A Deadly Education (The Scholomance #1)
Summary:
Lesson One of the Scholomance: Learning has never been this deadly.
A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.
There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.
El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students. (Summary and cover courtesy of goodreads.com)
Review:
While wandering through a random bookstore in Saratoga Springs on a day trip I got to chatting with a bookseller and she cheerfully told me this was the best book she had read that year. I impulsively picked it up on that recommendation and I am so thrilled that I did. I must agree - it is one of the freshest and interesting world-building stories that I’ve picked up in a long time. Despite that recommendation I recognize that this is *not* going to be for everyone. The book is jam packed with violence and monsters (sounds odd but it works), but if you give it a shot I like it might win you over.
In this deadly world El is setup for failure and yet manages to squeak through building a group of allies through increasingly absurd challenges. El’s stuck with a terrible prophecy about her powers – she’s supposed to ruin the world. The question is what she’s going to do about it. Cue Orion stepping in, an annoyingly successful hero who manages to accidentally finagle El into being a damsel in distress. Somehow. While this combination of horror and thriller easily could have been heavy, I found myself laughing the whole way through.
Warning: Contains repeated violence.
Rating: 5 stars!
Who should read it? Anyone open to an entirely different read with a lot of monsters.
Want to read the whole series?
The Last Graduate
The Golden Enclaves