A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik
This is one of those books that's been on my TBR for years. Since I'm writing a dark academia game at the moment that I intend to launch in March, I'm dedicating most of my reading in February to that genre as some sort of research for it. This seemed like as good an excuse as any to finally tick A Deadly Education off my list.
I wasn't sure what to expect going into this. That's partly because I didn't really know what it was about - if I've read the blurb it was years ago when I first picked this up, before it sat unread on my shelf for ages - and partly because I remember not really enjoying Temeraire when I read it back in 2006. I haven't read anything else by Novik in the meantime, but she continues to be popular and to publish work that seems quite well-received, so I was cautiously optimistic.
My immediate reaction to A Deadly Education was that it felt like reading fanfic. I can't fully quantify what "fanfic voice" is but it definitely exists and is immediately identifiable, and Novik has it. The tiniest amount of research tells me that I shouldn't be surprised by this. Novik was one of the founders of A03 and I think given that it's reasonable to assume that she has read a lot of fanfic herself. The book having 'fanfic voice' isn't inherently a bad thing, but it definitely took some adjusting for me to get into it since it's so far removed from the kinds of books I usually read.
I'm not actually sure if I ever did get into it properly. On the surface there's a lot to like her, but it all felt very surface level. I never felt like I properly got to know El or learned who any of the other characters were beyond their surface level. Everyone exists as a person who's good at one thing with no more depth, which was frustrating. Part of that is due to the fact that we see everything through the eyes of a character who is supremely self-involved and who never makes any effort to let people in or get to know them on anything more than a superficial level, but it's also down to the fact that Novik never spends any time developing her characters in any meaningful way. The book is wall-to-wall plot; every chapter brings a new monster to be fought and a new problem to be solved, so that it feels a little like the worst sort of Monster Of The Week episodic TV, and the result is that nothing really has any weight because it's always wrapped up by the end of the chapter.
And yet despite the fact that I didn't really enjoy it all that much, I found it oddly compelling. I rattled through it in a few hours and when I got to the end I immediately wanted to read the next book. Given that I don't think it's very good, really, that's a very strange response from me. Maybe it's because there's so much hinted at about the world and the school that could be interesting but isn't ever really developed; perhaps I want more because Novik is dangling it in front of me and I (perhaps foolishly) think she's going to deliver on it if I just give it one more book. Who knows?
This isn't bad, per se. I think a lot of what I dislike about it is actually just a facet of the fanfic-adjacent genre that Novik is writing in, and I'm not the target audience for that. It reminds me of candyfloss. It's straightforwardly entertaining and makes you want more while you're reading it, but ultimately it leaves you empty and a little disappointed when you're done.
I'm going to read the next one, though.