"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.