A Deadly Education was the first book I picked up from the selection of books my partner bought me leading up to Christmas (there were ten and I got to open up one a day leading up to Christmas – sort of like an advent calendar). It’s a book that I’d wishlisted too and was looking forward to it. The idea of a young girl with strong magical abilities in a school reminded me very much of a certain other relatively popular magical book.
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A Deadly Education is an oddity of a book centring around El Higgins, a magically gifted student at Sholomance – a magical school with no teachers and a whole lot of horrible ways to die at potentially random times. The focus is on El’s attempts to get through another school year without being killed by the many oddities that inhabit the school as well as the other pupils who may also attempt to end her life too. It’s all very odd and that’s my biggest issue with the book
A Deadly Education plot – 3.5/5
A Deadly Education simply confused me. I was reading and reading waiting for the moment when everything settled down and some actual story got going, but it really never did. There are only a rare few moments in the book where I understood that things were moving forward – El was interacting with people and things. Other than this though, almost the entire book is monologue from El.
And this essentially summarises my issues with the book. If there were moments where I felt like we were moving the story along, thus allowing me to grow more attached the school and the world and getting excited for what was coming next, then it ay have been more interesting. However, the majority of the books simply appears to be about El complaining about her fellow students, how dangerous the school is, her mother and how powerful she is but she can’t show it off.
A Deadly Education characters – 3.25/5
And then to compound the issue, El herself is quite unlikeable. I don’t mind a character with a bit of sass or a little bit of a bitey personality, but it felt like El spent most of the book moaning about things. She seems actively against making friends with anyone (other than the usual protagonist plot of being shy, quiet but desperately wanting to make friends) and would rather tell the reader all about her issues.
This might not be so bad if El had a character arc caused by some great friends she meets along the way. But instead, she meets people who aren’t particularly engaging and whom I didn’t really care for either. And, to say it gain but fear banging the drum, there’s just not enough other stuff going on with these characters outside the monologues and narrative writing.
A Deadly Education final rating – 3.5/5
I despise writing such negative reviews but A Deadly Education was such an oddity of a book to me. It had very little plot, an actively unlikeable main character, an oddly dangerous setting and no direction. I’m not sure who this book is aimed at as it’s too dark and gloomy for children but also is about children at a magical school so may also not be for adults. I might try and pick up the sequel and see if things improve there now we have some of the background and characters established but for me, this first book in the series is not one I can really recommend to anyone!
