Summary - a couple of kids decide to fix their school only for it to try to kill them.

*thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc!*

I was excited to get this one for the dark academia vibes. I will say it was a bit of a struggle to get into it. Its slower with a lot of world building. It's like Harry Potter except magic comes with a cost and everyone mostly dies. The main character in the beginning is hard to like, slowly you start to understand why she's so bitter and angry at the world. And at the end you're really rooting for her. I did find myself around 70% in fully enthralled by the world. And the ending? an absolute cliff hanger. Will definitely be reading the next one.

This was a reread of A Deadly Education for me in preparation for it’s archive date on NetGalley. The first of three lessons on the Scholomance was a very well written YA fantasy novel with a school of magic which is much more deadly than our beloved Harry Potter. El, short for Galadriel, has literally landed, from her home in Wales, in the Scholomance with a multitude of young sorcerers to learn her craft over four years and will return if she survives. Orion is a good guy who just wants to save everybody and El is pushing away from her with both hands. Magic and teenagers who can’t leave are a recipe for constant dangerous happenings. They need help to survive but haven’t made alliances yet.
3 Stars- Pub. Date: 9-29-2020; Archive Date: 10-21-2023

I sadly had to dnf this one. It read way too young for my personal taste in ya and I thought it'd be unfair to read something I knew I wouldn't enjoy for the purpose of reviewing it. I hope you see it the same way and thank you for giving me access to this arc.

Naomi Novik has knocked it out of the park with the new series, which is what I think I wanted Harry Potter to be all along.

Told from the point of view of the antagonist, this novel takes place at a school of magic that will definitely kill you if it can. The students who survive their terms make it out into the world, and the cycle continues.

The theme that stood out the most to me involves the cycles that families and institutions participate in that are potentially harmful, in the sake of tradition, or because they don't know any better way. It takes a cycle breaker, someone who comes along and says "We can do better' to question tradition and to find another way. This book has a lot of dread in it as the students prepare for their exams and will fight for their lives, but there is also a thread of hope that runs through the book, and lets the reader and the characters dare to think that this time it might be different.

It was even better than I expected!
El is an amazing character and I love her interactions with Orion!
And the world Novik created? OMG! A school that tries to kill you while you're trying to be a better witch. It's so amazing!
The plot is really good and it pushes you to read another chapter and another chapter until there is no chapter left and you're screaming because you need the next book!

I always loved Novik's writing but in "A deadly education" you see some matureness in the writing without losing her unique way.

I really loved it!

I was excited for the opportunity to read a (new to me) dark academia book for fall. This book had a great premise but it seems to suffer from getting a bit too heady and focusing on infinite details rather than moving the plot forward. I enjoyed this for what it was but don't think I'd continue the series. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey for this ARC.

I recently received an ebook of this book I had requested this wayyy back in 2020. I was quite surprised to see it. It’s was an interesting take on Academia genre. But it didn’t capture my attention and imagination.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik is a young adult, fantasy fiction that brings the reader to a world where children with magical abilities are hunted by monsters. In order to give their children a better chance of survival, a century ago adults banded together to create a school to protect and help the children learn. The school however, is not entirely safe either. The same monsters that hunt children outside lurk in the hallways and the ultimate test is when at graduation students must survive a gauntlet of the worst possible creatures.

The main character El, in some ways is an average teenage girl just trying to survive social isolation. However, she also has to deal with the fact that her grandmother predicted she would bring ruin to the enclaves of the world and that she is brimming with a type of magic that is dark and dangerous. Matters get more complicated when the school's golden boy starts making it a habit of saving her life and then even more strangely, acting like a friend.

This book is a new take on a magical school and was a fast paced read. I would recommend it for readers who enjoy fantasy fiction, young adult fantasy fiction and rooting for the underdog. Thank you to #NetGalley, Del Ray Publishing, and Naomi Noviks for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Dark Academia meets Survivor.

Just to start off: I know there is some sort of controversy about this book. I did not research it before I read the book, but I did read a few reviews that gave an overview of what people are offended about.

I received this ARC from NetGalley, and because this book has been out for several years, I’m assuming it went through a revision to address people’s concerns. This is my first time reading it, so not sure if there are any differences from the original text, but I will say that the book was not problematic to me.

Now to the summary: this is a world of magic in which people with magic are under constant attack from mals (magical beings that will kill you in an instant). To protect against mals, most people attempt to join enclaves (think covens) that are in cities all over the world. This is to provide protection and support to all people within that enclave. On the other hand, you have people like Galadriel and her mother who are not part of an enclave, and live separate.

Then the children get thrown into this school, which is actually the lesser of two evils if you can believe that. Before the school was created these children (who happen to be very tasty to the mals) would likely reach adulthood maybe 20% of the time. Inside the school, these children reach adulthood maybe 60% of the time. Better odds, certainly, but still grim as fuck. Murder and death are a very common occurrence in the school.

Our protagonist, Galadriel, has immense power: she could wipe out legions of people (mundanes) and other wizards without breaking a sweat. However, due to her upbringing by her lovely flower child mother, she knows that she should not. It is, however, a natural affinity of her magic, which other people (mundanes and wizards alike) can sense and fear. She is filled with bitterness and seething resentment after being treated with horror and disdain by people her entire life, including complete strangers and family members. She has no friends or allies in the school.

However, it is clear that when she does care about someone, she goes through great lengths to love them and show it… a la her mother. Her mother has a great respect for all living things, and as such has raised Galdriel to be strict mana, Galadriel would not even take the mana (life force) of an ant of beetle because it would upset her mother. At school, where there are no adults and it is always a life-or-death situation, Galadriel treats people like assets, in turn they treat her like one too.

This whole school (and world of magic, for that matter) runs on trades and bargains … tit for tat. My spell for a bit of your artificer work, etc. And as El has little social skills, and has been ostracized since childhood, I think it entirely likely that she would judge people solely on their utility rather than anything else about them. She isn’t going out if her way to befriend people, but they aren’t going out of their way to befriend her either.

Enter Orion! White knight and annoyance to Galadriel. The two become friendly. She gets some perks off of being his friend (although she actively detests the people who attempt to befriend her due to association) and Orion gets a person who doesn’t try to lick his boots all the damn time.

All manner of chaos ensues.

I liked this book. The writing style is a bit unusual in that it reads like train-of-thought with huge info dumps. I'm not certain if this is supposed to be Galadriel's diary or a memoir...at one point she breaks the fourth wall and calls you "Dear Reader".

I plan on reading the next book in the series.

Thank you to #NetGalley for an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I love, love, loved this book! I had such a fun time reading it. I was kind of in a reading slump heading into spooky season and this was the book to get me out of it. I loved the main character and how snarky she was. I liked all the side characters and am interested to see where the trilogy takes them.

This book has everything I wanted: A school of magic filled with creatures (mals) that could kill students at anytime, likeable main characters and dynamics and a solid ending to make me want to continue with the series.

I liked that the main character, El, kept mostly to herself and had a lot of secrets she kept close to her chest. Slowly as she makes meaningful relationships throughout the book, which she was speculative of, she opens up to them and they get small pieces of information about her. By the end she has real friends and even a romantic interest. I can't wait to start the next book.

For a book built on the basis of a magical school in a wizarding world, I found this quite original.

I was so intrigued by the plot that I found myself totally immersed in Naomi’s work, however the constant info dumping (while often not unnecessary) really broke up the flow of the story and left things feeling a little janky. There was just so much internal dialogue thrown in at strange points and perhaps something is wrong with my imagination, but I simply couldn’t comprehend a third of what was going on.

That being said, I enjoyed the story and will happily be reading book 2 of the scholomance trilogy. If you enjoy stories with unique and complex magic systems then this is for you.

Gotta say, I truly enjoyed this book! My favorite trope/subgenre is Magical School and Novik did such a unique twist on that. I know that there are more in the series so I can't wait to read the next!

A magical school with danger and death in store if you fail? I can’t believe I took so long to read this. The book dug its claws into me from page 1 and kept me entertained throughout. Highly recommend!!!

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik is a very different school of magic from Hogwarts. Children from magical families enter the school with a limited amount of belongings and do not leave until graduation. There are no letters from home or care packages. The school is filled with monsters, and students must learn quickly how to protect themselves or die. This engaging fantasy book is told for the perspective of a girl who is completely on her own and avoided by her fellow students due to an expectation that she will level mountains and become dark queen of the world. However, Orion Lake, a popular boy from the New York Enclave wants very much to be close to her. This was a very original tale about a dark school of magic called the Scholomance, and the lengths that students had to go to survive. This book has had some negative feedback due to descriptions which were perceived as racist, but I don’t think that this was intentional. If one read the passages fully with an open mind, the reference was an unfortunate choice of illustration, but there weren’t any other red flags in the book. I absolutely loved this story which was very unique and included the camaraderie of teens developing friendships, the first blush of young love, and teens working together to solve a problem. This was exceptionally well written and fascinating. Readers who enjoy YA Fantasy shouldn’t miss this book! I am voluntarily submitting this review after reading a complementary copy of this book thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey.

This was a really great book for people looking for magical academia that is meant for the NA readers who grew up on Harry Potter. I really enjoyed the premises of the book and the characters were all really interesting! The characters are really funny, clever, and there are some good moments between characters that made me smile at their relationships (and hopefully blooming it into something more?). This was definitely a book that I enjoyed for what it was, a fantasy academia book that is for the adults who loved Harry Potter as kids.

I found this was a slow start for me to get into it, but when the ball really got rolling, I started to enjoy it! Definitely excited to see what comes next in the series!

Thank you NetGalley for an eARC of this book!

There are already so many very thorough and thoughtful reviews of this book, that I'll keep this short. (But, seriously, whether it's before or after you pick up A Deadly Education, you should spend some time reading a few of the wonderful five-star and one-star reviews, many of which address and dissect the novel's controversial themes, characterizations, and subplots.)

What I will say is this—I found the novel very consumable. It kept me engaged. Even though I was put off by the way El initially viewed her classmates as assets rather than whole people, it made sense in the setting and with the way her character was drawn. By the end of the book, her perspective had certainly begun to change toward the few peers who'd gotten closer to her, and I'm hopeful that that expansion will continue in books two and three.

I think that's all for now—I enjoyed the book. I want to read more. To me, that feels like four stars.

This review is made possible via an ARC through NetGalley.

I cannot believe how much I loved the Voice of this. I've heard of A Deadly Education and seen people talk about it, but didn't have the time to read it until now. Novik makes pages of worldbuilding compelling and fascinating because of the incredible use of Voice throughout the work and the way El's melancholy and resilience manifests.

El is a fantastic MC who is tough and sarcastic and cynical but also molded by the difficult life she's lived. You see people change around her as they realize they judged her but you also see her open up and become closer to her peers without sacrificing her principles.

I loved this book. A magical school story with actual danger and feeling. The characters were very real and you loved them because the author didn’t try to make you like them, essentially. A new favorite

An excellent romp into a wholly new fantasy school and the dangers that accompany it. I was missing out by taking so long to read Ms. Novik's work and I am eager to devour more!

The concept held great promise: a school teeming with monsters, a protagonist determined to seek vengeance against her savior. However, what unfolded was an abundance of endless spell descriptions and convoluted magical intrigues within enclaves. While worldbuilding is undeniably crucial, it needn't be so tediously dull. The potentially dark heroine transformed into just another misunderstood teenage girl striving to be good. The only saving grace was her sarcasm and dark humor, which kept me engaged enough to finish the book.