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silverflight8I read A Deadly Education for book club, which was a good thing, because I probably would have DNF'd it about a quarter through otherwise. But by the end of the novel, which I consumed in one sitting, I thought "I'd like to read the sequels", downloaded them from the library, and they sat there for a few weeks. Last night I sat down with my kobo and thought I'd start The Last Graduate.
Reader, I read the Last Graduate through in one sitting, ending at 1:30am, internally screamed at the cliffhanger, and in a fit of madness actually started reading The Golden Enclaves for a few pages, because of that cliffhanger. The next day was a rainy Sunday and I woke up late and did nothing until 4:40pm when I finished The Golden Enclaves.
A Deadly Education starts with El, a student at the Scholomance, a massive deadly magical school. There are no adults or teachers, only the school itself; the school and the students are attacked daily by dangerous maleficaria, "mals", which are attracted to the young students' mana and relatively low power. Students are teleported in with very limited supplies and must survive 4 years before they can graduate, which involves running the gauntlet of mals to the doors. Despite the fatality rate of the school, which is around 50%, it is significantly better odds than growing up on the outside, so parents continue to send their children in.
El is a self-described loser in the school: she has no magical connections like the enclaver kids who have an assured ticket to a safe life after graduation, and she has no social skills or family connections to help her forge an alliance. She is also living with the terrible doom of a prophecy over head: specifically that she's destined to destroy all the world's safe havens, the enclaves. Her penchant for magic is for complete ultra-violent destruction, which only increases her fear.
Spoilery review follows of all three books follows.
First, the reason I almost DNF'd is the anger and frustration and despairingness of El herself. I think Novik did a good job of setting up El's background to create a person who's so afraid and angry. I just find characters like this so frustrating to read, and it doesn't help that I often share online space with people like this - rightly angry, but always paddling around in the same circles, never able to break out because they believe they won't, but angry about that, so it just keeps feeding back in.
Specifically, I completely get how people around El rejecting her led her to not wanting to try. Novik did pretty well I think in general setting these up - many of the enclavers, raised in a life of privilege, being carelessly snobbish and taking the work of others for granted, but still human and with some unexpected traits. But El, especially in the first book, wouldn't stop lying to herself about so much of it. She was too hurt to make friends, but she knew and desperately wanted to make alliances to survive. She kept saying she was prepared to use people, and then steadfastly refused to even be nice back to anyone who was willing to talk to her. She said she had no advantages while sitting on her mum's name - so famous that when it is revealed, it's a big deal, and someone who wanted to be practical and use all her resources should have tried to exploit that. I know this kind of cognitive dissonance is realistic - and that El ultimately by book 3 decides that her refusal to take steps down this path is going to save her - but it did not make it at all less frustrating to read, since the novels are fairly introspective and therefore spend a lot of time with El thinking about how everything is The Worst and she's angry almost 100% of the time.
The Scholomance was cool and scary and I enjoyed a lot of the worldbuilding with that. There was an endless variety of mals which made me want to study them in a biological way, the way you see that there are over 1,000,000 species of beetle and go "wow I wonder why they are so successful?" So much of the magic was rooted in intention, I loved that the hallways were just shorter or longer depending on what you wanted from them, that believing in the hallways and corridors was part of what kept them existing, and that they posted the blueprints everywhere to help with that. The fact that mana has to be built up, at least while at school, by doing things that either cost physical exertion or annoyance, made for some fun activities, like El repeatedly crocheting and unpicking and re-crocheting any available fabric.
I was so relieved when finally El made some friends in Aadhya and Liu in A Deadly Education. Their excitement over the snacks they managed to get out of the vending machine, and the little feast they had in their rooms, was so cute and kind of a relief from all the tension.
I think all three books have a similar central problem solved by the idea of being a third way, and getting everyone to help collectively. The Scholomance was never intended to be so dangerous, but the equipment had broken early on in the 1800's, and the adults sent in to fix it just all died, repeatedly, so the school settled into its current level of deadliness. The first book, even though El's a junior, they are all collectively worried because the totals are out of whack - because another junior, Orion Lake, has been too effective at fighting the mals, and saving students. After the seniors revolt, trying to increase their own chances of survival at the expense of the other students, El manages to get them to work with her little alliance at fixing the cleansing equipment, so that the run-the-gauntlet-of-mals-graduation isn't a complete massacre. Really, it's fortunate that El has Aadhya (and later on, other friends) to help with this part. The Last Graduate, which takes place the next semester, has all of the (now very unusually large) senior class practicing running the gauntlet together, instead of in the usual enclave groups and alliances. El believes it's her duty, because of her unique abilities paired with Orion, to get them all out, once they think up a plan of getting mals into the school and then jettisoning the entire school into the void. The third book has enclaves saving themselves by inviting others in to help and being forced to make compromises
The embedding of the maw mouths in book 1 and their significance all the way along was excellent. They're terrifying and vanishingly few wizard circles, never mind individuals, have ever killed one; anyone eaten by one doesn't get to die, just spends forever suffering horribly, so it's a terrifying combination. El has a personal history with them, too. Her father was eaten by one in graduation, to save her and her mother. The linkage of the maw-mouths to the creation of enclaves is a kind of horrible logic that runs through the whole book, that there's no free lunch and everything must be bought and paid for, if not now by you, then later by someoneone else. It sets up, although doesn't quite force, the question of whose life is worth saving and if it's justified to kill some to save others. The scholomance itself is one very large unpleasant pill, trapping kids in a deadly four year prison full of death, and yet it's the best option. I think the books as a whole wrestle and cry out against the unfairness of the world, basically. The stripped down conditions of the scholomance mean that even basic luxuries like clean clothes to wear are difficult or impossible to get, and with the scarcity the division between the haves and have nots is especially stark. All of the students are hard-nosed in trying to ensure their own survival, sometimes because they've been well prepared by their family or mostly because the mals are a very good winnowing force. El is attracted and utterly repulsed by the enclave life, which she furthermore believes she can't get into; everyone else is trying their hardest to get in too, jockeying for places by either being brilliant if they have the skills, brown-nosing if they can, being meat-shields for the enclaver kids in the hopes it'll earn them the chance to get in once they graduate. And El hates them, but not as much as the born-into-luck enclaver kids. It's also a series that says that everyone's individual decisions are good from their perspective, and add up to absolutely horrifying conclusions collectively.
I absolutely screamed internally at the end of the second book when, having pretty much executed their plan perfectly, Orion shoved El out of the scholomance back into the real world and went to fight and be devoured by the gigantic maw-mouth of Patience. Patience is one of the two resident massive maw-mouths, who had presumably finally eaten the other, thus doubling the horror.
I really enjoyed finally seeing Gwen, El's mum, in the third book. El succeeds in graduating and tumbles out in front of her mum, completely shattered by Orion staying behind. All of our moms had decades on us to grow up, polish up, learn to human, etc, whereas they changed our diapers and attempted to deal with our tantrums as we were doing all that, and when you're a kid your mom is impossibly more adult and put together than you. This is magnified like a hundredfold with Gwen, who is not only a world-class healer but is also extremely well-adjusted with infinite patience and understanding for a very, very angry little child. And with almost boundless generosity for strangers looking for healing, too. AND, which to me proves saintliness most of all, the patience to live with people who want to live in a commune, lol. Her mum appears in the first couple books mostly as El thinks about what her mum would do, the incantations and spells she's been taught, and so on. My favourite is when El is so angry and is thinking about how she knows how to calm herself down because her mum taught her all these different techniques, and they all work, and that only increases her anger and resentment.
I also really liked seeing all the different enclaves, just for the worldbuilding fun. I think Novik restrained herself - I stopped reading the Temeraire series partly because it felt like a travelogue, but here it was just limited to the last book, and I do like seeing how different places manifest their enclaves. It's a bit of a trip to see places I've been represented, though, and given the weight of plot locations.
Regarding the ending - I was really worried Orion was going to die, and I really didn't want that to happen. I quite liked El and Orion, separately and together. I find a lot of trilogies tend to be super strong on book 1 and then fall down on book 3 (plus, of course, any book I dislike enough on book 1 I won't read all the way into book 3, which reinforces this.) I wouldn't say 3 was bad, but at several points I wondered how there could possibly be adequate resolution. Some of the things brought up, like Ophelia Lake, felt like they could have been the beginnings of trilogies of their own. The fixing of Orion was OK. Ophelia, a little less so - she's El all grown up, having gone down the path of maleficer and been very successful. She could definitely have been an interesting counterpoint to El, but there wasn't room for that; she could have been a 3 trilogy villain, but she only appears in the third act, basically. I'm not sure what's going to keep the scholomance operating indefinitely - Orion isn't immortal, is he? (Is he?) Or for that matter, the enclaves.
Orion himself was also worked in well. His amazing ability to turn mals into mana, the hero worship of everyone around him, all seemed suspicious from book 1, and the revelations in the last few chapters were pretty great. As well as the look into his childhood in the third book, to be honest. The existential horror of his existence was fortunately offset by his diffident personality of the previous couple books.
For me, the greatest weakness of the books, as compelling as they were, was the proportion of them given over to introspection by El. All three books are from her POV and she's very invested in doing the right thing, even though she tries unsuccessfully to lie to herself about it. All of that has to be carefully thrashed out, sometimes repetitively, and every bad action by anyone has to be considered from all angles to give everyone their fair due, and that slows down the action considerably. I was so cheered by El making friends because it would also mean more dialogue and some plot movement, instead of just her thinking about how everything was stacked against her and the other outcast students and how they had to work extra hard for scraps. Not wrong, but also a very, very large chunk of all the books. Fortunately, Liu, Aadhya, and in the third book Liesel are all much more practical and help her with the logistics and push through some action. Orion is so cheerfully intent on killing mals that he also helped.
Reader, I read the Last Graduate through in one sitting, ending at 1:30am, internally screamed at the cliffhanger, and in a fit of madness actually started reading The Golden Enclaves for a few pages, because of that cliffhanger. The next day was a rainy Sunday and I woke up late and did nothing until 4:40pm when I finished The Golden Enclaves.
A Deadly Education starts with El, a student at the Scholomance, a massive deadly magical school. There are no adults or teachers, only the school itself; the school and the students are attacked daily by dangerous maleficaria, "mals", which are attracted to the young students' mana and relatively low power. Students are teleported in with very limited supplies and must survive 4 years before they can graduate, which involves running the gauntlet of mals to the doors. Despite the fatality rate of the school, which is around 50%, it is significantly better odds than growing up on the outside, so parents continue to send their children in.
El is a self-described loser in the school: she has no magical connections like the enclaver kids who have an assured ticket to a safe life after graduation, and she has no social skills or family connections to help her forge an alliance. She is also living with the terrible doom of a prophecy over head: specifically that she's destined to destroy all the world's safe havens, the enclaves. Her penchant for magic is for complete ultra-violent destruction, which only increases her fear.
Spoilery review follows of all three books follows.
First, the reason I almost DNF'd is the anger and frustration and despairingness of El herself. I think Novik did a good job of setting up El's background to create a person who's so afraid and angry. I just find characters like this so frustrating to read, and it doesn't help that I often share online space with people like this - rightly angry, but always paddling around in the same circles, never able to break out because they believe they won't, but angry about that, so it just keeps feeding back in.
Specifically, I completely get how people around El rejecting her led her to not wanting to try. Novik did pretty well I think in general setting these up - many of the enclavers, raised in a life of privilege, being carelessly snobbish and taking the work of others for granted, but still human and with some unexpected traits. But El, especially in the first book, wouldn't stop lying to herself about so much of it. She was too hurt to make friends, but she knew and desperately wanted to make alliances to survive. She kept saying she was prepared to use people, and then steadfastly refused to even be nice back to anyone who was willing to talk to her. She said she had no advantages while sitting on her mum's name - so famous that when it is revealed, it's a big deal, and someone who wanted to be practical and use all her resources should have tried to exploit that. I know this kind of cognitive dissonance is realistic - and that El ultimately by book 3 decides that her refusal to take steps down this path is going to save her - but it did not make it at all less frustrating to read, since the novels are fairly introspective and therefore spend a lot of time with El thinking about how everything is The Worst and she's angry almost 100% of the time.
The Scholomance was cool and scary and I enjoyed a lot of the worldbuilding with that. There was an endless variety of mals which made me want to study them in a biological way, the way you see that there are over 1,000,000 species of beetle and go "wow I wonder why they are so successful?" So much of the magic was rooted in intention, I loved that the hallways were just shorter or longer depending on what you wanted from them, that believing in the hallways and corridors was part of what kept them existing, and that they posted the blueprints everywhere to help with that. The fact that mana has to be built up, at least while at school, by doing things that either cost physical exertion or annoyance, made for some fun activities, like El repeatedly crocheting and unpicking and re-crocheting any available fabric.
I was so relieved when finally El made some friends in Aadhya and Liu in A Deadly Education. Their excitement over the snacks they managed to get out of the vending machine, and the little feast they had in their rooms, was so cute and kind of a relief from all the tension.
I think all three books have a similar central problem solved by the idea of being a third way, and getting everyone to help collectively. The Scholomance was never intended to be so dangerous, but the equipment had broken early on in the 1800's, and the adults sent in to fix it just all died, repeatedly, so the school settled into its current level of deadliness. The first book, even though El's a junior, they are all collectively worried because the totals are out of whack - because another junior, Orion Lake, has been too effective at fighting the mals, and saving students. After the seniors revolt, trying to increase their own chances of survival at the expense of the other students, El manages to get them to work with her little alliance at fixing the cleansing equipment, so that the run-the-gauntlet-of-mals-graduation isn't a complete massacre. Really, it's fortunate that El has Aadhya (and later on, other friends) to help with this part. The Last Graduate, which takes place the next semester, has all of the (now very unusually large) senior class practicing running the gauntlet together, instead of in the usual enclave groups and alliances. El believes it's her duty, because of her unique abilities paired with Orion, to get them all out, once they think up a plan of getting mals into the school and then jettisoning the entire school into the void. The third book has enclaves saving themselves by inviting others in to help and being forced to make compromises
The embedding of the maw mouths in book 1 and their significance all the way along was excellent. They're terrifying and vanishingly few wizard circles, never mind individuals, have ever killed one; anyone eaten by one doesn't get to die, just spends forever suffering horribly, so it's a terrifying combination. El has a personal history with them, too. Her father was eaten by one in graduation, to save her and her mother. The linkage of the maw-mouths to the creation of enclaves is a kind of horrible logic that runs through the whole book, that there's no free lunch and everything must be bought and paid for, if not now by you, then later by someoneone else. It sets up, although doesn't quite force, the question of whose life is worth saving and if it's justified to kill some to save others. The scholomance itself is one very large unpleasant pill, trapping kids in a deadly four year prison full of death, and yet it's the best option. I think the books as a whole wrestle and cry out against the unfairness of the world, basically. The stripped down conditions of the scholomance mean that even basic luxuries like clean clothes to wear are difficult or impossible to get, and with the scarcity the division between the haves and have nots is especially stark. All of the students are hard-nosed in trying to ensure their own survival, sometimes because they've been well prepared by their family or mostly because the mals are a very good winnowing force. El is attracted and utterly repulsed by the enclave life, which she furthermore believes she can't get into; everyone else is trying their hardest to get in too, jockeying for places by either being brilliant if they have the skills, brown-nosing if they can, being meat-shields for the enclaver kids in the hopes it'll earn them the chance to get in once they graduate. And El hates them, but not as much as the born-into-luck enclaver kids. It's also a series that says that everyone's individual decisions are good from their perspective, and add up to absolutely horrifying conclusions collectively.
I absolutely screamed internally at the end of the second book when, having pretty much executed their plan perfectly, Orion shoved El out of the scholomance back into the real world and went to fight and be devoured by the gigantic maw-mouth of Patience. Patience is one of the two resident massive maw-mouths, who had presumably finally eaten the other, thus doubling the horror.
I really enjoyed finally seeing Gwen, El's mum, in the third book. El succeeds in graduating and tumbles out in front of her mum, completely shattered by Orion staying behind. All of our moms had decades on us to grow up, polish up, learn to human, etc, whereas they changed our diapers and attempted to deal with our tantrums as we were doing all that, and when you're a kid your mom is impossibly more adult and put together than you. This is magnified like a hundredfold with Gwen, who is not only a world-class healer but is also extremely well-adjusted with infinite patience and understanding for a very, very angry little child. And with almost boundless generosity for strangers looking for healing, too. AND, which to me proves saintliness most of all, the patience to live with people who want to live in a commune, lol. Her mum appears in the first couple books mostly as El thinks about what her mum would do, the incantations and spells she's been taught, and so on. My favourite is when El is so angry and is thinking about how she knows how to calm herself down because her mum taught her all these different techniques, and they all work, and that only increases her anger and resentment.
I also really liked seeing all the different enclaves, just for the worldbuilding fun. I think Novik restrained herself - I stopped reading the Temeraire series partly because it felt like a travelogue, but here it was just limited to the last book, and I do like seeing how different places manifest their enclaves. It's a bit of a trip to see places I've been represented, though, and given the weight of plot locations.
Regarding the ending - I was really worried Orion was going to die, and I really didn't want that to happen. I quite liked El and Orion, separately and together. I find a lot of trilogies tend to be super strong on book 1 and then fall down on book 3 (plus, of course, any book I dislike enough on book 1 I won't read all the way into book 3, which reinforces this.) I wouldn't say 3 was bad, but at several points I wondered how there could possibly be adequate resolution. Some of the things brought up, like Ophelia Lake, felt like they could have been the beginnings of trilogies of their own. The fixing of Orion was OK. Ophelia, a little less so - she's El all grown up, having gone down the path of maleficer and been very successful. She could definitely have been an interesting counterpoint to El, but there wasn't room for that; she could have been a 3 trilogy villain, but she only appears in the third act, basically. I'm not sure what's going to keep the scholomance operating indefinitely - Orion isn't immortal, is he? (Is he?) Or for that matter, the enclaves.
Orion himself was also worked in well. His amazing ability to turn mals into mana, the hero worship of everyone around him, all seemed suspicious from book 1, and the revelations in the last few chapters were pretty great. As well as the look into his childhood in the third book, to be honest. The existential horror of his existence was fortunately offset by his diffident personality of the previous couple books.
For me, the greatest weakness of the books, as compelling as they were, was the proportion of them given over to introspection by El. All three books are from her POV and she's very invested in doing the right thing, even though she tries unsuccessfully to lie to herself about it. All of that has to be carefully thrashed out, sometimes repetitively, and every bad action by anyone has to be considered from all angles to give everyone their fair due, and that slows down the action considerably. I was so cheered by El making friends because it would also mean more dialogue and some plot movement, instead of just her thinking about how everything was stacked against her and the other outcast students and how they had to work extra hard for scraps. Not wrong, but also a very, very large chunk of all the books. Fortunately, Liu, Aadhya, and in the third book Liesel are all much more practical and help her with the logistics and push through some action. Orion is so cheerfully intent on killing mals that he also helped.
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Date: Jul. 3rd, 2023 03:52 am (UTC)When I was in the hospital once the doctor who came in had Novik as her last name, and I commented that this would be easy for me to remember because it was the same as an author I liked. And then she revealed that Naomi Novik is her sister!
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Date: Jul. 3rd, 2023 04:01 am (UTC)WHAT! Wow!! That's cool! Sorry to hear you had to go into the hospital though XD
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Date: Jul. 3rd, 2023 04:11 am (UTC)I do like the way all the maw mouth and Orion stuff is foreshadowed, and the resolution worked for me.
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Date: Jul. 6th, 2023 10:50 pm (UTC)Yeah I always am afraid book 3 will let me down but honestly it was a pretty good resolution!
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Date: Jul. 6th, 2023 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 6th, 2023 10:51 pm (UTC)I read these SO fast, they were such page turners, so at least it won't be super draggy sorts of books?
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Date: Aug. 2nd, 2023 01:52 am (UTC)I totally understand this, lol, but this make me like her even more. At times her POV is A Lot but lately I've been on a kick of canons about teenagers and, idk, there's something really charming to me about teenagers being their overdramatic selves. (In fiction. Teenagers IRL are too close for comfort, lol.)
I think all three books have a similar central problem solved by the idea of being a third way, and getting everyone to help collectively.
This is one of the things I liked the most about this series! The ultimately hopeful idea that things might look terrible but maybe there is a better way, and El and her friends being able to convince people to give it a shot. The end of the second book especially got me really emotional. This truly insane plan to save *everyone*, finally coming together, and going 99% perfectly. I definitely had a few moments when El first decided that she was going to save everyone like "girl... really??" but clearly I hadn't gotten the idea of this series yet, and I was so glad to be proven wrong.
All of our moms had decades on us to grow up, polish up, learn to human, etc, whereas they changed our diapers and attempted to deal with our tantrums as we were doing all that, and when you're a kid your mom is impossibly more adult and put together than you. This is magnified like a hundredfold with Gwen, who is not only a world-class healer but is also extremely well-adjusted with infinite patience and understanding for a very, very angry little child. And with almost boundless generosity for strangers looking for healing, too. AND, which to me proves saintliness most of all, the patience to live with people who want to live in a commune, lol.
LOL you're so right. She's so inhumanly patient and selfless but I love the depth that she still gets, how difficult it would've been to be a teen mom and then get turned away by her in-laws and left completely alone. Her and El's love for each other and El realizing how much it must have hurt her when she El accused her of hating her for not wanting to take her to an enclave was very good--realizing your parents were right about some things and maybe you were a little asshole and feeling bad about it!
Ophelia, a little less so - she's El all grown up, having gone down the path of maleficer and been very successful. She could definitely have been an interesting counterpoint to El, but there wasn't room for that; she could have been a 3 trilogy villain, but she only appears in the third act, basically. I'm not sure what's going to keep the scholomance operating indefinitely - Orion isn't immortal, is he? (Is he?) Or for that matter, the enclaves.
See this almost makes me wonder if Novik was setting up some sequel bait. There is a really interesting story that you can see on the horizon after the conclusion. (And I wonder if Orion really *is* immortal and will have to grapple with that.)
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Date: Aug. 15th, 2023 03:21 am (UTC)El is so dramatic! And she has never had an unmixed emotion about anything. (Unfortunately, #relatable).
I was so worried in book 2 that it would NOT come together!
OMG I completely agree with the parent thing. Did my parents make mistakes? Yes. Am I now older than them when they had me? Yes. Oh god. I would definitely make mistakes. And although I was an emotional teen I definitely lashed out in ways that I regretted.
A book about Ophelia would be really intriguing. She's very pragmatism & results first, and I kinda love that. El (and her mom) are very much her opposite. But alas sometimes I find villain books disappointing - probably because I'm into villains being really competent and good at their villain-ing, but their solo books usually try to humanize or give conflict, justify their actions, and that makes it less fun.
I'm wondering if instead at some point when El isn't hunting maw-mouths she can come back and raise a golden enclave for the Scholomance that doesn't require Orion to hold it? There are limitations to size but the Scholomance isn't skyscrapers in the void, it's just one building which also has the advantage of many, many wizards having memory of it which should help its stability. (Orion can probably be killed by El when he decides he's ready to pass on - which is a kind of terrifying last act of mercy. OK maybe I want to read THAT fic).
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Date: Aug. 16th, 2023 02:05 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm not particularly interested in a story *just* about Ophelia--I almost prefer her as an enigma, because I think it would be hard to understand why she did what she did. But a book where she's trying her very best to stop El from her life's mission would be interesting to me.
I'm wondering if instead at some point when El isn't hunting maw-mouths she can come back and raise a golden enclave for the Scholomance that doesn't require Orion to hold it? There are limitations to size but the Scholomance isn't skyscrapers in the void, it's just one building which also has the advantage of many, many wizards having memory of it which should help its stability.
I like to think that she'd be able to--the golden enclaves are smaller, but maybe as she shares the spells and people work together, they can figure out ways to build outwards to make them bigger? And yeah the Scholomance has a lot of Belief holding it into place. (I really loved everything about how perception and belief work with magic, like how it always tries to do stuff when you glance away because it takes less mana if it doesn't have to convince you something showed up out of thin air or whatever.)
(Orion can probably be killed by El when he decides he's ready to pass on - which is a kind of terrifying last act of mercy. OK maybe I want to read THAT fic).
OKAY YEAH I WANT THAT FIC TOO NOW
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Date: Aug. 16th, 2023 03:05 am (UTC)Good point - Purochan's text was lost for a long time so there's been no chance to innovate on the designs. El even improves on them in Golden Enclaves! I liked how magic was like an art and also a little sciencey, in that they would test things and try to iterate and get better prototypes. Hm maybe I mean more engineering-style, I guess they're not testing hypotheses. I really enjoyed the perception affecting magic too! Lol the library shrinking and expanding, El alternatively looking really hard at all the titles or pointedly avoiding them, haha.
OK dibs on NOT writing it though *touches nose*