"...What have I ever done that turns people off?” I waited for her to say all the usual things: You’re rude, you’re cold, you’re mean, you’re angry, all the things people say to make it my fault, but she looked over at me and frowned like she was really thinking about it, and then she said with decision, “You feel like it’s going to rain.” [loc. 1736]
Galadriel (El to her classmates: she has no friends) is a student at the Scholomance, a school for the magically-gifted which actively feeds on the deaths of the students. Despite the lack of (visible, human) teachers, punishments for academic failure are dire, and the school is overrun by maleficaria, magical vermin that range from almost microscopic to house-sized, and which love to snack on mana, the magical energy of the students. Constant hypervigilance is the only way to survive. It does help if you have allies who'll watch your back or save you a table in the cafeteria or take out a mal that's come after you.
El has no friends, in part because everyone has an affinity and hers is mass destruction, and in part because she is spiky and sarcastic and rude. She is especially rude when Orion Lake, the most popular and gifted student in the New York clique, saves her life -- again -- and seems to expect her to appreciate it. El's only chance of surviving the melee that is graduation will be to impress others with her power and ability, and she can't do that if Orion treats her as a damsel in distress. It doesn't help, either, that Orion's friends regard her as a threat because obviously she's coercing him, and she must be a maleficer, a user of darker magics. But growing up in a Welsh commune with a mother who's a famous healer will turn a girl against that sort of thing.
This was a massively enjoyable read that also interrogates the 'school of wizardry' trope. Novik's Scholomance has a student body drawn from all over the world, so there's cultural and ethnic diversity -- El herself is half-Welsh, half-Indian -- and exploration of how various magical traditions complement one another. Because there are no adults, there's no sense that the students are being forced to suffer when they could be saved by a more experienced practitioner. There's a lot of exploration of class, and how it works in the wizarding world: the economics of mana, if you like, and the various ways in which El might survive and flourish when (if) she graduates: most magic-users are part of an enclave, but not all enclaves are equal, and none of them are interested in recruiting El until she suddenly appears to be dating Orion . The ecology of the maleficaria, and the Scholomance itself, is part of the plot: where do all the mals come from? Why don't they feed on mundanes? Why have there been more incursions this year?
Also, refreshingly, appearance doesn't count for much. None of the students can bring very much into the Scholomance with them, so everyone's dressed in whatever suits them best for running: hairstyles are typically worn short, so the mals can't get a grip. (See note below, though.) Physical characteristics, including skin colour, are only mentioned when it's relevant: for example, a student whose room is near El's, has been using malia, dark magic, as evidenced by her glossy hair and black fingernails.
I liked the detailed worldbuilding; the mirror-versions of the Chosen One trope (El the potential destroyer and Orion the ridiculously powerful guy who doesn't think he's anything special) make an interesting contrast; the fake-dating trope is fun, the pop-culture references ditto. On a more serious level it's also a critique of systematic oppression, the ways in which the success of the few is founded on the sacrifice (in this case literal) of the many. "You get used to things," says one of the enclave girls near the end of the novel. "And you don't think about whether they're good. Or even okay... And there's nothing you can see to do about it, because there's not meant to be anything you can do about it." Which ... resonates, right now.
- Website for the Scholomance here (I believe some of the images from that site appear in the book, but the Kindle version made them hard to see).
- Naomi Novik talks about the book on the Be The Serpent podcast, episode 71.
- A particular passage, about maleficaria that target 'dreadlocks', has been called out as racist. My opinion is neither relevant nor required, but for what it's worth I pictured this as referring to the hippie / grunge style, rather than to specifically Black hairstyles (which I'd expect to read as 'locs'). Novik's apology is here.
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