A Deadly Education is the dark, magical boarding school saga we’ve been waiting for

Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education is the dark, feminist magical boarding school saga we’ve been waiting for, sure to soothe Harry Potter fans’ hearts.

Book news you can use: Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education is an instant contender for the best YA fantasy novel of 2020.

The story, which arrives just as many of us are uncomfortably wrestling with our complicated feelings about J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter universe, gives us the sorcerers’ boarding school saga we’ve been waiting for, complete with an appealingly difficult heroine, an exciting, fast-paced plot, and an entirely unique universe populated with matter-of-fact diversity and one of the most intriguing magical worlds in fiction at the moment.

A Deadly Education is the story of Galadriel “El” Higgins, a powerful potential dark sorceress attending the dangerous magical institution known as the Scholomance. A school where survival is the only aim, the students fight for their lives from the moment of their arrival, battling the hidden, monstrous malificaria (or “mals”) that inhabit the air ducts and lurk in the buildings’ drains, constantly trying to eat them on the way to class.

Graduation is the most dangerous time of all, as the seniors who manage to survive their four years in the Scholomance must fight their way through a horde of monsters in the school basement in order to reach their adult lives on the other side. A lot of them don’t make it, and the risk of death-by-horrible-monster drives many of the less fortunate students to compete for alliance space with richer, well-off kids from specific magical “enclaves” who share power and have access to better weapons.

A junior, El is attempting to position herself for inclusion in a single year alliance, when in fact she’s a powerful enough sorceress in her own right to wipe out half the school – if only she’d unleash her dark side. She’s not just incredibly powerful, her particular magical affinity makes her particularly adept at creating potentially world-ending destruction, the kind that could kill hundreds of her classmates in addition to the monsters in the basement.

Much of A Deadly Education is focused on El’s lifelong attempt to control her darkest impulses and choose the path of light, but her offputting personality – and a clear affinity for dark magic –  has generally made it difficult for her to make friends. Pretty much everyone thinks she’s basically Voldemort in the making, to steal a reference from that other wizard series, from her dead father’s relatives to her neighbors to the classmates she’s forced to share a lunch table with.

A prickly sort of antiheroine who’s often difficult to like but easy to understand, El is a sarcastic, rude, and strangely perfect lead for the story Novik is telling. The push-pull nature of her reluctant connection with school hero Orion Lake – he keeps saving her life despite her best efforts to show off her own abilities – is charming and sweet, and her journey to discover her own worth is a surprisingly moving one.

The ease with which Novik crafts a diverse group of supporting characters – from the snooty clique of New York rich kids who don’t realize how much the less affluent students are suffering all around them to the trio of misfits who eventually become El’s best friends – is amazing to witness and despite the fact that many of them do very bad or potentially even unforgivable things, their choices remain understandable ones.

And finally, the world of the Scholomance itself is ridiculously and fantastically complex. The school itself is as much a character as any of the students, a bizarre world in which each student dorm room also contains a dark and unknowable void, and the halls themselves rotate closer to the monsters as each year gets nearer to graduation. This universe’s rich and fully developed magical system, powered by two competing dark and light elements (mana and malia) that draw monsters toward those who possess the power to wield them, feels utterly fresh and unique in a YA fantasy landscape where it’s often difficult to stand out among the crowd.

Confession time: I read the entirety of A Deadly Education in a single 24 hour period. This book is absolutely impossible to put down and an exhilarating ride from start to finish. Like Novik’s other novels, A Deadly Education is determinedly focused on characters rather than story, and though the lurking monsters and student betrayals offer constantly plot compelling twists, it’s El and her reluctant friends who will keep your eyes glued to the page.

It’s an absolute must-read for anyone who loves fantasy fiction.

A Deadly Education is available now. Will you be adding it to your Fall to-read list? Let us know in the comments.