The TLDR version: This book is awesome, Naomi Novik is awesome, El is awesome, and I want one of my friends to read this book RIGHT NOW so I can talk to someone about it properly.
Long form review: Bear with me. I’m going somewhere with this.
The Paladin class is probably the trickiest of the classic tabletop RPG classes to play right. Setting aside details of stuff like armor class and weapon proficiencies and skill points, the heart of the class is that a character’s powers are directly tied to them living according to a strict personal code. Act against your code, and you lose your powers.
Lazy players will treat that code as just another class requirement, and make sure their character’s actions fit a strict reading of that code. Boring players make the code the central thing about their character, and the result is a kind of annoying religious zealot. The really interesting players also make the code the central thing about their character, but they make it a point of growth and internal conflict.
El is probably the best example of the Paladin character I’ve ever seen.
To quote Into the Wood, “‘Nice’ is different than ‘good.’” El is not nice. She is sarcastic, judgmental, self-righteous, and takes rudeness to places never before seen. But she is also, loathe as she is to admit it, her mother’s daughter, and that central conflict is what makes both A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate so freaking compelling. It’s not about the anti-Hogwarts nature of the Scholomance or fighting dangerous maleficarium or whatever cool spells El can pull off (though all that stuff is, admittedly, pretty great). What makes these books so compelling is seeing El trying to convince herself that she’s living according to the Scholomance’s selfish “every wizard for themselves” rules while being completely unable to actually do so.
I promised no spoilers, and I’m going to stick to that, but we saw this conflict play out pretty well in A Deadly Education. Her relationships with Aadhya and Liu and Orion. Her realization that she wasn’t actually playing some kind of clever long game so much as unconsciously procrastinating what her “plan” required her to do. Her determination to survive clashing with her refusal to let others die if she could prevent it. Her longing for the safety of an enclave and inability to accept the fundamental injustice of their existence. All of that carries on in this book, taken to the next level.
I strongly suggest not starting the last quarter or so of the book unless you have the time to finish it. The entire book was great, but that last portion building up to the climax was pretty much impossible to put down (the overall shape of the plot structure is pretty similar to A Deadly Education, actually). Those who have read aDE can guess what the climactic event is centered around. This book doesn’t end on a cliffhanger in the traditional sense, but (like aDE) holy hell is there a sequel hook.
Naomi Novik is, I feel, much like El herself: a once-in-a-generation-talent with the power to rock the world on its foundations. Will she use that power for good or evil? If Uprooted and Spinning Silver are any guide, probably for good, but (again, like El) I could well see her going to the dark side under the right circumstance. I hope Naomi gets book 3 out soon so I can find out.
Thanks to Del Ray for the ARC. The book comes out September 28.
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