I’m starting to read YA fantasy as bedtime books and I think this is a sign that I’m falling out with the genre for the time being. I’ve had my run, but it may be time for me to move on. Or, maybe they really are just very good books for bedtime because I’m having a harder and harder time getting into it.
A Deadly Education follows El, a young woman who has been sent away to school in order to better train in magic because if she doesn’t, the monsters drawn to magical beings will eventually kill her and possibly everyone around her. The school takes kids from all over the world and seems to be perpetually infested with monsters while having no teachers. The story has a very episodic feel to it, with each chapter largely focusing on a different aspect of the universe or a monster.
It’s a cool concept and a lot of the text of the book focuses on the universe building and how the magic and monsters works done through the lens of El’s stream of consciousness narrative. These elements are more important to the narrative than the actual story, which is essentially that she has to survive until the end of the year.
A large part of the problem I had with the book was that El is very much a teenager. This is a good thing for a YA book, but as an adult I found her insistence on being contrary to be irritating. I remember being like that as a kid and I didn’t really want to revisit those moments for an entire book.
I don’t ultimately understand how the school functions, though. There’s classes on schedules and assignments and graduation and all the parts that make it a school, but there’s no teachers or faculty. With all the world building that is being done elsewhere, I feel like I must have missed the chapter that outlined the way the school itself actually works.
Overall, if you like YA it’s not bad. I think this is a me thing, and I am just moving away from the genre for the time being. I may come back one day, but I think I already knew I needed this break.