A Deadly Education book review, characters and mals guide

Written By Esta Pinto

A Deadly Education (The Scholomance) synopsis/summary:

Lesson One of the Scholomance: Learning has never been this deadly.

A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.

There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.

El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

A Deadly Education characters.

The main character is Galadriel or El Higgins, our female main character, who narrates the novel. We have an interesting supporting cast of characters.

  • Galadriel Higgins

  • Orion Lake

  • Aadhya

  • Yi Liu

  • Nkoyo

  • Jowani

  • Cora

  • Chloe Rasmussen

  • Magnus Tebow

  • Ibrahim

  • Yaakov

  • Gwen Higgins

  • Jack Westing

  • Luisa

  • Clarita Acevedo-Cruz

  • Ellen Chen

  • Todd Quayle

  • David Pires

  • Maya Wulandari

  • Angel Torres

  • Zhen Yang

  • Wu Wen

  • Sarah

  • Alfie

  • Aaron

  • Pamyla

Scholomance mals and monster guide.

From maw mouths to mimics, mals is the short abbreviation for maleficaria, a catch-all term for the dangerous creatures found within the Scholomance. They can vary in size, appearance, and abilities, but they are all deadly and require the students to be constantly vigilant. Here is a list of all the mals we encounter in The Scholomance, book one.

Mal name/type Description
Agglo. Grub mal with a sticky shell that attracts debris.
Maw mouth. Thick rolling folds of a translucent glossy mass, with the surface covered in multiple human eyes and many mouths of the victims. They have tentacles all over. Most people believe that the consciousness of maw-mouth victims never ends, and they both are aware of and feel the maw-mouth eating them until the maw-mouth is killed.
Blood clinger. Tentacular mal that leaves bloody sucker marks.
Chimaera. Fire breathing tail.
Digester. Digesters that haven’t eaten in a while are translucent and can spread themselves thinly enough that a victim won’t realise they’re even there until they flap themselves around them.
Death wyrm. Mal that lives in caverns.
Soul-eater. Purplish incandescent mal that puts on a dramatic light show when attacking victims. The best way to defeat it is to use an incantation that unravels souls and leaves an empty glowing wisp behind.
Hissingale. Pulsy snaky limbs.
Lockleeches. Pokes an ovipositor into big clumps of hair, lays an egg inside and creeps away. When the leech hatches, it attaches to scalps unnoticeably and starts very gently sucking up blood and mana. If it’s not removed in a week or two it can work itself the skull, and there’s a window of a few days after that before you stop being able to move.
Scuttler. Have big lemur eyes, needle teeth and a stinger.
Argonet. Smooth armoured head, talons and nine eyes.
Shrike. Violent sparrow-like flying mals with iridescent beaks.
Sirenspider. Spiders that make a sound like melancholy wind chimes, the sirensong can freeze and paralyze, while the mal sucks the victim’s blood.
Scratcher. Made almost completely of metal with long jointed fingers and claws like the blades of paring knives, with enough of a brain to hunt for mana and build weapons and armour. Scratchers aren’t hard to kill and just require a basic blunt-force spell.
Ooze. Doesn't make any sound at all except squelching.
Mimic. A mal that pretends to be an innocuous object such as a chair, before attacking an intended victim.
Grogler. With thin pink cords running through the centre of their tentacles and a big red knot in the middle of their mass, cutting their tentacles off results in said tentacles splitting and multiplying. Defeat them by freezing them.
Wauria. Slithers out of drains to latch onto ankles.

A Deadly Education book review.

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
4.5 stars.

Spice level: Zero
Zero spice: 0/🌶

4.5 stars. I did not want to put this book down! I get the comparisons to Hogwarts without teachers, but the Scholomance is an extra labrinthine, sinister magical school that serves as both a haven and a death trap for young wizards filled with demon monster things called mals/maleficaria who feast on “mana” (magic power) and as a result, the students face 50/50 odds of graduating or dying. 

Surviving the Scholomance is a clever parallel to real life--to survive and thrive, it’s not just about skill, it’s about social status, wealth and privilege, and mana is the currency. We see that contrast in two main characters: 

  • Galadriel/El (MC narrator), who lives in a yurt in the woods and who has to work really hard to build mana/magic, and has no friends except her mother, and 

  • Orion Lake, a kid from a prestigious enclave who is put on a pedestal and has access to immense amounts of ‘mana’/magic.

I really enjoyed main character Galadriel/El’s narration. I know she’s not for everyone and I understand why. She’s snarky, sarcastic, dark-humored, cynical and morally ambiguous, and her great grandmother prophesised that she will “bring death and destruction to all the enclaves in the world” if she wasn’t stopped, probably because she’s a vessel of immense power with an affinity for mass destruction. But at her core, she really doesnt want to hurt anyone despite her struggles with isolation, fear, and the moral implications of her power.

Orion Lake, on the other hand, doesn’t have any real friends either for completely different reasons. He is treated as a hero and saviour and put on a pedestal. That’s because he is hero, with an affinity for combat magic and heroism. Still, this means that people kinda worship the ground he walks on. It comes as a refreshing surprise when El doesn’t fawn over him, and even does her best to insult him and push him away.

I adored how diverse and cultural this book was. If you love culture and languages, you’re gonna appreciate this book big time. 

However, there is a LOT of info dumping in this book. It’s an artistic choice to built a really intricate world and explain the history of magic to boot, and that might not be for you. I admit, I did find some of it quite dense to get through. 

Still, all in all, I was completely sucked into the Scholomance, and I can’t wait to devour the next one! I’ve also seen this is getting made into a movie, so I really hope they do the book justice.

My heartfelt thanks to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey and author Naomi Novik for the opportunity to read this work in exchange for an honest review.

View A Deadly Education book review here.

FAQs.

Does A Deadly Education have romance?

A Deadly Education does have a small touch of romance which is not central to the overall plot in the slightest.

Is A Deadly Education YA?

Yes A Deadly Education is Young Adult, with Galadriel/El being aged 16 years old.

Is A Deadly Education spicy?

On the spice level scale, A Deadly Education ranks 0/5--that’s right--there is zero spice.

What is the correct order to read The Scholomance series trilogy in?

The order to read the series of The Scholomance book series trilogy/A Deadly Education series is:

  1. A Deadly Education

  2. The Last Graduate

  3. The Golden Enclaves

What is malia?

Magic power has to come from somewhere. If you build or gather the power yourself, it’s called mana. Otherwise, you can pull the power from something that has life, for example, such as ants in your backyard, or even something as big as a human. However, that power gets tainted if that being resists you drawing their power, and it’s called malia. People who use malia (aka mana without consent) are called maleficers. The consequences of using malia involve rotting or disintegrating from the inside out and a shortened life span.

What is the release date for A Deadly Education movie?

So far, there is no release date for the first movie of The Scholomance.

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