insane book. It’s witty, dark, magnificent, and impossible to put down. I’ve read several of Naomi Novik’s other works, including Uprooted and the first two books in the Temeraire series, but the Scholomance series has absolutely captivated me. I cannot stop thinking about this magical school and its inhabitants.

The world-building is overwhelming. I mean, a sentient school that’s more likely to kill you than let you graduate? It’s insane and genius. The school feels dangerous and cut off from the rest of the world (probably because it is cut off—the whole idea of the void terrifies me). It’s very obvious that Novik put a lot of thought into the Scholomance and her magic system. I particularly liked that magic costs you something. Either you work to build up the mana needed to cast spells or you drain the life force of something or someone in order to work your magic. Either way, magic is definitely not free. And because it’s not free, there are the haves and the have-nots in the form of those belonging to an enclave and those that desperately want into one.

Through the enclaves and the children born into them, Novik explores privilege and inequality in a way that feels timely and relevant. Enclave children enter the school with so many advantages over kids like El, who don’t belong to an enclave. Enclave children already have allies and power share techniques which means they basically have an unlimited supply of mana at their fingertips. Meanwhile, those without the protection and the advantage of an enclave must fight to grab and hold onto to any scrap of advantage they can through bartering and working for the enclave kids, all in the desperate hope of maybe surviving graduation and securing one of the few open and coveted spots in an enclave.

Now, there’s a lot of info-dumping throughout the book, but to be honest, that didn’t bother me. I eagerly devoured every little tidbit of information Novik supplied, and am waiting, most impatiently, for the sequel.

As far as characters go, El is a marvel. She’s the unlikable, grim, snarky, powerful, prophesied to bring doom and destruction to the world, main character I’ve been waiting for. I understand her cynical outlook and her desperate desire to prove herself. Her struggle against her very dark, very destructive magical affinity while trying to survive in a school that she knows she could destroy and waltz out of, is just amazing to read.

Orion is the not so dashing, more awkward than charming, knight in shining armor that readers deserve, and Novik pits him and El against each other in a beautiful one-sided rivalry turned grudging friendship turned slow burn, antagonistic romance. Together the two of them are absolute perfection. They are complete opposites that slowly discover they’re not quite so different.

Overall, A Deadly Education just might be my favorite book of the year. I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who loves magical schools, powerful female leads, and slow burn kind of enemies to maybe friends to possibly lovers. This book is dark, hilarious, amazing, and an absolute must read.

If I could write a letter to my former self it would be a howler that exploded in rage in the Great Hall to shout, in Mrs. Weaskey's shrillest notes, "STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND START READING NAOMI NOVIK NOW."

A Deadly Education is like professional grade Hogwarts satire-style fanfiction with sass that can cut diamonds and a humor that will pull the air from your lungs because you're wheezing so hard. It is magnificent. It is glorious. From the amazing insults to the bafflingly funny predicaments the characters wind up in, you're in for a roller coaster ride from the first sentebce to the last.

Naomi Novik excels at both world-building and fast pacing. The first book in her new Scholomance series, A Deadly Education, uses both of those skills to their maximum effect. The story centers on Galadriel--El--a student at a boarding school for magic. Where her experience diverges from the standard magic school tropes is that the school is overrun by monsters called mals. Teacherless and parentless, the students strive to store magical capacity and learn as much defensive magic as possible in order to survive past graduation day--which involves getting through a graduation hall beset by these mals. The result is never-ending combat with dark entities and a cut-throat school culture in which students strive to align themselves with magical guilds and feed other, less-able, less-connected students to the mals. All of this is interesting for the reader, although the learning curve required for entry into this world is steep. Where Novik falters is that the book is mostly exposition. You can tell that Novik loves her world and has probably written hundreds of pages of backstory. The thing is--were it not for her ability to keep a book moving--this book might have been a total slog because of that backstory. The actual plot is short and simple and probably could have been disposed of in 20 pages. The climax is unsatisfying. The story builds toward one climax and instead ends on a cliffhanger--a transparent ploy to keep the reader following the series. Will I remember the details of this book a year from now? I don't know. I think Novik is writing for a whole-canon reader, someone five years in the future. For all its flaws, I really enjoyed this book. It was a deeply engaging read, the clear heir of the Potter series. It was transporting at a time when that is deeply needed. So, it earns both a recommendation and four stars for me.

This was an interesting read because I really liked it, the characters were fun and well written, but the prose was quite long and could sometimes get confusing. I would definitely recommend it though. I know I'll be rereading it when the finished proof comes out.

A fantasy about a magic school without teachers and with a graduation requirement of surviving is such an interesting premise for a book. I haven't read any of Naomi Novik's previous books, but I've always thought they sounded interesting. Unfortunately, I was really let down by this one and didn't enjoy it very much.

This almost felt like a nonfiction to me. It felt like there were more pages filled with information and history than the current story. Although I did enjoy certain parts of the book, like El's relationships with her classmates and learning how to use her abilities to help others, those parts were too few and far between and I'd find myself skimming the pages.

I do think this book had a lot of potential and will be enjoyable to readers who like a lot of world building and history of their characters.

El (short for Galadriel, but woe to anyone who calls her by her full name) is a student at an unusual magical high school, the Scholomance. Since it was built, the magical structures that maintain it have gone awry, meaning that the school is full of predatory creatures who feed on the student body, given the opportunity. The students themselves draw on either mana or malia (think light or dark magic) to develop their skills, defend themselves, and have the best chance possible of a professional career post graduation (if they survive it - graduation means escaping past the worst of the school's monsters.) Because El's mother is a devoted practitioner of the lightest and most nurturing magic possible, the universe's sense of balance means that El has a propensity to stumble on the darkest and most violent spells possible, though she is determined to be a "strict mana" practitioner, and not give into the dark -- even though she'd really like to strangle the most popular boy in her class, after he rescues her from one of the school's monsters.

Novik's new series is in dialogue with previous works -- some of them rather momentous in stature, like Harry Potter and The Magicians.. It's not entirely clear what she's trying to say to those works yet, though I don't wholly mind giving the series time to breathe, and it's clear that making the Scholomance books more centered on female characters is important. The first third of the book felt somewhat belabored with worldbuilding to me, but as El's relationships with two other women in her class develop, it found its footing, and I was drawn in. The climax did not provide quite the payoff that I was looking for...but I'm intrigued enough that I genuinely want to read the sequel, and would go grab it now, were it available. Recommended especially for readers who like the magical boarding school trope, and/or snarky heroine narrators.

This was a pure delight. Fans of Naomi Novik will find all the signatures of her writing in this one: moments of dark, biting humor and fast-paced action in an expertly developed magical world (and in true Novik fashion, a great slow burn enemies-to-lovers, thank you very much.)

The familiar story of dark magic and survival in a highly competitive boarding school is told anew, with great care taken to incorporate the past, welding into something that respects what came before it, but does not pretend to be anything but fresh. The twists on tropes of heroism and villainy are compelling and completely new.

I’ve heard conflicting opinions regarding if this is YA or adult fantasy, and while I can see great YA crossover appeal, this book is very dark - the elements of true horror are often. The humor is witty in a truly adult way, and while this IS a coming of age story, I don’t think it’s necessarily a coming of age story for those coming of age. Still - adults and teens alike will find lots to love.

El is a sixteen year old sorceress studying at the incredibly dangerous magic school the Scholomance. The students are trapped in the school, fending off the stray nightmarish malificaria that crawl up from the graduation hall, lured by the enticing smell of mana. To survive, they forge alliances and travel in packs, because everything, even a broken chair in the library, could be a death trap. El’s magic is dark, more suited for chaos and destruction, and it takes all her concentration not to accidentally drain her classmates of their life force for mana. A dark, twisted take on the “school of magic” theme, A Deadly Education is refreshing and fascinating. It excels both in creating a strong female protagonist to root for and an intricate world built on spellcasting, Lovecraftian monsters, and secret magic enclaves. The first book of the Scholomance series, this one promises even more brilliance to come!

I truly, truly can't say enough good things about this book. Making a 16 year old protagonist likable is hard, but Novik succeeds, and I can confidently recommend this title to adults, without worrying that they'll think it's YA. Can't wait to read the next one!