By Charity West
Naomi Novik’s brilliant twist on the magic school trope, A Deadly Education, explores the idea of what would happen if the magic school was trying to kill you. The story starts with our main character, El (short for Galadriel, much to her chagrin), having her life saved for the second time, and being so frustrated by her savior’s inconvenient heroics that she decides he has to die. Instant intrigue. It’s been described as Harry Potter meets Hunger Games, but it’s even better than that sounds. It’s a constantly surprising, emotionally satisfying story that ultimately challenges the way the reader views life and social structure.
I loved this book so much. It was one of those “can’t stop till you finish it” stories. As the story unfolds, you get to know El better, and you find out there’s a reason she’s so irritated about being saved—and it’s not that she’s petulant. This school, and this world, are all about the divisions between the weak and the powerful, the haves and the have-nots, and looking weak is as good as painting a target on your back. But as El’s life gets entangled with Orion’s, her perspective starts to change and she starts to see possibilities beyond survival.
There’s a lot the author has to establish about the world for the story to make sense: how the school works, why it exists, why it’s so dangerous, and why anyone would ever send their children there. Not to mention the magic system and various magical threats. On top of that, the reader needs to understand the complex social structure that has left El alone and fighting for her life, while others live in relative comfort with plenty of power to supply the spells they need to stay alive. What surprised me as I read was how thoroughly engaged I was, even as the author revealed this information through long passages some might call “info dumps.”
The info dump is so dreaded among authors that sometimes new writers leave out necessary information. We’re so afraid to get caught telling rather than showing, that we leave our readers in the dark, confused and unable to connect with the characters and the story because of what they don’t understand.
What we can learn from Naomi Novik in A Deadly Education is how to provide that crucial information and still keep the reader engaged. The first principle is to provide the info in the scene it’s relevant to, and don’t tell the reader everything you know about your world all at once. But another equally important key to keeping information engaging, is to tell it in the character’s voice.
Here’s an example from chapter one, just after Orion Lake has so rudely saved El and left her with the task of cleaning up the dissolved monster that tried to eat her. She tries to summon a useful spell from the school’s collection (housed in an empty void) and instead receives a spell for summoning an army of demons.
“That sort of thing is always happening to me. Some sorcerers get an affinity for weather magic, or transformation spells, or fantastic combat magics like dear Orion. I got an affinity for mass destruction. It’s all my mum’s fault, of course, just like my stupid name. She’s one of those flowers and beads and crystals sorts, dancing to the Goddess under the moon. Everyone’s a lovely person and anyone who does anything wrong is misunderstood or unhappy….Naturally I came out designed to be the exact opposite of this paragon, as anyone with a basic understanding of the balancing principle might have expected, and when I want to straighten my room, I get instructions on how to kill it with fire.”
El’s voice is full of sarcasm and self-deprecation, which I found endearing. This passage reveals information about the magic system (affinities) and one of the “rules” of the world, but all of it is told in a conversational tone by a character dripping with attitude.
Here’s another great example, from a moment in chapter six when El is running through the library on her way to perform an act of heroics that might secure her future in this dangerous world, and instead of hiding useful books and trying to keep her from her destination, as the school library is wont to do, it delivers her a very valuable spell book.
“You never get anything for free in here. But I’d just been handed an incredibly valuable book, and right behind me in the reading room was everything I’d been hoping for, my best chance for survival and a future. I already knew that the school wasn’t holding that out to me for nothing—and here in front of me was the exact opposite. I was being offered a bribe twice over. But why would you bribe someone if you didn’t have to? The school wouldn’t bother trying to keep me off the maw-mouth unless the school thought—that I had a chance. That a sorceress designed from the ground up for slaughter and destruction might just be able to take out the one monster no one else could kill.”
Again we get this important information about how the school works—it’s a sentient being with its own agenda and students can learn a lot by figuring out what the school is trying to do—and we get it all in El’s unique voice. She brings her signature cynicism and pessimistic worldview to the analysis, giving us the information in a way no other character could—and making it more engaging as a result.
Not every type of story can get away with these long passages of information and analysis. Typically, it works better to weave the context in among other writing elements like dialogue, description, and action. But every story can benefit from delivering important context for the reader in an engaging, interesting, character-revealing voice. Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education is a powerful study in voice, and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to apply this principle to their writing.