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2022 reread: Upping to full 5 stars. Love this series immensely. I want to be El’s best friend.
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2021 reread: Yes, of course Carol is right (as she always is) �� the protagonist *is* a Murderbot. How did I not see it myself???

Upping to 4.5 stars on reread, given how much absolute delight it brought me.
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2020:

“We’re not meant to all survive, anyway. The school has to be fed somehow.��

Scholomance is an isolated magical boarding school in the Void that you enter at fourteen and - maybe, possibly, if you are *very* lucky - get to leave four years later. But before you sign up, keep in mind: “Most of the time less than a quarter of the class makes it all the way through graduation.�� There are no teachers but the students still study hard - it’s the only thing to do when your choices are learn enough useful skills and maybe live or fall prey to the multitude of monsters living there (and occasionally to your own classmates).

The magical world is plagued by multitudes of maleficaria - “m�������� - who love going after magical kids (especially around puberty, which already sucks even without magical monster attacks) in the most gruesome ways. You are safe-ish in the wizarding enclaves, but those are exclusive, powerful and nigh-impossible to join. If you are an “independent�� non-enclave wizard kid, your odds to survive are pathetic. Those odds, however, dramatically increase if they spend their adolescence educated in Scholomance because even this murderous school is still safer than the outside world:

“[…] If you’re an indie kid who doesn’t get into the Scholomance, these days your odds of making it to the far side of puberty are one in twenty. One in four is plenty decent odds compared to that.��

Except even in the school the students are certainly NOT on equal footing. The enclave kids are the privileged crowd, with 80% chance of surviving through graduation, with their strong position, shared stories of magic, protection shields and the ability to get the non-enclave kids scrambling to do anything for them and serve as cannon-fodder for the merest promise of joining an alliance that may get them alive during the graduation slaughter (the mals descend on the trapped students each graduation day, and only half of those who already have survived four brutal years of constant danger lurking everywhere manage to escape the monsters feeding frenzy) and for the slightest chance of invitation to join the coveted safety of an enclave post-graduation. The indie kids know they are meant to be cannon fodder so that the elite can go on being elite, but the alternative seems even bleaker and there seems little you can do to upset the bloody status quo.

“When the enclaves first built the Scholomance, the induction spell didn’t pull in kids from outside the enclaves. The enclavers made it sound like a grand act of generosity when they changed it to bring us all in, but of course it was never that. We’re cannon fodder, and human shields, and useful new blood, and minions, and janitors and maids, and thanks to all the work the losers in here do trying to get into an alliance and an enclave after, the enclave kids get extra sleep and extra food and extra help, more than if it was only them in here. And we all get the illusion of a chance. But the only chance they’re really giving us is the chance to be useful to them.��

Galadriel (“El��) Higgins, named so by her whimsical commune-dwelling witch mother, has the potential to be probably the most powerful student at the school, but she chooses to hold back because following her powers will certainly make a maleficer, one who feeds off the life energy of others and is destined for gruesome end. She is supposedly born evil, a future dark sorceress whose magical affinity is “laying waste to multitudes��, who is sought out by evil spells and cannot even dip a toe in the dark magic before it becomes irreversible for her.

“Some sorcerers get an affinity for weather magic, or transformation spells, or fantastic combat magics like dear Orion. I got an affinity for mass destruction.��

She is an enclave-less loner outcast in school, with people staying away from her because they subconsciously sense her evil potential, holding her powers back to prevent death and destruction, and pragmatically planning and plotting possible ways to survive day-to-day life and - hopefully - the graduation day slaughter, only a year away. All while narrating this story to us in the snarkiest, prickliest, most sarcastic voice that grew on me quicker than I expected:

“That might sound extreme, but it’s not explicitly a spell to conjure mortal flame, it’s a sliding-scale spell to conjure magical fire. Most people love those spells, because virtually anyone can cast them successfully and you just get different results depending on your affinity and how much mana you put into it. Even if you’re a fumbling child, you can use it to light a match, and get better at casting it. Or if you’re me, you can suck the life force out of a dozen kids and then incinerate half the school with you inside it. So helpful!��

Unexpectedly even to herself, El slowly builds tentative friendships with a few of her classmates - including an enclave kid, irritatingly heroic (sometimes stupidly and recklessly so) and very well-connected Orion Lake, whose actions to save too many kids from otherwise sure destruction by monsters (remember - at Scholomance death of students is a feature, not a bug) have upset the delicate balance in this bloody environment. And things are getting dangerous even by Scholomance standards.

I started this book a bit skeptical - about the magical school setting, the snarky heroine, the generous helping of exposition in the first few chapters - and then I realized that I loved it all, exposition and school history included, and was feverishly reading on, enjoying the strange deadly setting and survival strategies and even the inevitable softening of a few rough edges of our prickly unwilling dark sorceress in the making. In a school like that, I would have been monster snack in week one, so watching El navigate this life while making Orion see some sense, learning to work on friendship and kindness, and kicking some monster ass was so much fun.

“Breakfast isn’t half as dangerous as dinner, but it’s still never good to walk alone.��

The setting itself is fascinating. A self-regulating living organism of the school with the self-regulated life and education, a cross between a prison and a safe-ish (ok, deadly) haven, a deadly magical boot camp that is still full of adolescent politics and the uneven power play between those in power and those who can only dream of it is a fun place to read about (but certainly not to visit unless you’re ready for the monsters to pick bits of you out of their teeth.)

“I hate this school more than anyplace in the entire world, not least because every once in a while, you get forcibly reminded that the place was built by geniuses who were trying to save the lives of their own children, and you’re unspeakably lucky to be here being protected by their work. Even if you’ve been allowed in only as another useful cog.��

It’s fun, suspenseful, sharp and just snarky enough to entertain but not to grate too much on the adult mind. (The snark does gets toned down a bit as El softens her sharp edges just a tad). It starts very much YA but throughout the story moves into more adult territory so organically that you notice it almost in retrospect, and even graying heads can enjoy it, honestly. It’s excellent at showing very plausible struggles and anxieties of a young person in a quite implausible world and situations. It’s a magic school story with sharp menacing teeth, and I loved that.

“I’d got used to my ordinary level of low-grade bitterness and misery, to putting my head down and soldiering on. Being happy threw me off almost as much as being enraged.��

It shines not only in its setting but the characters as well. The supporting characters are wonderfully drawn and nuanced - Aadhya, Liu, Chloe, Orion - they started feeling real to me. The friendships - first tentative, then real - were portrayed with skill and heart. And the dreaded romance angle was almost sidestepped, for which I’m immensely grateful. (Side note: it’s nice to note discussion of avoiding teen pregnancy and IUD in a book about adolescents). And the classism and social privilege criticism part was a part of the actual story as opposed to shoehorned preachiness that we can see from less skillful writers who try to stay “current��. Not Novik - she addresses it well and makes it a logical story thread, and I loved that as well.

4 stars. I certainly can’t wait to read the sequel.

“I love having existential crises at bedtime, it’s so restful.��

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My Hugo and Nebula Awards Reading Project 2021: /review/show...

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