A review by lexieesrw
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

3.0

The premise — giving a kind of malicious sentience to a school — is creative and memorable. The details on the world building lore can get messy and nebulous, and as a result it can be a confusing read when it comes to visualising. I found some of the characters bland, and some of them teetered on being racially stereotypical (eg the Asian kids are the engineers) and it at times felt like diversity for diversity’s sake. I did enjoy the mixed race lead, and the diversity of characters but it felt trite at times as culture didn’t play into their differences so much as Novik using the international element to refer to different languages. I’d lean towards giving this 2.5 stars, but I rounded up because I found the idea very fun, and I love it when fantasy authors give life to things as well as people.