A Deadly Education (The Scholomance Book 1)

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## About the Book

* Genres: Magic School Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Dark Fantasy
* Theme:
* Narrative style: First person, limited.

## Description

I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.

Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans.

I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts, I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, make myself the dark queen of the world.

At least, that’s what the world expects. Most of the other students in here would be delighted if Orion killed me like one more evil thing that’s crawled out of the drains. Sometimes I think they want me to turn into the evil witch they assume I am. The school certainly does.

But the Scholomance isn’t getting what it wants from me. And neither is Orion Lake. I may not be anyone’s idea of the shining hero, but I’m going to make it out of this place alive, and I’m not going to slaughter thousands to do it, either.

Although I’m giving serious consideration to just one.

## Chapter Summaries

### Chapter 1: Soul-Eater

Orion Lake breaks down the door to Galadriel Higgin's cell while chasing a soul-eater and melts it. El does not appreciate this as it is three weeks before the end of term and she is studying for final exams, and the melted soul-eater stinks horribly. El kicks him out of her room and tells Orion to stay away from her. El tries six times to get a spell from the void to clean her room before the school gives her a large tome of household cleaning spells in Old English. After cleaning her room she goes to the cafeteria to eat dinner, and she is temporarily popular because everyone is convinced Orion saved her life.

### Chapter 2: Mimics

El asks for company to go to the shop for supplies. Jack Westing offers to go with her but then backs out when he suspects El knows he is a maleficer; Orion ends up going with her. While walking El tries to figure out why Orion went with her and learns that he enjoys fighting mals and is never attacked by them. In the shop a group of mimics attack and Orion kills them all. He realizes she's strict mana as he guards her while she's mending her door, After El gets angry that Orion doesn't believe her when she says she can't cheat with mana, she temporarily pulls Orion's mana from his body convincing him that she is a maleficer. He asks her suspiciously about a student named Luisa who disappeared early in the year, and is not convinced when she says she doesn't know. She is confident it was Jack Westing, but doesn't say so.

### Chapter 3: Maleficer

The next day, Aadhya invites El and Orion to walk to breakfast with her. During the day Orion follows El around the school, hinting that he'd kill her if she ever starts pulling malia from others. El gets little work done, and in maleficaria studies comes up with a new plan: to convince everyone that they are dating. After lunch, the rumor starts spreading through the school. People invite El to sit with her and do small favors, hoping to get in with Orion. As dinner ends Orion kills a mal and is splattered by its guts, so he stops following El around to get a shower. When someone knocks on her door, she expects to see Orion, but instead Jack, smeared with the mal's guts to trick her, stabs her. Since El had gotten ready for bed, she had put her mana crystal away, so she couldn't access any of her stored power. Even knowing she might die, she refuses to pull malia from Jack to kill him. She hears another knock on the door and casts a spell to open the door, revealing Orion. Jack turns around, covered in El's blood, some of it smeared on his face. El collapses while Orion kills Jack.

### Chapter 4: Things That Go Bump In The Night

After killing Jack, Orion uses a linen flax patch that El's mother made to start healing her wound. El explains that Jack was a maleficer. Orion decides to protect El during the night, even though staying in another student's room causes mals to rampage. Outside El's door, mals fought over Jack's body. Mals begin to attack, making their way into the room through the gaps under El's door and the air vents. During the night Orion kills all the mals that come to eat them. El and Orion leave El's room the next morning looking exhausted and overwhelmed. Other kids see them, and the gossip that they slept together spread throughout the school. Kids from the London enclave begin being kind to El, seeing her as a way to poach Orion, while the New York kids start to get nervous. Several enclavers decide to make an effort to hang out with El. Each time they talk to El she snubs them, instead talking to the independent kids who tolerated her before Orion started to 'date' her.

### Chapter 5: Sirenspiders

El asks Orion and Aadhya for help with a magic mirror, as she needs an alchemist and an artificer for the project. The three of them head down to the shop and get to work. Using the opportunity to work with Orion, Aadhya shows off her skills in artifice. El also plans to show off, but for Aadhya instead of Orion. While they work, two sirenspiders drop down from the vents. Orion grabs a hammer and vaults over the table to attack them. During the fight, El is able to finish the mirror with a powerful spell, and grabs a sirenspider leg that lands next to her on the table. El returns to her room where she hangs the mirror on the wall; she covers it when it offers unsolicited prophecies. At lunch, Chloe asks Orion for advice to help her with a potion. Instead of following them to the New York table like a trailing girlfriend, El sits at an empty table. She reflects on how because Orion was with her, she didn't strategize at all for lunch because she expected to sit with him and pretend for one meal more that she was a normal student, not the class reject. While she sits alone El thinks about the first time a mal came after her when she was nine. Her mother was ill, and a member of the commune took Gwen to the hospital, leaving El scared and alone; when she was attacked by a scratcher, none of the commune members came to her aid. She had to rescue herself. The enclavers are all ignoring her now, but Aadhya, Liu, and other independent kids eventually join her. After lunch Orion asks why El didn't sit with him and his fellow enclavers, and she snaps at him. El realizes that he was now hanging around her because she won't genuflect to him, and the two become friends.

### Chapter 6: Manifestation

El drags Orion up to the library, which is the safest place in the school. Orion usually avoids the library since everyone wants to use him to protect themselves. El takes him to her desk in the stacks and they study together. They argue about the privileges that enclavers enjoy, and how often non-enclavers get jumped by mals. He suggests coming back to the library the next morning, but El has a maintenance shift; Orion asks to work El's shift with her since he's never done one. The next morning he helps her clean the alchemy labs, and El and Orion then spend the rest of the weekend in the library. Aadhya suggests that evening that El use her friendship with Orion to get into an enclave. Instead El continues to snub enclavers when they invite her, deciding not to use Orion for her own gain. Later, Orion hears faint screaming and runs towards the reading room, leaving El behind. She follows, but Orion is so far ahead she can't catch up before the library extends the aisles. As she continues down the Sanskrit aisle she spots a book with a gilded spine with no label and grabs it.

El makes it to the end of the aisle and realizes that the library wanted to keep her out of the aisle she's in, not the reading room. When she stops and turns around, she sees a maw-mouth coming out of a vent. She backs away slowly and reflects on what she knows about maw-mouths, including the fact one ate her father. Instead of attacking her, the maw-mouth goes in the opposite direction, heading towards the freshman dorms. Even though she realizes she might die, El goes after the maw-mouth. She casts a shielding spell and pushes into its body, knowing the only way to kill it is from the inside. When she gets inside she tries to get to the core, but has to stop moving as being inside the maw-mouth is too horrible. She instinctively casts a mass killing spell, then she casts it over and over, as well as casting other mass killing spells, until the maw-mouth collapses around her and disintegrates into a puddle. Orion arrives after the last of the maw-mouth remains goes down the drains in the floor created to help clean up the remains of students and mals. He is slightly annoyed that El is fine and ran away from the fight, until El bursts into tears.

### Chapter 7: Misery

Orion takes El back to her room and stays with her, then takes her to the cafeteria. Thinking she is drained of mana, Orion kills some mals and pushes the mana into El. In order to avoid being mana poisoned, El instinctively casts her mother's Simple Gifts spell to 'make yourself right,' which jerks her out of her disassociated state. She casts it using so much mana that it effects the nearby students; the effects from Liu's malia use is reversed. When she returns to her room she inventories her remaining mana stash and finds it greatly depleted. El realizes that if she were to reveal how powerful she is, people would start to fear her. She reflects on her great-grandmother's prophecy that she will bring death and destruction to the enclaves. After she spends time doing mana building exercises she rewards herself by looking over the book she took from the library. El realizes that the spell book is from the Baghdad Enclave, and contains the Golden Stone Sutras--ancient and powerful spells for building enclaves. She promises to build the Sutras a special book chest. El shows the book to Aadhya, who agrees to run an auction for one of the spells which controls the phase of matter.

### Chapter 8: Crawler

The next day at breakfast, El and the group she walked with spots Todd Quayle sitting alone. She soon learns that Todd poached another student's room, which is only possible if one student pushes another into the void, because he heard a maw-mouth go by his old room. When Orion confronts him, Todd dumps Orion's food tray over his head and blames him for the increased maleficaria activity. El proceeds to chew Todd out in front of the entire school. All the enclave kids who were previously being kind start avoiding her. In the library, El fixes a ripped chair so she can sit near the Dubai enclavers in order to pick up some conversational Arabic. At dinner Orion admits he went hunting the maw-mouth, but Liu convinces everyone that there is no maw-mouth, since maw-mouths don't hide. After dinner, El claims her chair in the Dubai corner of the library reading room, and Orion, Ibrahim and Nadia join her. Watching El and Orion in the Dubai corner, Magnus, Chloe, and the other New York enclavers suspect El has joined Dubai and taken Orion with her. Magnus creates a crawler construct and sends it to hurt or kill El. Orion sees it and saves her, and based on the New York kid's reactions, El realizes Magnus was responsible.

Back in her room, El tries to control her anger and thinks about going after Magnus in retaliation. While she seethes, Aadhya knocks on her door. Aadhya asks if El took out the maw-mouth, which makes El remember being inside the maw-mouth. She proceeds to throw up violently, and after recovering, confirms Aadhya's guess. After she explains how she guessed, Aadhya asks why El didn't show everyone how powerful she was freshman year and let the enclavers fight over her. El declares that she doesn't want to join an enclave.

### Chapter 9: Unknown

El spends the night reflecting on her opinions about enclaves. After deciding Aadhya is her best chance at alliance, El tries to score points with her by suggesting Liu bid her hair--which Aadhya wants for her lute--in the auction Aadhya is setting up for the phase control spell. Aadhya instead offers a three-way alliance between all of them. Orion kills a mal that was about to bite El preventing them from discussing it further. In class El and Liu sit together; Liu shows El her mana amplification song spell. Liu explains that she's behind on her mana building which confirms El's suspicion that she isn't going back to malia use. Despite this meaning Liu is not a great strategic choice, El realizes that she doesn't want to lose Aadhya and Liu. She wants them both to live. Later in the library, Chloe warns El not to go to her desk, revealing that Magnus and Jennifer left an unbreaking sleep spell at her desk. Chloe also explains that the crawler the New York kids sent to attack El only had a malia siphon spell. Chloe tries to invite El to New York, but El repeatedly declines her while Chloe tries to negotiate.

When El gets angry about Chloe and the other New York kids wanting her to lock down Orion, even though they aren't actually dating, Chloe tells her that El is the only person Orion's ever hung out with. All Orion ever wanted to do was hunt mals. When she was nine, Orion saved her from a swarm of lyefly mals, and Chloe followed him around trying to be his friend. El realizes that Orion has been living the same life she has in reverse, with people deciding who they were--a dark sorceress, a selfless hero--and acted accordingly without ever trying to know them. El tells Chloe off and rudely suggests she try treating Orion like a human being.

### Chapter 10: Grogler

El runs down the stairs to her room and trips, skinning her knee. Aadhya goes with her to the bathroom so she can wash it off. El, Aadhya, and Liu head to the snack bar, then discuss their alliance while eating in Aadhya's room. El and Liu write all of their names together on the wall outside the bathroom, where alliances are written down, in English, Hindi and Mandarin. The next morning El half-dreams about her mother, and tells her she isn't joining an enclave and has friends. When she realizes Orion isn't up yet, she wakes him and drags him to breakfast, where he keeps falling asleep at the table. She helps him throughout the day until Orion freaks out, worried that El is mad with him. When she realizes she is mad, but at the New York kids, she reassures him by snapping and storming off. In the shop, El and Aadhya demonstrate the phase control spell by starting on the book chest, changing the lignin in a piece of wood to liquid and then back to a solid as a curved shape. During the demonstration the shop starts shaking violently. Orion runs down the stairs and El follows, where finds Orion fighting a grogler. El realizes that the grogler is trying to tear open the staircase, which leads to the graduation hall, which would start graduation early and kill most of the students if opened. Using the phase control spell El turns the nitrogen in the air around the grogler liquid, killing it. As they walk to the cafeteria, El realizes that Orion is exhausted because he's been staying up late patrolling.

### Chapter 11: Seniors

While at lunch Orion, El, Aadhya, Liu, and Ibrahim make plans to fix the damaged stairwell. After realizing that the seniors could use the stairwell to open the graduation hall and increase their odds, they decide to bring as few people as possible into the repairs. Aadhya suggests they use the phase control spell to turn the iron wall liquid, add carbon, and turn it into steel. When Orion reveals he has a block on his power-sharer and can't give them the mana for the project, the group brings Chloe in to help. While practicing in the shop the group overhears a team of seniors discussing plans to break down the wall. The group heads down to start work immediately, but they are discovered by the team of seniors. Chloe tries to de-escalate the situation, but the seniors attack, trying to destroy the repairs. One of them grabs Orion using a fire whip. Liu puts up a shield, Ibrahim tries to free Orion, and Chloe panics and runs. El and Aadhya try to fix the entire wall, pulling it down to reveal an argonet. The seniors use a yanker to quickly travel away and pull Orion and Ibrahim along after them. While Aadhya mixes the iron and carbon in her crucible, El disintegrates the argonet with a spell and grabs one of its teeth. El and Aadhya repair the wall but not before a shrike makes it through Liu's shield. Orion surfs down the stairs on a steam tray and ends up colliding with the group, knocking everyone into the repaired wall and breaking Aadhya's crucible. He has also killed the shrike. The four of them head upstairs where they find Chloe returning with Magnus and a large chunk of the Junior class. After El tells everyone the wall is repaired, the entire group heads to the cafeteria.

### Chapter 12: The Graduation Horde

The large group of students head to the cafeteria where they eat and discuss what to do about the seniors. After the rest of the students come in, El's group is approached by the Senior Valedictorian Clarita Acevedo-Cruz. She proposes sending Orion down to the graduation hall to fix the cleansing machinery, since he is responsible for the imbalance. El tells Clarita off and then counters by suggesting she, Orion, and a team of the most skilled students in the Senior class go down to fix the machinery instead. The Berlin Enclave offers guaranteed spots in their enclave to whomever goes on the mission; when the rest of the enclaves promise the same the matter is settled. The whole school builds mana to support the effort. A team of the best seniors is assembled: five incanters to hold the shield, including Clarita and El; Wen Wu, a Shanghainese independent who had volunteered for a guaranteed spot in the Shanghai enclave, selects and leads the artificers and maintenance-track kids to fabricate and install the repair to the mechanism; and Orion to kill the mals. The morning of graduation the team goes down to the Graduation Hall and head for the machinery. The mals do not notice them at first, but then begin attacking, and Orion holds them off. The team successfully fixes the machine after more than an hour, and they use a yanker to get back upstairs to the senior dorms. El and Orion try to get upstairs to the junior level, but they only get to the workshop level before the cleansing fire of mortal flame begins sweeping the hallways. Orion, thinking they're going to die, kisses El. El knees him in the crotch to get him out of the way so she can cast her own wall of mortal flame as a firebreak.

### Chapter 13: Mortal Flame

El's mortal flame firebreak protects them from the cleansing fires. Orion is overwhelmed by the realization that El saved his life, but then shoves her down so he can kill some mals about to attack them on the ceiling. At that point a crowd appears to ask Orion how he fixed the graduation hall machinery, and El escapes to the workshop to grab supplies. She goes back to her room and Chloe knocks on the door to ask how she is. El gives Chloe back the power-sharer she borrowed, and Chloe apologizes for her ingrained behavior as an enclaver. El takes a nap and a while later Aadhya and Liu come by, bringing some lunch. They discuss the mission and Orion kissing El, and then budget numbers for mana building next quarter. Liu goes back to her room to bring a mouse that she is training as a familiar, and offers to train mice for El and Aadhya as well. The girls get up to go see the rest of the mice in Liu's room but are surprised to find Orion trying to get the courage to knock at El's door. Aadhya and Liu leave while El stays behind to talk to Orion. She tells him she kicked him downstairs to get him out of her way, thinking he would prefer to have his life saved, but she was not kicking him out of her life. Orion says he'd like to ask to date her, but not in the Scholomance; El says in a year he can come visit her in Wales and ask.

They all go to dinner in time for Induction of the new freshmen; Liu's two cousins are among them, as well as a girl named Pamyla from New Jersey who brings a letter for Aadhya, and a boy named Aaron from Manchester. Aaron asks for Galadriel, the daughter of Gwen Higgins, as he had a note for her. El gets the message from her mother, which says, "My darling girl, I love you, have courage, and stay far away from Orion Lake."

## Additional Info

### Characters

#### Juniors in the Scholomance

* Galadriel Higgins aka El
* Orion Lake, from the New York enclave
* Chloe Rasmussen, from the New York enclave
* Magnus Tebow, from the New York enclave
* Aadhya, from New Jersey, independent
* Guo Yi Liu, from China, independent
* Jack Westing, from America
* Luisa, not from any magical family (deceased)
* Nkoyo, independent
* Cora, a friend of Nkoyo
* Jowani, a friend of Nkoyo
* Ibrahim, independent
* Yaakov, close to Ibrahim
* Nadia, a friend of Ibrahim's
* Alfie, from the London enclave
* Sarah, from the London enclave

#### Seniors in the Scholomance

* Clarita Acevedo-Cruz, Senior class Valedictorian, guaranteed a spot in the New York enclave
* Todd Quayle, from the New York enclave, room poacher
* Annabel, River, Jessamy - Clarita's and Todd's other alliance members
* Victoria, from the Seattle enclave
* David Pires, saluditorian, incanter on the mission to the graduation hall
* Wu Wen, from Shanghai, in charge of artifice for the mission
* Maya Wulandari, from Canada, incanter on the mission
* Angel Torres, incanter on the mission
* Zhen Yang
* Ellen Cheng
* Kaito Nakamura
* Vinh Tran
* Jane Goh

#### Incoming freshmen inducted in the last chapter

* Pamyla from Newark
* Guo Yi Zheng, one of Liu's twin cousins
* Guo Yi Min, the other of Liu's twin cousins
* Aaron from Manchester

#### Outside the Scholomance (characters in flashbacks or mentioned)

* Gwen Higgins, El's mother
* Philippa Wax, a disagreeable personality at the commune
* Deepthi Sharma, El's several-times-great-grandmother on her dad's side, and a famous seer
* Arjun Sharma, El's dad, deceased
* Ophelia Rhys-Lake, Orion's mom, next in line for Domina of New York
* Li Shan Feng, Dominus of Shanghai, leader of the best-recorded time a maw-mouth has been killed
* Sir Alfred Cooper Browning, the Dominus of Manchester who led the building of the Scholomance

## References:

1. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education (The Scholomance) (Chapter 1). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.
2. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education (The Scholomance) (Chapter 2). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.
3. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. (The Scholomance) (Chapter 3). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition
4. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. (The Scholomance) (Chapter 4). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.
5. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. (The Scholomance) (Chapter 5) Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.
6. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. (The Scholomance) (Chapter 6). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.
7. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. (The Scholomance) (Chapter 7). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.
8. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. (The Scholomance) (Chapter 8). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.
9. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. (The Scholomance) (Chapter 9). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.
10. ↑ Novik, Naomi. A Deadly Education. (The Scholomance) (Chapter 10). Random House Publishing Group. Audiobook Edition.