A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Synopsis
Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered.

There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic, and the odds of survival are never equal. Once you’re inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate or you die.

El Higgins is uniquely prepared for the school’s many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions – never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school.

Except, she might accidentally kill all the other students, too. So El is trying her hardest not to use it . . . that is, unless she has no other choice.

Review
When I first started reading Fantasy Fiction about two years ago Naomi Novik was one of the authors I was told I should read. She has quite a good back catalogue, but I was lucky enough to be given a copy of A Deadly Education which was published in paperback in May. This is the first in a Duology set in a school of magic, like no other; imagine a nightmare version of Hogwarts. The school is set in a black void making it impossible to to leave until graduation, or another student pushes you into to it to die. There are no teachers only monsters, and less than half the students are expected the graduate, the other half killed by the monsters. Into this comes Galadriel, El, a loner in a place where safety is in numbers, but her magic is not like the others, she can’t use it to make alliances. Her magic is strong and dark, but also dangerous, so whilst she could kill the monsters, she could also kill the students, and has a prophecy for slaughter an destruction. As El tries to survive she has to open herself up and learn to trust others if she wants to survive.

This book has its roots in Romanian Folklore about Scholomance, a fabled school of black magic run by the devil, and reading this book I think the monsters there, and some of the students are more frightening than the devil. Monsters lurk everywhere, in the food, the showers, the classrooms, just waing for a lonely, unwitting student to come along. The fear is not just of monsters but of other students that practice’malia’ a dark magic that feasts on ‘mana’ a life force, from people and iinaminate objects, that have to be sacrificed. Even is you survive the horrors this school holds there is still graduation, where students face the worst of the monsters, before they can leave, if they leave. Naomi Novak keeps the tension throughout, as El and her classmates fight to stay alive, in this horrible and fearsome world she has created where literaly there is no where to run in the void. There are so many current themes addressed in this book, class differences, equality, the consequences of our actions and how we cannot go through life alone.

I really liked El as a character, and felt I understood her in some way. She is a loner, brought up in a commune by her mother after the death of her father in graduation. Most of the other students come from enclaves so are part of a group, giving them the better chance of survival. El finds it hard to trust and has no friends, making her vunerable, but during the course of the book, she seems to open herself up mainly due to her unwanted protector Orion Lake. Orion is everything El is not, popular, part of the New York Enclave and now her protector, whether she wants it or not. Orion is everyones knight in shining armour, always on hand to save the day, but shows modesty and is unpretentious about his skills. His interest in El sees her popularity rise, as enclaves and other students start to take notice. The relationship between El and Orion is one of sarcasm, she doesn’t adore him or admire him like others do and I loved watching then spar against each other. There is also a host of interesting characters, all trying to graduate alive in anyway they can, as it is a game of the survuval of the fittest.

A Deadly Education is a dark, tense, magical and spellbinding read. The school is fearsome in it’s need to feast upon students, and the monsters are terrifying to say the least. El is a wonderful character, strong and independent, and as the plot progresses she realises that she can’t do this alone, and has to compromise. I was totally hooked by this book and am lucky enought to have the sequel from the publisher to read and I can’t wait to see what happens next, especially after the cliffhanger ending.