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A Deadly Education (Novik)
Apr. 29th, 2021 12:27 pm4/5. ...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 :) ( Implicit spoilers for Novik's last three books, nothing explicit )
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 :) ( Implicit spoilers for Novik's last three books, nothing explicit )
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.
