A Deadly Education (Novik)
Apr. 29th, 2021 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn4/5. ...okay, I found this book totally delicious because a) I feel like the whole thing was written affectionately but also totally skewering YA-grim-dystopian-love-triangle-ness (there is fake dating, but no love triangle in this book, just snark about the potential for a fake dating love triangle, which I found hilarious -- but also it's a YA grim dystopia that is actually well-written and works and isn't super anvilicious (1), which is... well, I can say that about other YA grim dystopia I've read, but certainly that is not what first comes to mind when I think about YA grim dystopia I've read in the past, much it for the Hugos), and also b) it could be looked at as a (quite well written) subset of Harry/Draco Grimdark AU only we can't have non-het so Draco is a girl with just a very fandom feel to it in terms of the things it's interested in examining from Harry Potter -- I saw a review that compared it to The Magicians, and the thing is that while Magicians had a similar "let's deconstruct Harry Potter via a dark gritty version" idea, it wasn't engaged in looking at it from a fandom perspective. (2)
I mean, the boy's name is Orion, and the book opens with how he is constantly saving people from gruesome fates, and El is really grumpy about it, and she doesn't think he even knows her name before he went off saving her life. And Orion sticks closely to El for a while because he thinks she's a dark magician... I have read all those fics before, is what I'm saying :D I don't think El ever shows up in leather pants but I was totally waiting for it :D (Though, I mean, Novik changes enough that they're their own characters -- Orion is the one who has the cushypureblood enclave parents; El is the scrappy kid of a lovely hippy single mom.) Anyway, in general, the extremely-fandomesque-deconstruction of Harry Potter / Hogwarts is hilarious to me -- there are all sorts of bits like El explaining why they're always all studying in the library even though they don't really like it there: it's because it's safer there from the marauding monsters! or why the teaching/pedagogy is so horrible: because there are no teachers, it's all done automagically.
As well, although the tone of the book is not heavy (as opposed to dark; it's very dark, but what I mean is that this book is not making a bid to be Srs Lit), I wonder if the entire book isn't basically a metaphor for high school and college admissions and how college admissions / going from school to the outside world in general are basically like a monster that can eat you alive. The graduation monsters literally do so, in the book; but also it happens figuratively, as people overcome ethical qualms to do things that aren't very nice, and not-very-nice-deals are struck, and alliances are made, and people are taken advantage of, and privilege tramples over the un-privileged.
This is all so smoothly done (and Novik's writing is very smooth and compelling -- she really is getting better and better with every book, and I basically inhaled this over a couple of days) that by itself I would have liked the book very much, but what really made me love it are the relationships El forms slowly and painstakingly with a couple of the other kids (not just Orion, although I got a kick out of that as well). That's the heart of the book, and a book as dark as this needs a heart. And it's a good one.
And the other thing that made this book really good: the last quarter of the book I really loved, which brings together a theme I've noticed in Novik's writing before and Harry Potter fandom-critique :) I loved this in Uprooted [ETA: and,thistleingrey reminds me, Spinning Silver!], and I love it here: the idea that sometimes the solution is not to work against the enemy, to promote more and more divison -- but to work with the enemy. And of course that's the most common of Harry Potter critiques: that the Houses never worked together, that a full quarter of Hogwarts was just... written off, by the end, and it's lovely how Novik has inverted the situation here.
The only quibble I had was that much is made at the beginning of everyone disliking El on sight -- El says that this isn't because of anything she does, it's because of something about her or her aura. But then during the course of the book she is able to form relationships with others, and except for Orion it's never really explained what happened to overcome her aura or whatever. The best I can come up with is that El isn't a reliable narrator, and though yeah maybe she doesn't present well and people respond negatively to that at first, she responds to people being turned off her at first by being a jerk to everyone (she does know she does this, and there's ample evidence of this in the book) in a self-perpetuating spiral, and it's that spiral that gets checked with those particular people. But it would have been nice to have just a bit more text pointing to that, not just my headcanon.
Content warning: it is grimdark horror! Lots of gruesome bits, lots of people dying in gruesome ways.
This is the one to have to beat for the Lodestar, I'm guessing. I'll be really surprised if anything else on the Lodestar ballot tops this.
(1) I mean, yeah, sure, the premise is anvilicious by design, but I'm so glad not to get lines about How People Are Evil For Doing X, or whatever; that's what I mean.
(2) I feel that the Scholomance world is, while extremely dark, also more coherent than the ersatz Narnia world of the Magicians if only by virtue of not trying to do so much -- Novik isn't trying to merge two things that are diametrically opposed to each other.
I mean, the boy's name is Orion, and the book opens with how he is constantly saving people from gruesome fates, and El is really grumpy about it, and she doesn't think he even knows her name before he went off saving her life. And Orion sticks closely to El for a while because he thinks she's a dark magician... I have read all those fics before, is what I'm saying :D I don't think El ever shows up in leather pants but I was totally waiting for it :D (Though, I mean, Novik changes enough that they're their own characters -- Orion is the one who has the cushy
As well, although the tone of the book is not heavy (as opposed to dark; it's very dark, but what I mean is that this book is not making a bid to be Srs Lit), I wonder if the entire book isn't basically a metaphor for high school and college admissions and how college admissions / going from school to the outside world in general are basically like a monster that can eat you alive. The graduation monsters literally do so, in the book; but also it happens figuratively, as people overcome ethical qualms to do things that aren't very nice, and not-very-nice-deals are struck, and alliances are made, and people are taken advantage of, and privilege tramples over the un-privileged.
This is all so smoothly done (and Novik's writing is very smooth and compelling -- she really is getting better and better with every book, and I basically inhaled this over a couple of days) that by itself I would have liked the book very much, but what really made me love it are the relationships El forms slowly and painstakingly with a couple of the other kids (not just Orion, although I got a kick out of that as well). That's the heart of the book, and a book as dark as this needs a heart. And it's a good one.
And the other thing that made this book really good: the last quarter of the book I really loved, which brings together a theme I've noticed in Novik's writing before and Harry Potter fandom-critique :) I loved this in Uprooted [ETA: and,
thistleingrey reminds me, Spinning Silver!], and I love it here: the idea that sometimes the solution is not to work against the enemy, to promote more and more divison -- but to work with the enemy. And of course that's the most common of Harry Potter critiques: that the Houses never worked together, that a full quarter of Hogwarts was just... written off, by the end, and it's lovely how Novik has inverted the situation here.The only quibble I had was that much is made at the beginning of everyone disliking El on sight -- El says that this isn't because of anything she does, it's because of something about her or her aura. But then during the course of the book she is able to form relationships with others, and except for Orion it's never really explained what happened to overcome her aura or whatever. The best I can come up with is that El isn't a reliable narrator, and though yeah maybe she doesn't present well and people respond negatively to that at first, she responds to people being turned off her at first by being a jerk to everyone (she does know she does this, and there's ample evidence of this in the book) in a self-perpetuating spiral, and it's that spiral that gets checked with those particular people. But it would have been nice to have just a bit more text pointing to that, not just my headcanon.
Content warning: it is grimdark horror! Lots of gruesome bits, lots of people dying in gruesome ways.
This is the one to have to beat for the Lodestar, I'm guessing. I'll be really surprised if anything else on the Lodestar ballot tops this.
(1) I mean, yeah, sure, the premise is anvilicious by design, but I'm so glad not to get lines about How People Are Evil For Doing X, or whatever; that's what I mean.
(2) I feel that the Scholomance world is, while extremely dark, also more coherent than the ersatz Narnia world of the Magicians if only by virtue of not trying to do so much -- Novik isn't trying to merge two things that are diametrically opposed to each other.
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Date: 2021-04-29 08:40 pm (UTC)My headcanon on El's aura is that she reads as scary, the way people can only magically more so, and once you learn enough to judge her by her choices you can tell that it's just a vibe. She's the magic version of the teen whose style preferences put her outside the safe friend zone, for anyone looking to conform, which at that age is most people.
I'm fairly sure I see where the series is ultimately going, but I have no sense of how it will get there. This is a delicious situation. I've seen Novik set herself problems she doesn't seem to know quite how to solve -- that's my sense of what happened with the final Temeraire novel, where all the tensions of an impossibly complicated not-our-history-but-has-to-resolve-like-our-history story get cut in half by a Very Special New Super-dragon -- but I agree with you that she's been getting better with every book. I have a lot of faith in her.
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Date: 2021-05-01 04:50 am (UTC)She's the magic version of the teen whose style preferences put her outside the safe friend zone, for anyone looking to conform, which at that age is most people.
Oh, yeah! This reminds me that I also found this to be a hilariously-intentionally-over-the-top grimdark retelling of what it's like to be in high school. The cool (privileged) kids! The kids who are of use to the cool kids! The outsider kid! The kids who can kind of go between groups! Yeah.
I feel like part of the problem with Temeraire (which admittedly I haven't read all the books of) was that it was so many books, which let issues have larger scope. In a two-book series I have a lot more faith that she can tell a tight story.
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Date: 2021-04-30 01:41 pm (UTC)It wouldn't surprise me... but a particularly grim/unpleasant one. (I pretty much also raced through the book, but and I like El a lot, but this was pretty much the opposite of what I want in my magic school stories, so it was a weird reading experience...)
Self-perpetuating spiral and unreliable narrator is how I see it as well -- El's "about to rain" or whatever aura puts people on edge when they first meet her, and she's used to people being leery of her / not caring about her, so she acts like a jerk preemptively, and it spirals from there to where she rarely manages to overcome that initial impression. Except with people she's thrown together with who get the opportunity (and are open-minded enough) to observe her actions and actually adjust their expectations.
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Date: 2021-05-01 06:08 am (UTC)It's cool that you got the same impression I did! I just wish we'd gotten a little more explicit text one way or another.
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Date: 2021-05-02 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-03 05:19 am (UTC)I do think the world Novik has postulated is sufficiently grim, both in the sense of being a really strong metaphor for privilege and inequality and in the more literal sense of "set up so massive amounts of people regularly die," that I still suspect that someone who wasn't okay with the level of darkness in GRRM or Grossman would also have some trouble with this book.
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Date: 2021-05-04 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-04 04:41 pm (UTC)You know, this also makes me wonder if Novik isn't trying to say something about these grimdark worlds. Because what's so very awesome about El is that she absolutely refuses to make those accommodations -- which very much do exist in the world, and are very much considered as the status quo -- she never accepts that it's necessary even when it's her life on the line, and she is able to thread her way through. (With a bit of luck, to be sure, and certainly power -- but also because she's unwilling to make those accommodations and other characters see that and respond to that.) And like you say it's so different from all these other grimdark writers (and why I love this book and don't love theirs).
That is to say, I fully agree with what you say and I think it's very different from Joe Abercrombie or KJ Parker, where, like you say, I come away feeling begrimed, whereas being in El's POV is very clean. (HUH, I bet it's no mistake that the book begins with El looking for a cleaning spell...)
Such a cool book, I feel like I inhaled it so quickly that I sort of slotted it into my "really enjoyed this, fast read" bin, but there's so much more going on!
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Date: 2021-10-06 01:46 am (UTC)I think what puts me off in a lot of grimdark stuff is there's no feeling stuff can change -- people can struggle and try to make the world better, but the best they can hope for is an honorable defeat. But if they do have the power to do something, to change something, there's the hope things can be better even if they don't win. (Which is why Rogue One is a comfort watch movie for me -- everyone dies! but they have hope, and they die as they choose to, trying to make things better.)
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Date: 2021-10-06 04:12 pm (UTC)But yessssss so many times to being able to effect change! -- dying isn't the issue, the issue is if you died for nothing :(
*cough* Rodrigo in Don Carlo, it's fine that he died but I will NEVER FORGIVE VERDI for his death being USELESSno subject
Date: 2021-10-06 04:24 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, that's REALLY depressing. I love both Tiptree and Caitlin Kiernan but a lot of the time in their books the struggle to do good is not only doomed, but useless. I'm kinda wary of the "hopepunk" thing because I LOATHE forced optimism ("I'm glad I got cancer because it was a gift that helped me to see the world differently!" omfg no, not for me) but the Good Guys don't even have to win at the end (see Rogue One). But that their lives have meaning, that they're able to make their own choices and hold fast to their principles and their own selves even if they lose -- if that's not in a story it just really bums me out.
(That said, I LOVED the character of Aunt Lydia in Atwood's recent Testaments, the sequel to the Handmaid's Tale, because she took a very minor and flat character and made her into this sort of Le Carre character who deliberately decides to become part of the regime to bring it down, but it wasn't a bummer for me....maybe because her rage is so incandescent and she's such a master plotter. Hmm.)
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Date: 2021-10-08 04:37 am (UTC)Huh, I haven't read Testaments, that sounds interesting! Also master plotting is a thing I Really Like :D
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Date: 2021-10-08 06:03 am (UTC)Testaments is great! I dunno if it makes sense without Handmaid's Tale tho -- in Tale Lydia is a total villain, and then you get the flip side. Testaments also has some mildly unconvincing teenage girls in it, but I forgave every infelicity because LYDIA. I love great female villains who are like "Burn it all down," especially if they're morally grey and not sure if it was worth it but it's too late to stop now.
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Date: 2021-10-08 04:00 pm (UTC)Oh, yeah, I've read Handmaid's Tale but it was sooooo long ago, I have forgotten who all the characters are -- I'd have to read it again if I tried this one.
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Date: 2021-05-25 04:34 am (UTC)I did see one review that also mentioned very briefly that it also works to read it through a Transformers lens, but since I'm not in that fandom I can't speak to that at all. (I'm hoping
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Date: 2021-06-17 05:39 am (UTC)It's the arena and Galadriel is going to grow up to be Megatron. Independent magicians, rise up!TFWiki page relevant to character naming. I suspect it will prove more complicated than jolly-seeming well-intentioned Orion and his incidental combat magic affinties just happening to exist, but we'll see.
I'm fairly hung up on Orion's ability to pull mana from mals. Why isn't everyone doing that? Can it be taught? Is it an indication of Sinister Goings-On at the New York enclave? (Novik is a G1 fangirl, wacky mad science / engineering projects are in the cartoon's wheelhouse. The experimenting-on-people mad science is more of an IDW-era comics development, IIRC.)
Other than that... think twice about who might be suffering in the dark for someone else's comfortable life. And choose your victory condition wisely.
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