The Last Graduate: Lesson Two of the Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Del Ray, 2021

The second volume in the Scholomance Trilogy finds the narrator, Galadriel “El” in her senior year. The graduating class has escaped, and the new load of freshmen have been portaled in. In this school, where there are no instructors, assignments appear by magic, and one never knows what one will be doing. El goes to her “homeroom” and finds eight freshmen- her most loathed creatures. Over the course of the book, though, she finds herself teaching them how to survive the mal – the malignant magical creatures that live in the school, killing many students- and even starting to care about them.

There is a lot of character building in this book. El learns to trust (sort of), although every time she screws up she figures her new friends will no longer want to be around her. She makes some friends, and her relationship with Orion develops- reluctantly and with a lot of jive talk. People learn to trust her, the alleged evil sorceress who may turn on them at any moment.

There is also a lot of info dumps, even more than in the first volume, but they are worked in nicely so they don’t jar the reader out of the narrative. And a large amount of the story is devoted to the seniors practicing for their ‘graduation’, when they all run across the gym, with every mal in the school trying to kill them. In some years, as few as 20% of the class survives, so practice is taken very seriously. El realizes that the only way to be sure you’ll survive is to work with others- which is why alliances are so important. Of great importance is the realization that the Scholomance itself might be sentient, and is having a hand in El’s idea. And El’s post-school ambitions change, as she delves in her magic book about a different type of Enclave from the ones that exist.

This book is better than most middle books in trilogies, but it has a few places where it bogs down. The descriptions of the many runs through the magical obstacle course in the gym get a bit tedious. All in all, the book works just fine and I couldn’t put it down. Except… the ending. If you don’t like cliff hangers, have book three in your hands before you read two! Five stars.

 

A Deadly Education: Lesson One of The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Del Rey,2020

Galadriel- “El”- to pretty much everyone- is in her junior year at wizard school, which is very much not like Hogwarts. The school itself- the Scholomance- is a somewhat sentient structure that exists in the great void, with only one way in and one way out. And you only come in once, carrying nothing but what you have on your body, and out once, at graduation, again with only what you can carry on your body. There are no teachers or anyone other than the students. Lessons arrive magically on papers on your desk. You work on your own, and with others, to learn languages (very important because of spellwork), alchemy, building magical tools, etc. Grades arrive in the same way lesson assignments do. During their time in the school, students must be on their toes constantly, because the school is infested with magical creatures, all of which want to kill the students. And many, many students die through the years. Graduation is a run for the door through a field of monsters. Sometimes only 20% of the kids make it through four years and graduation.

But going to the Scholomance is better odds than going through one’s teens in the outside world; at puberty, for some reason, the magical monsters become really, really attracted to the young wizards. Better odds for survival if one is part of an Enclave, where the elite wizards with real power live, but El is not elite. She has no friends, never had any. Brought up in a commune run by her healer mother, she has no relationship skills whatsoever, and is shunned because of a vision her great-grandmother had that said El would be a destroyer of, well, everything.

El is smart, and extremely powerful. But you don’t get through graduation without allies. That’s the one thing she just doesn’t have in her corner.

I loved this book, despite a few problems. There was a possible racist mention, which I understand has been removed from later editions. Despite the school having students from all around the world, the main characters are pretty white and Asian. El herself is half Welsh and half Indian, but she is very far removed from the Indian half of herself; see above, great-grandmother’s vision. But I loved El and seeing her growth during the story. She reminds me of myself as a teen (minus the immense power and beauty); cranky, grumpy, snarky. And why wouldn’t she be; she’s been, and still is, regarded as a person with great potential for evil. She doesn’t know how to make friends. She’s completely cut off from the one person in her life she cares about, her mother. And, mostly, she’s a teenaged girl. The story is told in the first person, so we get the full picture of El’s life. There is a LOT of info dumps, but it takes a lot to describe the world, the school, the malignant creatures that stalk them constantly, the way magic works, and more. You’ve seen how much verbiage it’s taken me to give a rough picture of why it’s so interesting! It does slow down in places- it can take a lot to describe a run in with a single monster. But I found myself thoroughly engrossed in it. Five stars. (note: this is young adult)

 

A Man & His Cat, book 7, by Umi Sakurai. Square Enix Co Ltd.

Box full of kittens!

This is pretty much how the book starts, with a famous pianist coming to see Mr. Kanda and finding a box of abandoned kittens on the way. Despite having been brought up with no animals, and not being allowed to interact with them even momentarily, he can’t leave them to die in the rainstorm. So he shows up at Kanda’s door with five little kittens in his arms…

The book isn’t entirely kittens, though. The serious thread in this one is about how a person’s upbringing can shut them off from having friends. How even though a parent thinks they are doing the best thing for their child, it can have unpleasant consequences. And how parents and children should take a chance and actually talk things out.

I probably enjoyed this book more than any except the first volume. I mean, boxful of kittens!