A review by maxierosalee
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

adventurous dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 This was another book that unfortunately falls in the "cool premise, mediocre execution" for me, although there were times when it peaked to fall into the "borderline good" stage, hence the extra half-star.

My biggest problem was just the exposition dumps. There was so much exposition to slog through.

In my opinion, Novik has made a legitimately fascinating world, on paper at least. I love the idea of Harry Potter but deconstructed and showed how legitimately deadly a world like that would be to magical children. There were times when maybe Novik toed the line of ridiculousness a bit too much, but I didn't mind too much. If anything, it almost added to the dark humor of the book. Harry Potter is an idealized magical world (at least in the early books), Scholomance is the exact opposite and is borderline grimdark.

Unfortunately, Novik's strategy of worldbuilding is to have El, the narrator and main character of the book, grace us with exposition dumps. Paragraphs and paragraphs of exposition dumps. I loved the world but hated reading about it. Scenes would stop because a character would introduce a new aspect to the world, some kind of new creature or rule of the magic system, and then El would have to stop and explain it to the reader in full, pace-halting detail. When it feels like the story has to grind to a halt and half a chapter is dedicated to exposition, it's no longer engaging to me. It's tedious. Really, I feel like that's the main issue I had with the book. Weave the exposition into the story in a less heavy-handed way, and I feel like this would easily be a 4 star book for me.

Galadriel (El for short) was annoying at first, but I actually warmed up to her by the time the book ended. She gave me petulant child vibes. She puts on a front of being rude to everyone. She's snarling at Orion constantly, she snaps at her classmates. She thinks about how she can blast Orion into a bloody pulp, how she can level the school with her magical powers, how she can take on Orion in a fight, but never actually does. A lot of her thoughts, especially in her interactions with Orion, boil down to "I wanted to [insert physical hostile action here] to Orion, but ended up not doing it." While I maybe thought her development and the character arc she goes through might have been a bit sudden and it would have been nice to have the seeds of it sowed earlier, it was still a nice character arc to see develop.

I don't know if any character outside of Galadriel and Orion in last act of the book were really all that engaging, but they weren't overly dull or tedious to read about. Novik didn't fall into the usual boarding school tropes that are in so many other books. She could have given us the same exact character tropes we see in boarding school books: the fish-out-of-water main character, the good-without-question allies of the main character, the obligatory mean bully, shallow love interest put on a pedestal. It's a breath of fresh air, and I commend Novik for it.

Also, confession: Part of me thought Orion and El was cute. Yeah, it's the kind of silly where it's like "El is constantly rude to Orion and in real life, this would be a toxic relationship" but...I don't know, man. It's a romance trope guilty pleasure of mine.

So, do I want to read the rest of the series? Maybe Novik got out all of the exposition dumps in the first book and it'll make the other ones better for me to read.

I'll be real. If I do read the rest of the series, it'll just be to see where El and Orion end up. I hope they kiss again.
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