Tuesday, 24 January 2023 09:05 pm
Book Review: A Deadly Education
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deckardcanineNaomi Novik understands the importance of a gripping first line: "I decided Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life." It's even quoted on the back cover, albeit with Orion's surname Lake added. Does the narrator, Galadriel "El" Higgins, have totally backwards values? Not exactly. To understand where she's coming from, you have to know a few things about the Scholomance, the magic high school whose name is also the title of the trilogy that this novel kicks off.
If you thought Hogwarts was irresponsibly dangerous, you ain't seen nothin' yet. To call the Scholomance a dystopia seems an understatement; it is a nonstop nightmare that would make prison look like a vacation. In particular, it fails to keep out a lot of mostly sneaky creatures called maleficaria, or mals, whose favorite food is young wizards who haven't mastered their inherent powers yet. Some mals may provide a fate worse than death. (This is apparently supposed to be our world, with most non-wizards blissfully unaware of the magic side and untargeted by mals.) There are no adults present to offer protection; lessons, food, and other resources simply appear by magic. No time or place is safe, no matter how crowded. Dealing with mals mostly gets easier for students during their four-year stay, provided they live that long, but graduation means having to get past the biggest and most dangerous mals waiting outside.
It's hard to know what the Scholomance would be like if mals weren't a thing, but as it is, they're not the only cause for complaint. While it wasn't founded by Satan and doesn't specialize in dark curricula like the Scholomance of Romanian legend, it does have at least one mind of its own, which is not consistently in the students' favor. Apparently, it requires some deaths just to stay fueled, and it adds extra dangers for underachievers. The work is hard (e.g., learning lots of modern and archaic languages fast just for spells), especially considering how little sleep one can afford. Furthermore, since the school is in a semi-separate realm and travel to it is difficult, students have strict limits on what they can bring; if they want so much as a new shirt, they have to learn to create their own or trade for it. And the snack bar has some foods decades past their freshness date.
In such a dangerous milieu, there are plenty of alliances but few true friendships, because nobody takes longevity for granted. Students who come from or are accepted into enclaves enjoy more security and luxury, especially in powerful ones like New York's, whose members might face a mal attack once every six months on average. Outcasts like El have to fend off mals almost daily.
Then there are threats from fellow students -- or oneself. Those who practice dark arts are called maleficers, most of them needing little reason to kill classmates, usually in secret, and all doomed to die from their practice if from nothing else first. As the similar names imply, every mal is either the direct result of a maleficer's experiment gone awry or a descendent of such results. With so many species, I have to wonder if wizards are as prone to madness as the Sparks from Girl Genius. Even non-maleficers might throw their neighbors into the Void (not sure how that works) for some safety or mere comfort. And many seniors have turned so selfish with worry that they'd kill everyone else to improve their chance of coming out alive.
You'd think that after the year with zero surviving grads, everyone would give up on the Scholomance. But supposedly, it's still statistically safer than any alternative. And no, there are no other magic schools in the world to our knowledge. Perhaps this is the clearest sign of writing with minors in mind: The adults are incredibly useless.
Congratulations, Naomi: You've created a fantasy system where I don't envy wizards in the slightest. Sure, it's cute that they make things happen by rhyming, but I think I'd commit suicide before anything could eat me. I'd stand better odds at Blackcliff Academy.
Anyway, junior El has no friends and few tolerators at the start of this volume, because something about her suggests a budding villain. Oh, her mother is a kind and popular healer, but her grandmother prophesied that El is the pagan equivalent of the Antichrist or something. She's not exactly amiable, and it doesn't help that her innate affinity is for super-destructive spells she doesn't dare try out. I imagine her looking like a half-South Asian version of Wednesday Addams.
And why hate Orion, who has rescued his fellow students countless times? Well, as I mentioned, the Scholomance demands sacrifice. Saving everyone is kinda like helping everyone evade taxes: What next? In general, Orion doesn't give nearly enough thought to consequences beyond the moment. Besides, El is confident in her skills and doesn't want to look weak in front of her potential allies. Orion is one spoiled enclave boy and has a poor idea of what her life is like.
Nevertheless, El has trouble wanting Orion dead for long. Once she treats him differently from everyone else he's rescued, he can't help taking a special interest in her. Classmates assume they're dating, and El starts to be allowed where she wasn't before. Orion turns out to be abused in a unique way, eliciting El's pity and reducing her desire to join an enclave. How close might they get for real?
As unfun as it would be to live at Angst Central, I rather enjoyed my vicarious visit. It's escapism in reverse, and no less exciting for that. El's snark gets amusing at times. And while I don't particularly expect her to give in to the occasional temptation to go maleficer, the final line hooks me as much as the first.
This might have been my cue to pick something less recent and/or less intense. Instead, I've started Upgrade by Blake Crouch. Wow, a new sci-fi that both my parents read ahead of me.
If you thought Hogwarts was irresponsibly dangerous, you ain't seen nothin' yet. To call the Scholomance a dystopia seems an understatement; it is a nonstop nightmare that would make prison look like a vacation. In particular, it fails to keep out a lot of mostly sneaky creatures called maleficaria, or mals, whose favorite food is young wizards who haven't mastered their inherent powers yet. Some mals may provide a fate worse than death. (This is apparently supposed to be our world, with most non-wizards blissfully unaware of the magic side and untargeted by mals.) There are no adults present to offer protection; lessons, food, and other resources simply appear by magic. No time or place is safe, no matter how crowded. Dealing with mals mostly gets easier for students during their four-year stay, provided they live that long, but graduation means having to get past the biggest and most dangerous mals waiting outside.
It's hard to know what the Scholomance would be like if mals weren't a thing, but as it is, they're not the only cause for complaint. While it wasn't founded by Satan and doesn't specialize in dark curricula like the Scholomance of Romanian legend, it does have at least one mind of its own, which is not consistently in the students' favor. Apparently, it requires some deaths just to stay fueled, and it adds extra dangers for underachievers. The work is hard (e.g., learning lots of modern and archaic languages fast just for spells), especially considering how little sleep one can afford. Furthermore, since the school is in a semi-separate realm and travel to it is difficult, students have strict limits on what they can bring; if they want so much as a new shirt, they have to learn to create their own or trade for it. And the snack bar has some foods decades past their freshness date.
In such a dangerous milieu, there are plenty of alliances but few true friendships, because nobody takes longevity for granted. Students who come from or are accepted into enclaves enjoy more security and luxury, especially in powerful ones like New York's, whose members might face a mal attack once every six months on average. Outcasts like El have to fend off mals almost daily.
Then there are threats from fellow students -- or oneself. Those who practice dark arts are called maleficers, most of them needing little reason to kill classmates, usually in secret, and all doomed to die from their practice if from nothing else first. As the similar names imply, every mal is either the direct result of a maleficer's experiment gone awry or a descendent of such results. With so many species, I have to wonder if wizards are as prone to madness as the Sparks from Girl Genius. Even non-maleficers might throw their neighbors into the Void (not sure how that works) for some safety or mere comfort. And many seniors have turned so selfish with worry that they'd kill everyone else to improve their chance of coming out alive.
You'd think that after the year with zero surviving grads, everyone would give up on the Scholomance. But supposedly, it's still statistically safer than any alternative. And no, there are no other magic schools in the world to our knowledge. Perhaps this is the clearest sign of writing with minors in mind: The adults are incredibly useless.
Congratulations, Naomi: You've created a fantasy system where I don't envy wizards in the slightest. Sure, it's cute that they make things happen by rhyming, but I think I'd commit suicide before anything could eat me. I'd stand better odds at Blackcliff Academy.
Anyway, junior El has no friends and few tolerators at the start of this volume, because something about her suggests a budding villain. Oh, her mother is a kind and popular healer, but her grandmother prophesied that El is the pagan equivalent of the Antichrist or something. She's not exactly amiable, and it doesn't help that her innate affinity is for super-destructive spells she doesn't dare try out. I imagine her looking like a half-South Asian version of Wednesday Addams.
And why hate Orion, who has rescued his fellow students countless times? Well, as I mentioned, the Scholomance demands sacrifice. Saving everyone is kinda like helping everyone evade taxes: What next? In general, Orion doesn't give nearly enough thought to consequences beyond the moment. Besides, El is confident in her skills and doesn't want to look weak in front of her potential allies. Orion is one spoiled enclave boy and has a poor idea of what her life is like.
Nevertheless, El has trouble wanting Orion dead for long. Once she treats him differently from everyone else he's rescued, he can't help taking a special interest in her. Classmates assume they're dating, and El starts to be allowed where she wasn't before. Orion turns out to be abused in a unique way, eliciting El's pity and reducing her desire to join an enclave. How close might they get for real?
As unfun as it would be to live at Angst Central, I rather enjoyed my vicarious visit. It's escapism in reverse, and no less exciting for that. El's snark gets amusing at times. And while I don't particularly expect her to give in to the occasional temptation to go maleficer, the final line hooks me as much as the first.
This might have been my cue to pick something less recent and/or less intense. Instead, I've started Upgrade by Blake Crouch. Wow, a new sci-fi that both my parents read ahead of me.