A Deadly Education

SYNOPSIS:

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.

REVIEW

(5 STARS):

If you're into cursed magic schools, moody teenagers, and dark Academia this book is for you.

On 'A Deadly Education', we follow Galadriel, an outcast girl who's just trying to survive her second year at this horrible School of Magic whose sole purpose is to feed its students to the terrible creatures that lurk in its shadows. Daughter of one of the most powerful witches of the last decades, El tries to keep her personal life private so that no one figures out her darkest secret — she could kill the entire school in less than a minute.

I loved everything about this story. First of all, our main character is an antihero which made it easy for me to like her. El is not a damsel in distress, a perfect student or a nice person. She's unapologetic, a bit rude, and as strong as one can be when surrounded by murderous evil creatures (which means that she's strong as f*** but that she also breaks from time to time). She's real, and I can't stress this enough: realistic characters are the best type of characters. They make you connect with the story at a deeper level since a) you get to see how an ordinary person would handle a similar situation; b) they make you feel like you don't have to be exceptional for your story to be worth telling.

All the other characters feel as genuine as she, except for Lake (who's the hero, but also a secondary character).

I'd also like to add that this book had a racially diverse plot. However, the author made some mistakes regarding the culture of different ethnicities that were discussed in several reviews. I am going to link the review I think was most helpful to understand the issues with this book as well as the Goodreads thread where these issues were addressed, since I don't think it's my place to discuss them since I'm not a POC. However, I will say that the author apologized and said future editions wouldn't include the referred passage and that she would try to do better in the future.

Plotwise, I think this book was very original and fun. It's not like any other fantasy book I've read, particularly when it comes to portraying Magic Schools. I loved the creatures, the dark vibes and how the author was just descriptive enough. There were things that I'm hoping will be explained over the sequel, but overall I wouldn't say this book was tiresome. It did have a slow-paced beginning, but I encourage you to push through because the pace gets better as the action picks up.

Lastly, I want to say I was not invested in the romance and found the friendships more interesting (especially the one between El and Yi Liu).

This book should serve as an example of how fiction could be a much healthier genre (in terms of heroic vs anti-heroic characters). Instead of building the narrative around this perfect character who's the smartest, prettiest, and excellent at everything, you have real teenagers who're just trying to keep themselves alive (AKA, all of us, except none of us go to a murderous school).

I can't stress enough how much I loved this atypical fantasy book. It was one of my favourite reads this year! If you're looking for something different, I urge you to pick it up.