A Deadly Education

Today, I read a book.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. 

It's Lesson One of the Scholomance.

What is the Scholomance?

I'm so glad you asked, because there was this fantastic map just inside the front cover of the book.

It appears to be some sort of magic jail/school.

And honestly, school is sometimes a lot like jail, so I get it.

Um, this book was fantastic, and I couldn't put it down and I finished it in a single day, and then I ordered the second and third books in the series immediately after I finished it and I can't wait for them to get here.

Opening line:

I decided that Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life.

What a hook!

 

Second paragraph:

Selfish of me, you'll say, to be contemplating with murderous intent the hero responsible for the continued survival of a quarter of our class. Well, too bad for the losers who couldn't stay afloat without his help. We're not meant to all survive, anyway. The school has to be fed somehow.

Wait, what exactly is this school? It sounds terrifying.

I enjoyed this part after he saved her life for the second time:

"You okay - Gal, right?" he said to me, just to put some salt on the wound. We'd been in the same lab section for three years.

"No thanks to you and your boundless fascination for every dark thing creeping through the place," I said icily. "And it is not Gal, it has never been Gal, it's Galadriel" - the name wasn't my idea, don't look at me - "and if that's too many syllables for you to manage all in one go, El will do."

His head had jerked up and he was blinking at me in a sort of open-mouthed way. "Oh. Uh. I - I'm sorry?" he said, voice rising on the words, as if he didn't understand what was going on.

"No, no," I said. "I'm sorry. Clearly I'm not performing my role up to standard." I threw a melodramatic hand up against my forehead. "Orion, I was so terrified," I gasped, and flung myself onto him. He tottered a bit: we were the same height. "Thank goodness you were here to save me, I could never have managed a soul-eater all on my own," and I hiccuped a pathetically fake sob against his chest. 

Would you believe, he actually tried to put his arm round me and give my shoulder a pat, that's how automatic it was for him. I jammed my elbow into his stomach to shove him off.

More about our main character:

That sort of thing is always happening to me. Some sorcerers get an affinity for weather magic, or transformation spells, or fantastic combat magics like dear Orion. I got an affinity for mass destruction. Its all my mum's fault, of course, just like my stupid name. She's one of those flowers and beads and crystals sorts, dancing to the Goddess under the moon. Everyone's a lovely person and anyone who does anything wrong is misunderstood or unhappy.

Naturally, I came out designed to be the exact opposite of this paragon, as anyone with a basic understanding of the balancing principle might have expected, and when I want to straighten my room, I get instructions on how to kill it with fire.

And everyone else seemed to just be waiting for me to get going, except for Mum, who won't even call Hitler a bad person. It's not that she thinks he's the product of irresistible historical forces or anything. She says it's too easy to call people evil instead of their choices, and that lets people justify making evil choices, because they convince themselves that it's okay because they're still good people overall, inside their own heads.

And yes, fine, but I think after a certain number of of evil choices, it's reasonable shorthand to decide that someone's an evil person who oughtn't have the chance to make any more choices.