A Deadly Education

Não me senti investida nem nos personagens nem na ambientação da história. Apenas 2 personagens no livro inteiro recebem uma caracterização decente - El e Orion. Todo o resto é reduzido a nomes e caracterizado pelo idioma que falam e esteriótipos estúpidos ou incorretos. A história é contada em primeira pessoa pela nossa protagonista El e ela passa parágrafos e parágrafos fazendo seus monológos que muitas vezes eu esquecia pq ela começou a pensar naquilo.returnEsse livro tem muita encheção de linguiça que a autora pensa que dá pra classificar como worldbuilding e que no fim não acrescenta em nada. Sabemos muito sobre enclaves, dos maw-mouths, da diferença de mana e malia, malificer e wizards e é isso! A Scholomance em si fica dificil de imaginar. A autora poderia ter passado menos páginas reduzindo seus personagens a meros "fulana, que fala tal idioma" e feito um worldbuilding mais efetivo.returnLer que Scholomance é uma Hogwarts mortal é realmente de despertar a curiosidade, afinal, quem não adora uma história de escola de magia, cheia de lore? Mas aqui a lore que é apresentada não acrescenta em muita coisa e muitas vezes Novik atira no próprio pé com a tentativa de diversidade.returnNão gostei de nenhum dos dois personagens que a autora desenvolve bem.returnreturnNão pretendo continuar a série, a não ser que alguém consiga me convencer que ela melhora os pontos que levantei na resenha...returnMinha busca por uma série de escola de magia que preste continua.

Não me senti investida nem nos personagens nem na ambientação da história. Apenas 2 personagens no livro inteiro recebem uma caracterização decente - El e Orion. Todo o resto é reduzido a nomes e caracterizado pelo idioma que falam e esteriótipos estúpidos ou incorretos. A história é contada em primeira pessoa pela nossa protagonista El e ela passa parágrafos e parágrafos fazendo seus monológos que muitas vezes eu esquecia pq ela começou a pensar naquilo.
Esse livro tem muita encheção de linguiça que a autora pensa que dá pra classificar como worldbuilding e que no fim não acrescenta em nada. Sabemos muito sobre enclaves, dos maw-mouths, da diferença de mana e malia, malificer e wizards e é isso! A Scholomance em si fica dificil de imaginar. A autora poderia ter passado menos páginas reduzindo seus personagens a meros "fulana, que fala tal idioma" e feito um worldbuilding mais efetivo.
Ler que Scholomance é uma Hogwarts mortal é realmente de despertar a curiosidade, afinal, quem não adora uma história de escola de magia, cheia de lore? Mas aqui a lore que é apresentada não acrescenta em muita coisa e muitas vezes Novik atira no próprio pé com a tentativa de diversidade.
Não gostei de nenhum dos dois personagens que a autora desenvolve bem.

Não pretendo continuar a série, a não ser que alguém consiga me convencer que ela melhora os pontos que levantei na resenha...
Minha busca por uma série de escola de magia que preste continua.

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

Killer opening line, leading right into an engaging world. I'm still a bit surprised that I ended up loving this book so much - El as a main character took a while to grow on me (beyond what seemed intentional).

This book does the "setting as a character" thing pretty damn well though:

"The school will come after you if the work doesn't get done, but it doesn't care in the slightest if you cheat."

So the world sucked me in deeply and quickly, and I had time to get invested in the characters. By the end I was fully onboard and pumped for book 2.

Now for a bit of a wild and silly tangent... somewhere along the line I got a bit of a theory started in my head and I can't let it go. So (minor spoilers for both this book and Stephen King's Dark Tower series):

In the Dark Tower series, there are "thinnies" where reality has eroded. There are gaps between worlds, and who knows what sort of crazy shit is lurking in there. There are also some references to the Harry Potter books in the later books. Now I feel like the Scholomance vibe is much more dark/creepy/King than Hogwarts is, and the Scholomance itself exists within the void. So in my head it's accessible from a warbling thinny somewhere, and the void monsters from the Dark Tower series are maleficaria. This probably doesn't make sense if you think about it too hard, but I haven't! And I hope I can avoid doing so - because I like the idea, damn it.

Naomi Novak invokes both Le Guin and Rowling as providing the seeds of this book. As it is, the author writes far better than Rowling and cracks a lot more jokes than LeGuin. She also has LeGuin's intelligence.

A Deadly Education is the first in a trilogy. It is, as with many so-called YA novels, a Bildungsroman. In the fantasy genre, this often involves the youthful protagonist discovering that they have hidden magical talents. In the case of Novik's Galadriel, the heroine already knows full well that she is an extremely powerful wizard, but she has to deal with a Dead Father and an Awful Curse.

Galadriel has enrolled in a school for magicians, despite her mother's obvious misgivings. The world is a dangerous place for young wizards, who are the preferred tasty snacks of a horde of magical nasties. Nowhere is safe, but Galadriel believes that the school provides some measure of protection. This is moot: the book opens with her being saved in extremis from one of the fell creatures by the school's white knight, Orion (the Hunter) Lake.

The school itself is a satire on meritocracy. Open to anyone who has magical talents, it has in fact been designed to ensure that the children of the patrician class are protected, while the oiks draw off the hungry monsters. Galadriel is, so far as the rich kids are concerned, an oik. Even worse, at the opening of the book she is utterly friendless. "You feel," one of the other characters tells her, "like it's gonna rain."Orion almost immediately assumes that she is a murderess, and spends a whole chapter looking forward to putting her down. Once he discovers who the true murderer is, he spends the rest of the book trying to make up for his initial poor judgement. Galadriel, for her part, is as rude to him and to his friends as she can be. (One of the book's jokes is the array of insults she throws at him). This is a dangerous game, as Orion's friends are among the most powerful of her fellow students.

Despite the feeling of doom that she inspires in others, Galadriel gradually comes to discover friendship, and by the end of the book she has built up a small but well-knit group with whom to face the terrors that the school will throw at her in the following volumes.

The curse under which the heroine lives, and which has resulted in her rejection by her father's family (they attempted to put her down like a pariah dog), is a prophecy, announced by her great grandmother, that she would destroy the enclaves. The enclaves are the sheltered spaces in which the patrician wizards seal themselves off from the rest of the world for their own safety and comfort. Galadriel's Mum is having none of this; a nurturant Earth Mother, she lives in a commune in Wales, dispensing her healing magic for free, taking in strays, and giving her powerful spells away to anyone who wants them. Despite her daughter's pleading, she refuses to seek safety in one of the enclaves, and one suspects she looks on her daughter's promised future as a blessing rather than a curse.

The fact that there are no teachers in the school is a great relief. One the reader's burdens in the school novel is having to shudder through the usual stock of masters and mistresses being authored into significance. The children in Novik's novel are faced with a magical algorithm which is both cunning and deranged. It seems designed to trap the students into wasting their energies on pointless exercises, punishing them for any deviation from the plan by exposing them to one or another of the hungry monsters. The very Ideal Type of the School, in fact.

By all means, read this book.