A Deadly Education (2020)

A Deadly Education is a 2020 fantasy novel written by North American author Naomi Novik following Galadriel "El" Higgins, a half-Welsh, half-Indian sorceress, who must survive to graduation while controlling her destructive abilities at a school of magic very loosely inspired by the legend of the Scholomance. It was published by Del Rey on September 29, 2020 and is the first book of The Scholomance Trilogy. Its sequel, The Last Graduate, was released on September 28, 2021, and the final volume in the trilogy, The Golden Enclaves, was published in September 2022.

Setting

Describing the legend of the Scholomance, which inspired the school in the book, Novik stated that it "paints a truly horrible place...[spending] years locked up in the dark, with answers to your lessons appearing in letters of flame, with no teachers, no contact with the outside world. It’s a horrible idea." She also described the school in her book as being similar to a variant on Hogwarts that attempts to "take the glaring flaws in school safety at Hogwarts a little too seriously."

In Novik's fictional universe, magic is real, but "mundanes" are largely unable to perceive it. Due to their mana, the magical energy that all sorcerers create and use, magic-wielders are constantly in danger from mana-eating monsters called maleficaria. Maleficaria, or "mals", are particularly attracted to young sorcerers just after puberty, and ninety-five percent of magic children do not survive to adulthood. Elite communities of wizards live in structures known as enclaves, which are far easier to defend from mals, but these are difficult to build and access to them is jealously guarded, creating a deep class divide. However, even the children of enclavers are at significant risk during adolescence.

The Scholomance was built as a haven where wizard children can learn magic in a safer environment until they are able to defend themselves. The school was constructed in the Void, a space outside of reality, and as such has a number of strange properties, even bordering on sentience. It is connected to the physical world at only one point, the graduation gates. Students are magically transported into the Scholomance at age fourteen and have no contact with the outside world until graduation day four years later, when they exit the school via the gates. There are no adults; students are provided with a curriculum, materials, and assignments by the school itself.

The safety of the Scholomance is relative. Its magical wards and mechanics can keep out most maleficaria, but not all, and half of all students are killed before graduation. Half of the remainder perish during graduation itself, when they must run from the school proper to the gates, through an unwarded hall where hundreds of mals congregate. Most of a student's tenure at the school is spent learning spells, building mana, and creating alliances in order to make it through the run alive.

Plot

El is a student in her junior year. In flashbacks, she reveals that her father sacrificed himself during graduation so that her mother Gwen, then pregnant, could escape. However, Gwen and El were rejected by her father's family when El's great-great-grandmother, a famous seer, prophesied that El would become a powerful maleficer who would destroy enclaves. Gwen refused to believe this would happen, and raised El to never use malia, the magic that is drawn from unwilling living beings. Although Gwen is a powerful healer and would be welcome in almost any enclave, she has declined to join one; El has therefore resolved to win a place herself while at school.

El struggles with her schoolwork, as much of what the school provides for her to learn is black magic suitable for violence and destruction, apparently confirming the prophecy. In addition, most people seem to instinctively dislike and avoid her, and she has difficulty making friends. She comes to the attention of Orion Lake, a boy from the New York enclave who is both extremely popular because of his proclivity for saving his fellow students from attacks, and unusual due to his ability to take mana from killing mals. Orion initially suspects El of being a maleficer who murdered one of their classmates; however, because of his close observation of her, he is able to intervene and kill the actual murderer when El is attacked, and he and El develop a somewhat antagonistic friendship. Once the two begin spending time together, other students become far more warmly disposed to El. Wary of those students' motives, El takes care to remain friendly with the few people who showed her any kindness beforehand and shares her new advantages with them. In this way, she becomes closer with her classmates Aadhya and Liu.