Marina & Sergey Dyachenko has a strong writing style and am excited for more as I really enjoyed this as a third entry in the Vita Nostra series, it does a great job in creating that dark academia and was hooked from the first page. The characters worked well in this setting and thoroughly enjoyed the concept and how they were used.

I will forever remember this series as one of the weirdest I've ever read (but enjoyed!).
Magical school and dark academia is a mix I can't resist and even if this last book wasn't as centred around the MFC, I still enjoyed it.
I'm not sure I'd be able to describe it in a way that could do it justice but I'll keep recommending it!

Finally, we have finished actualization and have witnessed the metamorphosis of Sasha; from Human to Student to Concept to [redacted] to Provost. It ends here. And the experience was wild, disorienting, and strange. I’m rating this a hesitant 4 stars. Thanks to NetGalley, Harper Voyager, and Avon for this ARC. I appreciate this more than you know.

I’m so glad I reread Vita Nostra and Assassin of Reality right before I tackled this book. I think my experience reading School of Shards would have been materially worse if I wasn’t caught up on all the themes of the books. While it maybe a hard book to conceptually describe (HOW DO I CONVINCE MY FRIENDS TO READ A RUSSIAN MAGICAL DARK ACADEMIA BOOK THAT MAKES AS MUCH SENSE AS MODULE 1), at its core, the Vita Nostra Books are about academia. We follow Sasha as she becomes an academic. That’s it.

Sasha has always been the shining star of the books. I could write a whole essay about her (and who knows, I might). Her part feels diluted here due to the presence of 2 other POVs: Valya, Sasha’s brother, and Pashka, Yarosalv’s son. Their inclusion muddies the water a little. This has always been Sasha’s story, and while they may be a part of Sasha (grammatically or otherwise), they still didn’t feel quite… right. Maybe when I revisit this is a few years with fresh eyes, my opinions of their parts of the story will improve. But for now, they were simply fine. I wish we had more interactions/development for Kostya, hell, with all the other teachers. I love that messed up band of educators.

I still don’t fully understand “the magic” of this book, but it makes a lot more sense now. Which is a good thing, because this books feels a lot more “magic school” than the previous books. Time is constantly played with, claiming happens left and right, metamorphosis and change and reality and fear all collide in this book and it feels a bit more “fun” than the last two, you’re not stretching your brain as much. You’re rewarded for the work put in.

The plot in this book also feels a little more like a classic fantasy. We have a clear threat (reality unmade), we know what we have to do (make more Speech), we know what stands in our way (an assassin of reality). And I liked that. But I gotta say, I kinda miss being lost and struggling my way through a non-standard Western paced, Russian novel.

All in all, I have say I love this trilogy so much. I love the grammatical reality held within the pages. Not everything is a hit. But this series isn’t about being weird for weirdness sake. It’s a fascinating examination and deconstruction of academia and humanity. It’s delightfully dark and Russian. It’s beautiful. So I can’t help but verify my love of it through my reviews.

School of Shards brings the trilogy to a thoughtful and intense close, weaving together the threads of magic, identity, and sacrifice that the series has been building toward. The Dyachenkos have a way of blending fantastical elements with deeply human struggles, and this final installment continues that tradition with a focus on internal conflict as much as external threats.

I appreciated how the book didn’t rush the resolution, allowing characters room to grapple with their choices and the consequences of their powers. The narrative remains mysterious and atmospheric, inviting reflection on themes of belonging and transformation. At times, the pacing was deliberate — maybe a bit slow for some — but that patience rewards you with richer emotional payoffs.

While the ending felt satisfying, a few secondary plotlines could have used tighter wrapping, and some world-building details remained just a little hazy. Still, the complex character dynamics and the subtle interplay between hope and darkness kept me invested throughout.

Overall, School of Shards is a fitting, emotionally resonant finale that honors the trilogy’s themes and leaves room for contemplation. It’s a strong finish for readers who appreciate layered fantasy with a literary touch.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Book 3 and the final installment to the series. Bold and ambitious, the series manages to keep you puzzled and entertained long enough to grab you by the collar and shake you as bad as the first years of the institute have it.

I'm not sure if I quite like how this ended, especially since the focus shifts away from Sasha quite a bit. We still get her pov on things and the plot is still following her needs, but the introduction of the new students and what Sasha needs strays from what I liked about book 1 and 2. Being so deeply close to Sasha as she figured out what the institute was doing and what she was becoming made me enjoy book 1 a lot. Even by the end I still had no clue what was going on (in a good way). Book 2 expands on that and gives Sasha more. More power, more view, more ability to do. Then book 3 feels like it all came crashing down. An inevitable end.

We still get the same bits of unease from the students in book 3 as we did in book 1, but we don't follow them as closely nor do we follow Sasha as closely. I think the lack of intimacy given from the characters is a large downfall. I didn't necessarily feel connected with the brothers or Vanya. They were vehicles. Means to an end. And maybe that's the point; Sasha seems to almost use people as she needs.

I wish I remembered who Nikolay Valerievich was though. It's in the dark corners of my mind, but I only sort of vaguely remember who he was.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for the eARC!

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. This is the final novel in the "Vita Nostra" trilogy, which is one of the most unique and incredible fantasy concepts I have read in a very long time. The story led us into a new version of reality, where our previous protagonist, Sasha, has become the "administrator" of the university and implements her will on the world -- only to find her methods backfiring. Highly recommended!

I found this book to be the easiest to read of the trilogy. It’s still complicated but if you’ve made it through the weirdness of book 1 and the confusion of book 2, this one will be extremely rewarding. Do read these book in order and not jump ahead - nothing will make sense otherwise.

Note: ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

From The Storytelling Blog
School of Shards by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko: A Book Review

School of Shards concludes the story of Sasha Samokhina begun in Vita Nostra (reviewed here in 2019) and continued in Assassin of Reality (review here in 2023 ) by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko.  All books in the series were translated from the Russian by Julie Meitov Hershey.

Disclosure: I received an advance reader copy from the publisher, Harper Voyager, with no obligation to review.

School of Shards

In School of Shards, Alexandra (Sasha) must enlist help from the next generation of Torpa Institute of Special Technologies students to save the Great Speech and thus reality itself. The grand ambition she displayed in Assassin of Reality has led to momentous failure. The current crop of students aren’t developing properly, and the Great Speech is in danger of falling silent. Now, as the school’s head, she recruits three special students: her younger brother and the twin sons of her former lover, Yaroslav. Perhaps, Sasha can only hope, they hold sufficient shards of her special gifts to learn quickly. Can these young men prevent disaster?

“Are you planning to bring back prerevolutionary orthography?”

Important Shards

Like Vita Nostra and Assassin, Shards tells a compelling, high-stakes story while making the reader both care about the characters and think about the meaning of life, relationships, and the fabric of the cosmos.

The book opens with yet another student miserably failing an important assignment. Sasha realizes that she made a fundamental pedagogical error by sparing the students the terror her class felt as they struggled with the curriculum. “This issue isn’t just a matter of passing, but who is passing. The grammatical composition is unbalanced. There is a dramatic shortage of verbs…To put it bluntly, the Great Speech is degenerating, and the grammatical structure is declining,” Portnov said quietly.

And, outside of the protected space around Torpa, existence is vanishing. Life as we know it will soon wink out of existence. “The Great Speech did not tolerate simplification. Should the Torpa Institute…fail to produce a new generation of strong, well-prepared graduates, the world would go mute and cease to exist—it was that stark.”

Through good old-fashioned coercion, she and her colleague, Kostya, manage to recruit three promising students, and the reader follows them through their unique first year.

Socially inept, Sasha’s younger half-brother, Valya, shows remarkable mental talent, enough to get him in a great deal of trouble. The twin sons, Pashka and Arthur, of her pilot lover have special twin abilities, which can be both a help and a hinderance with what they need to accomplish to save the Great Speech.

Reader Experience

Definitely read the Vita Nostra series in order. While each tells its own story, they are interconnected such that you’ll want the experience to unfold before you and with you. That said, I found Shards to be a bit more explicit about what exactly is going on—the time for hints, mysteries, and guesses is over. We all know by now the real purpose of the school and the arcane curriculum the young people as tasked with mastering.

Readers who enjoy diagramming sentences (Me, it’s me. I’m the grammar nerd.) as well as stories like The Magicians (Lev Grossman’s novels and the Netflix series) will dive right into the depiction of cosmic issues at a magical school.

I keep wavering back and forth on how I felt about this. It took longer to pull me in than the first two books, but eventually it did become just as engaging. However, I found the characters a little thin this time around, maybe due to the fact that we were frequently bouncing around between multiple perspectives? The moving parts of the story didn't feel as deftly woven together as the previous installments, and the pacing felt a bit odd too. I am glad to have a conclusion to the series, but ultimately I think this suffers for a variety of reasons, some of which nobody could've controlled, and the fact that nothing will ever live up to Vita Nostra.

I was very fortunate to be given an ARC of School of Shards in exchange for an honest review. I was probably among the first readers to have read the first two books in the Vita Nostra trilogy, and I've been waiting for this entry impatiently. I'm so glad to see it finished. In my mind, it is the best book of the three - not only because the main characters are already developed - but because we get to see them reflected in the eyes of newcomers, the first year students at the mad magic school in Torpa. The story focuses primarily on the next generation of Words while describing the role of Sasha as the assassin and creator of realities. My heart ached for Valya, Sasha's brother, and the twin sons of Yaroslav, the brave pilot she had loved in book 2. The studies are back with a vengeance, and we get to follow our young heroes from acceptance to the institute to the conclusion of their studies. Their course of study is complicated by temporal loops, threats of arson, and impossible to complete homework assignments.
It was bittersweet to see Kostya, Sasha's first love, take the place of his father, Farit, who had terrorized Sasha and her fellow students into studying harder in the first two books. It gave me a glimpse of Farit's character in a way the first two books hadn't, and made me want to reread them. In all, I feel like rereading the entire trilogy, now that it's complete, is a good idea - I'm sure I will see things I haven't noticed before on second (or third/fourth look! I've reread them before).
This is just a magical book, suffused with affection for its characters, and I hope it finds more readers searching for fantasy and magical realism. Beyond the genre, though, it's a beautiful story of love, loss, and change, for anyone with a heart and a brain. It's been compared to Harry Potter for adults, but I'd say this is a far more complex universe, with multidimensional heroes, meant to engage you in ways HP never could.

Overall, a satisfying conclusion to a fairly intense trilogy! The stakes kept getting raised throughout, and this book wrapped it up in a way that was both logical and not too "just so," the way can sometimes happen. One major challenge was that this book got more and more conceptual as it went, which was enjoyable to a degree but less engaging emotionally. Still, quite good!