As a wizard kid grows older, they start attracting maleficaria which hunger for their magical essence, and they need someplace relatively sheltered in order to grow in strength. So why do wizard parents allow their kids to attend this diabolic charnel house? Well, it’s because being at the Scholomance is less deadly than not being there.

They do some of the murdering, since it’s an easy way to gain power and thus, increases one’s chance of survival. Further upping the danger level is some of its students who are actively malevolent-called maleficers-and practices dark magic. Nightmarish creatures of all shapes and descriptions (called maleficaria) infiltrate it incessantly and ambush the fledgling wizards within at every opportunity: during meals, while showering, or even when they are asleep in bed. The Scholomance has no headmasters or teachers around to protect the teenagers, and the whole revolving drum-shaped institution is fully automated, floating in a Lovecraftian void. Ms Novik’s Scholomance makes Hogwarts look like a daycare centre for particularly squishy toddlers. Reading the Harry Potter books as an adult, one realises that Lucius Malfoy and the Board of Governors actually have a point regarding Dumbledore’s reckless administration of the school which unnecessarily exposes students to mortal danger and incompetent pedagogy.

In Ms Novik’s A Deadly Education, the Scholomance is a school where wizard children are sent to study the magical arts and um, to get murdered. Scholomance has a deep footprint in pop culture, and had appeared in many works from folklore to Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the World of Warcraft. Roke, Hogwarts, the University Kvothe attended, Brakebills, Osthorne) in my readings. I am somewhat of an enthusiast of this sort of fantasy setting, and have attended many such sorcerous campuses (i.e.

With the notable exceptions of Tongues of Serpents and League of Dragons (book 6 and 9 of Temeraire), I generally enjoyed and was even wowed on occasion by Ms Novik’s body of work, so I was quite excited to hear her announce a new series that’s set in a magical school called the Scholomance. So she sits alongside China Miéville and Jo Walton on my bookshelves as authors whose canon of novels I’ve read in entirety. To date, I’ve read each and every one of her published novels, including all 9 books of her Napoleonic Wars dragon series, Temeraire. I am a fan of Naomi Novik from the very beginning. I decided that Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life.

A deadly education reviews