Title: A Deadly Education

Series: The Scholomance #1

Author: Naomi Novik

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.

Wow, the Scholomance is a dark and fun place to be! (Note – it is dark but certainly not fun – but is fun to read about!!)

So we have a school with no teachers where monsters called maleficaria attack everyone at any point, even whilst they sleep!

Galadriel aka El is powerful student and because of her power, she has to limit herself to make it to graduation, and to make sure everyone else makes it too! She basically has no friends until an Enclave student, Orion, inserts himself in her life.

El is grumpy and snarky and, from what I can gather, a genius! But she makes some, how can I put it, tentative friendships!

So basically this is the story of how they survive on a day to day basis as they battle mals trying to get to graduation! There’s action and a revelation I didn’t really see coming!

This was such a creative story but very full of narrative – the audio helped me there! And that last line had me so intrigued!

One question I am left with though is why parents would ever send their kids to this school is absolutely beyond me!