Hi Cara,
Today book review takes me back to a magical school. The book in question is A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. A Deadly Education is the first book in the Schoolmance series.
A Deadly Education comes out on 29th September 2020.
Lesson One of the Scholomance
Learning has never been this deadly
A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere. El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.
(Synopsis from Goodreads.com)
A Deadly Education is true to its name as I’ve never read a book where getting an education can be so deadly.
The leading lady in A Deadly Education is Galadriel aka El, and although she isn’t well-liked by her classmates I really liked her. She is blunt, sarcastic and smart, which not everyone can handle. Although her magic infinity is for the destruction she tries really hard not to blow things up and kill everyone.
One of my favourite element is El “relationship” with Orion Lake the ‘Hero” of Schoolmance. Everyone in the school treats Orion like the golden child and they bend over backwards for him. El doesn’t and I love some of the insults she throws at him. I liked it even more when he banters back.
What surprised me about A Deadly Education was how emotional I got when El talked about the way people treat her and the loneliness of it all. Especially as everyone loves her mum so much she can see the difference even more, in the way they treat her.
There is a lot of Drama in A Deadly Education with the fact that death is literally around every corner from evil maleficent trying to eat your malia aka magic and even some student will kill you for power. Having this ever-present danger keeps the pact and interest in the story. I was never sure what the end game would be for the story but enjoyed the ending and how it left things for book 2.
My rating for A Deadly Education is 3.8 out of 5.
Thank you to Netgalley and Del Ray for gifting me an ebook copy of A Deadly Education for a fair and honest review.
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Thanks for reading,
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