Note: I know the author of this book socially.
The first book in the Scholomance trilogy, I decided to finally read this now that it's complete, and I'm glad I waited, because boy that cliffhanger at the end of this book!
What I knew going in was that it was a story set at a magical school, but very little else, and the start of the story really drops you right into the middle of it. There's no set up, the narrative begins most of the way through the junior year of the protagonist, and in general it feels designed to make the reader feel like they're struggling to keep up. That also matches the school itself: there are no teachers, just classes with assignments, and there are monsters who can kill you everywhere, and then graduation means running a gauntlet of the worst monsters and using your developed skills (and, crucially, the alliances you've built) to survive and make it to adulthood. It's a lot!
Our protagonist is El (short for Galadriel), whose mom is a great healer but who does not follow in her footsteps: her talent in magic is for mass destruction, essentially, and she also makes everyone else feel bad psychically. But over the course of the book, she begins to develop a core group of friends, in part because the golden boy of the school, Orion, rescues her and everyone assumes that if he bothered to do that, there must be some reason to not dismiss her for their own self-interest. I've been watching a lot of Survivor this winter, and there's a real sense of that kind of alliance-building, it's an interesting mashup of genres.
The end of the book is extremely satisfying, and then the final line is a classic first book ??? moment, and I am very excited to dive into book two now!
Grade: A
No comments:
Post a Comment