Sometimes popular books don't connect with certain readers. And unfortunately, this one didn't connect with me. A Deadly Education was supposed to be a cutthroat version of Harry Potter, with a female protagonist who is half-Welsh and half-Indian.

That said, racism is frequently bandied about in book reviews. Really, the racism issue is a nonissue, masking some other problems with the story. Frankly, the first-person narrative is overwritten and rather rambling, a point made worse when Novik unleashes an infodump about her otherwise decent world-building skills. She also does a splendid job blending some real-world issues into fantasy, but she asks the reader to dig them out of a stream-of-conscious prose that makes Galadriel-El too annoying to be likable. And, aside from that, she is too self-centered to allow anybody else to be liked either. 

Suffice it to say that El is your typical prophesied outcast, expected to become the end of her domain. In this book, her job is to figure out what is wrong with the school and then enlist a few students to help her fix the problem, specifically her one-off, sort-of, boyfriend. Her primary plus is her sarcasm and not magic, but like so much of everything else in the book, it takes a long time for it to play out.

As I said, most people seem to be taken in by this interdimensional magic school falling apart around its reluctant (and over-eager) heroes. But for me, after listening to El prattle on endlessly, I was more tempted to tell them to let it fall apart if it meant a quicker end. Sorry if you liked it.