A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) Naomi Novik | Spoiler-Free Book Review [CC]

and there were tentacle beasts around
every corner and i really enjoyed that
welcome back to dead good book reviews
i’m judith welcome to the floor of my
reading room once again
today we’re here to review a deadly
education i’ve been a naomi novik fan
since well pretty much since i’ve been
on the bookish internet
so i was very excited to read her latest
book a deadly education
and tell you all about it a little bit
before release date some quick
disclaimers before we kick off i was
sent a digital review copy of this book
that’s why you’re not seeing it behind
me as ever being sent a free copy of it
does not affect my opinions whatsoever
nobody is paying me to talk about books
if you would like to pay me to talk
about books
you can second disclaimer this will be a
spoiler free review
uh there will be no spoilers here i’m
going to do my best to keep them out
you will hear about elements of the plot
in this review so if you want to keep
yourself completely free of any
expectations
why are you watching a video review
don’t watch this
so if you want to go in knowing nothing

/> go read it and then come back when
you’ve read the book
third disclaimer i’m a white woman
reviewing a book in which the main
character is not white
so while I am going to talk a bit about
the representation in this book i’m not
talking about it from any place of
authority or particular wisdom
remember to go and read own voices
reviews you have been disclaimed
if you for some reason have never
encountered naomi novik before let me
give you a bit of information
she is an american i think she’s a first
generation american i’m not quite sure
what the language around that is because
I’m in the uk
is an american speculative fiction
author who’s written all sorts of things
she’s written all sorts of things
including the temeraire series which is
dragons
spinning silver and uprooted which are
both original fairy tales i have all
these on the shelf i should show you
them
i’m not gonna stand up though i didn’t
know this until i was doing the research
for this video
but naomi novik has a degree in computer
science from colombia which isn’t
relevant to this book
in any way shape or form but i always
find it interesting to know what authors
did
or what they studied or what they were
doing before they were authors so
what is a deadly education so this is
the first book in what i believe
is going to be a trilogy according to
entertainment weekly in what’s going to
be called the scholomance
series this is out on september the 29th
from del rey in the uk
and so it goes on my big list of all the
books that i’m excited for that are
coming out in september this series is
named after the school in which events
take place the scholomance the scholomance
is a school for the magically
gifted where essentially
you graduate or you die if you manage to
make your way through the school year
without being eaten or killed by various
beasties that have crawled up through
the pipes or vents then on graduation
day
the graduating class gets lowered down
into the chamber at the bottom of the
school where they have to fight their
way out
our main character El who is
inconvenienced by her affiliation with
really really evil powers that she
doesn’t necessarily want
is just trying to make her way through
the school year when she starts to
uncover some weird stuff that’s going on
in the school
all while trying to avoid the attentions
of school hero orion lake
so it’s like a magical school with
a kind of constant threat of death
things that i liked about this book i
really liked the setup
i liked that the book starts with El
being already established in the school
she’s not in her graduation year but
neither is she in her first year
in the world of magical school
literature i feel like the plot would
normally start with this kind of like
doe-eyed
girl starting in magical school and
having to learn all the pitfalls and
perils for a variety of reasons i
thought it was really smart to have the
reader join the narrative at a point
where El
is established she has a pretty good
idea of what she’s doing i think it adds
to this
idea of a world where these students are
in constant fear of being attacked to
the point where it has become normal
and El’s kind of jaded towards it if
we’re following that pixar storytelling
setup of
everything was normal whatever normal is
until something changed then
in this in this situation normal is
already quite weird so having that
properly set up and then having the
change happen is done really well
the magic system who saw this coming i
thought this was another really great
magic system in part because of the
setup El is still learning magic so we
get a decent amount of information about
how magic works and she’s still trying
to figure it out
but she isn’t starting at the very
beginning so we still get to see her do
some cool stuff
in the school spells are kind of
currency they’re part of the bartering
system so they used to trade your way so
if you discover
a really cool spell that could be your
key to having an alliance that gets you
through graduation
the way that that works is you might ask
for a spell for cleaning
and the school would fling a book your
way but it might be in a language that
you barely speak it might be
a very specific kind of spell for
cleaning blood off a floor and you
actually just wanted to mop
you know that kind of thing so El
quite frequently will ask for a very
small smell and get a spell that could
like
topple an entire empire because of her
affiliation with that kind of
catastrophic magic so this follows the
idea of magic having a cost which is
quite familiar trope in fantasy fiction
in this case you build up mana by doing
a task that causes you some strain so
a lot of press ups would generate mana
crochet
generates mana but the other way that
you can do magic is
if you’re a maleficer maleficer i’m
not quite sure
malfy sir
that’s where you take life energy from
other things so
a hamster and use that to do your magic
which can have very bad effects on the
spell user
but is pretty efficient this book mostly
focuses in on the mana stuff there’s
some
maleficer stuff happening but uh the
discussion of mana and how that ties
into the theme of privilege in this book
i thought was very interesting
i liked the school and by talking about
the school i’m really talking about the
setting we get a few kind of anecdotal
snippets from the outside world about
elle’s past and so such but the majority
of all of the plot is happening in the
school and it’s about the school so the
scholomance that inspired this story is the
scholomance of
uh fable so it came about i have written
it down
it was referenced in an 1885 article
about superstitions in transylvania
so the school was supposedly run by the
devil there’s all of this kind of like
fantasy writing about the scholomance
it’s referenced by bram stoker
it’s also apparently referenced by
cassandra clare so mortal instruments
fans
there you go while she is creating a
school for magic called the scholar
months where things are pretty bad naomi
novik isn’t directly referencing the
1800s scholomance
her school is one completely sealed off
from the outside world basically all
these children are attracting
these evil creatures of various kinds uh
to the school
uh but the school is sealed off it’s all
tied in so that the creatures in theory
can’t get to them
the creatures that are small enough can
get up through the vents and pipes and
hide away in nooks and crannies and
attack the children
the bigger creatures who can’t get
through uh just wait in that graduation
hall
growing and feeding on each other so the
biggest survive to attack the graduating
class
there’s also this idea of the school
rotating and lowering
so you start at the top where the beasties
are less likely to get you and you go
lower and lower and then that graduating
class is lowered down into the hall
which i thought was really interesting
there’s a lot of
magical mechanics at play it’s just it’s
a stupidly cool setting
that you see through a character who’s
already established in its eyes i’m
gonna keep coming back to the idea but i
think it’s so clever
the fact that she chose to start the
story there you learn about the school
in kind of drips and drabs you don’t
ever get a full set out there wasn’t a
map in the review copy that i had
it’s that thing of where you can’t see
the edges of it so it just feels
ginormous but we know it can house
thousands of students it’s just a really
cool setting and i really liked it
the tone of this book i think is
important to mention this book is
written in first person narrative from
El’s perspective so if you’re not in
the mood for reading a quite angsty
teenage girl
this may not be the book for you i
personally really enjoyed it it’s a
magical school where there’s a lot of
focus on old books and spells and such
but it never feels
if you’ll pardon the phrasing up itself
i think part of the reason that worked
is that book
looks at both sides of the idea of
privilege so you have both characters
who don’t have privilege looking at
people who do
and characters who do have privilege
realizing that that is something they
have
or indeed not realizing it but you see
that from the lesser character’s
perspective you know
i wouldn’t say it’s a totally fresh take
on the issue but i think it’s part of
what distinguishes this book from
the dark academia stuff so there’s kind
of a quite casual tone to this book it
feels very modern
in a kind of timeless way i feel like
you would say this book was happening
anytime within the last 30 years and it
would make sense
it’s very funny without being a comedy
it’s emotional without being completely
draining
essentially it’s a very human book for a
book where there are tentacles around
every
corner and i think it is a good book
that crosses over between
adult and y.a kind of fantasy some
things to note
i’m still trying to find a way of saying
the
opposite of the things i did like but
you might like them still working on
that phrasing
things to note the representation so the
main character El is half indian
uh her mother and her father met when
they were at the scholomance there’s been a
lot of discourse lately about writing
characters of color when you are not an
author of color or you are not own
voices that perspective because
specifically when you’re writing a point
of view you have to be able to capture
that person’s story and identity
so El is half indian and as far as i
am aware i did my research naomi novik
is not
again i’m not the person who can speak
on this issue but what i will say is El
is not connected to her indian family
pretty much at all she goes there at one
point but
it’s part of the story that i don’t want
to spoil although the languages that she
knows because of her heritage do come
into play as part of the book i
personally again not the best person to
say it but i personally don’t think the
representation was harmful
but i think that the argument would be
it’s not as nuanced a representation as
it would be coming from an author who is
half indian
i’d recommend going and reading some own
voices reviews as we come closer to the
publication date i think there will be
more people who have read this
who can comment on it my second point
where were the gays
i never want to be one of those people
where my sexuality is my entire
personality
but in this case i really do have to say
it again where were
the gays it’s 2020 and you’re writing a
book about a magical school in which
there
are thousands of students statistically
speaking
one of them many more than one but one
of them
should have been gay like i could have
blinked and missed some lgbtqia plus
representation but i don’t think i did
and i might have understood if there was
no romance whatsoever in the book none
at all because they’re all so busy
focused on surviving to the end of their
graduating year you know maybe these
teenagers are all way too busy trying to
stay alive
to listen to their hormones but there is
a romance this main character is
discovering all of this extra stuff
happening in the school and she still
has time to have a romance
just it wouldn’t it wouldn’t have hurt
the book to just have one of the
characters be interested in another
woman or
a man interested in a man or a character
who used they them pronouns it wouldn’t
be difficult
it’s really frustrating because as much
as i can say it would be lovely to see
that in later books now if it’s in there
it’s going to feel 10 times as
tokenistic
it’s difficult to ask for representation
don’t write thousands of characters and
then have no one be gay don’t do it
the romance i do want to touch on the
romance it takes up
a fairly big chunk of this book it’s not
romance focused but it is really there
i think this book could have been quite
happy just being platonic but perhaps
that’s just me being bitter about the
lack of lgbtq plus stuff
like it’s not really insta love it’s not
an annoying
romance by any means i just think it
didn’t necessarily need to be there and
it might have been something to develop
in
later books rather than cramming into
this one
so some other things you might want to
read if you’ve read this and enjoyed it
or if you’re just looking to build up
your tbr
if you read this and you want more naomi
novik my personal favorite is uprooted i
think it’s really really good
though i should say i haven’t finished
temeraire so i might enjoy that more but
uprooted is an
all-time favorite though it still does
have a sad lack of gay do you want
a character with a villainous lean to
them as your main character in ya
forrest of a thousand lanterns by julie
c dao it’s a wicked stepmother retelling
but the wicked stepmother is the main
character oh it’s so good
you know this one yes if you want a
story where the characters are kind of
trapped underground this is kind of my
wild card connection
but uh face like glass by frances
hardinge involves everyone being stuck
underground in caverna an entirely
underground city uh
just some little comparisons in there
for you final thoughts should you read
this
i think absolutely yes despite the lack
of gay
i think it’s a really fun read and it
really surprised me i enjoyed it
i really felt kind of the emotion going
through it which was really good and i
really connected with El the main
character book one ties off really
neatly which i think leaves a lot of
space to develop new things in book two
which i’m hoping that they do
i’m really looking forward to more from
El and i’ll be watching this space
thank you very much for watching this
review i hope you enjoyed it comment
below with another book that you think
should have been more gay while you’re
down there you can like you can follow
me on all of my socials they’re all
listed below
you can also subscribe it makes me feel
loved and appreciated that’s all from me
and i will see you in the next one
there’s gonna be some bloopers now
probably too zoomed in
some quick disclaimers before we start
off uh i should close my window
cease your incessant buzzing so the
scholomance is a fabled school of black
magic this is like
in the real world the scholomance is the
fabled

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