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Jan 07, 2021PimaLib_ChristineR rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Novik has written another intriguing fantasy in A Deadly Education with a creative setting and interesting characters. El (Galadriel) is a dark magician who has earned a spot in the Scholomance. Before you go worrying that this is another Harry Potter knockoff, know that the Scholomance is a character in itself. The school, once entered is inescapable until graduation, and then only for a select few. In the intervening years the school actively tries to kill the students. El is one of the strongest magicians there but because her magic is darkly aligned, and she's a complete jerk, she is on her own. Magicians on their own never get out of the school because they have only their own magic, which they painstakingly gather, to use; and they have no one to watch their back, making showering and sometimes eating, nearly impossible. El forms an unlikely alliance with Orion Lake, a magician from one of the large groups to which all magicians aspire, meaning he has a nearly unlimited supply on which to draw and is able to live a nearly normal life, when he's not throwing himself into danger. Novik plays off the relationship between the two to explore the idea of privilege and power, while still writing a straight ahead magical adventure that kept me enthralled. So, it's somewhat ironic that the book has come under attack for some thoughtless content coming from a place of white privilege. Let's get into these (and keep in mind I'm coming from the same place so take my thoughts with a grain of salt). Novik has already apologized publicly for creating a sort of monster that lives in hair, but which is specifically associated with dreadlocks--pretty thoughtless blunder. One for which she has not been called out is that, like all of her books I have read so far, there is not a single non-hetero, non-cisgender person. In her earlier works, that may have been a function of the historical setting (hiding differences to survive) and limited characters, but there's really no excuse for it here, and unfortunately, it has set it up so that if this is rectified in the rest of the series, it comes off as afterthought. Regarding some of the other charges against the book though, I have to take exception. Reviewers have complained because while students come from all over the world, El identifies them as "the Mandarin speakers" or the "the Arabic speakers" and equate El's worldview (people are identified by how they might be valuable to El) with the author's worldview. I have as much respect for these reviewers as I do for people who don't believe that men can write about young women characters, and by logical extension believe that Stephen King must be a clown who lives in the sewers. Characters, and certainly this unlikable main character, will often have views that aren't socially acceptable, but it is not the job of the author to make every character perfect, it is their job to make them real, and Novik has succeeded admirably. In all, there are definitely problems with the text that cannot be overlooked; Novik has written a page-turner novel that looks at real social and racial issues, even as it falls prey to Novik's own unseen biases.