A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, TP $24.99
If you put the staff of Whodunit? in a lineup, you would probably not choose me as the one most likely to choose the quasi YA magical girl novel as their book of the year. However, books like A Deadly Education which on the surface begin as one thing and become quite another are often the books that stick with me most as we get down to reflecting on the books we have read for this selection process.
A Deadly Education is set in a magical school which attracts monsters. With no adult supervision, young wizards are fed, cared for, and educated by the structure of the Schoolomance, functionally the school itself. However, the schools protections have weakened, and more and more of the monsters are arriving to kill the students, who each graduating year, must fight through a gauntlet of them to get back to the real world and survive.
Novik does a wonderful job of building suspense, first through the real outside threats that the students face, but increasingly through the threats that they are to one another. Galadriel, the narrator, has survived by keeping to herself, and until the unwanted appearance of Orion Lake (just a lightning bolt scar short of being a more obvious allegory for a more famous boy wizard), has survived through to her penultimate year. After being provided with the context of the world and the school, Galadriel is then thrust deeper and deeper into the politics of the school itself, while at the same time fending off (or having Orion interfere with fending off), targeted attacks at herself and her growing circle of friends. The mysteries around why certain barriers are failing, and what exactly has made the narrator such a target work to drive the narrative and Novik does a wonderful job of sprinkling in the necessary clues even while the story focuses on the political dramas.
My book of the year next year is almost certainly going to be quite different, but a book that makes you want to use its sequel as a reward is always one worth serious consideration. This book gripped me so much so quickly this summer that I have been saving its sequel The Last Graduate for Jolabokaflod, and the end of Whodunit's holiday season.