Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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> Genre: Fantasy > A really good premise ruined by casual racism and poor characterization

A really good premise ruined by casual racism and poor characterization

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

February 22, 2021 by Mobius_Walker 4 Comments

The Scholomance is not your typical school. And not just because it’s a school for magic. No, this school is not your average school because it will straight up try to kill you. Students have to stay alert constantly and travel in packs everywhere lest one of the evil creatures, or malefecaria, who live in the school try to kill them. Galadriel, or El, is a student at the Scholomance determined to survive all the way through graduation and do so on her own terms. She didn’t start the school year already privileged to have a posse or lots of resources, and she refuses to learn how to do magic except in the strictest possible terms: generating her own power, or mana, and not using any from the world around her. It’s a difficult path to choose, but since her affinity is for destruction and death, it’s for the best. Throughout the year, El forges friendships and allegiances with her classmates which just may be what she needs to survive.

Upon first pass, this book does a really great job of explore privilege and money and power. Those with money and resources don’t have to worry so much about surviving all four years. They have the connections they made with each other before school started, gadgets and mana from mommy and daddy on the outside, and training they receive even prior to starting school. But what about those students who don’t have magical parents? Who are just whisked away to this school without any preparation? What does this say about the overall caste system of this magical world? It’s a very interesting premise (though it all is revealed through incredibly lengthy inner monologues from El which are just basically world-building info dumps)… but then you look a little deeper.

Really the only characters that get any semblance of characterization are the protagonist and her quasi-love interest, Orion. Everyone else, though diverse in racial, ethnic, and language background, get reduced to the “Mandarin speakers” or the “Hindi speakers”. It all seems very superficial. The protagonist, El, is half-Indian but there is very little expansion on this side of the character even though we get quite a bit of information about her Welsh heritage.

Also, in what is probably the most egregious misstep in the entire book, Novik invented an evil creature called a lockleech which burrows into “large clumps of hair” and lays eggs which then hatch and burrow into the scalp, and she specially calls dreadlocks “not a great idea.” It’s bad. I mean, Novik could have inventend anything and yet chose an evil bug that infests dreadlocks. Yikes.

All together, this is a phenomenal idea that is just absolutely wasted.

Filed Under: Fantasy Tagged With: magic, magic school, Naomi novik, Racism, school

Mobius_Walker's CBR13 Review No:8 · Genres: Fantasy · Tags: magic, magic school, Naomi novik, Racism, school ·
Rating:
· 4 Comments

About Mobius_Walker

CBR13 participantCBR12 participant

Houstonian trying to teach the youths maths and aerial arts while making sure that my pets are healthy and my husband is happy View Mobius_Walker's reviews»

Comments

  1. teresaelectro says

    February 22, 2021 at 9:50 pm

    I haven’t started this yet but definitely gave pause after this Youtube discussion on the representation. https://youtu.be/AdK8-ZbOWrg

    The author is removing/editing out the hair story device though.

    Reply
    • wicherwill says

      February 23, 2021 at 1:28 am

      So aside from the hair issue (which is in and of itself a large ask—when I got to that part of the story my heart just sank a thousand feet, like why but again, let’s set it aside) I remember thinking while reading it how awesome it was to get Indian/Desi representation that wasn’t *clears throat* REPRESENTATION THIS WAY REPRESENTATION THIS WAY.

      Things that made sense to me as an Indian-American (El’s father was from Mumbai so she speaks both Hindi and Marathi) flew over the head of my non-Indian friends, although they thought it was color they didn’t understand. That’s the sort of representation that I never knew I needed, which I never find in stories that feature a protagonist for whom their Indian identity is front and center (aka the entire genre of American Born [Confused] Desi novels which proliferated while I was in school).

      Which is to say, I was so very into El and her story and everything. I remain incredibly upset by the hair device, it’s such lazily insensitive writing and more so because I was getting so into the other parts of the story and had already started excusing some of the other parts as well (the fact that non-El non-Orion characters were oftentimes just referred to as “Mandarin magician”). Spinning Silver is one of my favorite books! Why are authors like this.

      In any case, lots of thoughts on this book. Not buying the next one, will probably wait and get it at the library.

      Reply
      • Mobius_Walker says

        February 23, 2021 at 1:16 pm

        Lots and lots of thoughts. I’m not sure that I liked the book enough to even give the next in the series a chance even from the library. I would love, love, love, to explore El’s father’s side more. If that were handled well, I would pick up the rest of the series.

        Reply
    • Mobius_Walker says

      February 23, 2021 at 1:24 pm

      Thank heavens she’s removing that part. It’s not necessary to the plot or world building, and could have been handled so differently. Like, just make it about long hair and not specifically dreadlocks. Make the creatures latch onto long hair in general, so the less you have, the better! Done.

      I’ll definitely find some time to give that youtube video a watch. Thank you for sharing.

      Reply

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