First Quarter 2021 Round up

Blogging continues, though it isn’t clear if anyone is even looking at what I post.

Hits are wa-a-y down.  Where is everybody?

Obviously, the posts are better than ever ( : – ) ), so what’s going on?

Is this pandemic related?  Is this something to do with global politics, e.g., blocking in China or EU? Or maybe changes in WordPress reporting.  I dunno.

Band Names

As always, I noted some Dave Barry tribute band names, taken from real scientific and technical publictions.

Stochastic Parrots
Neanderthal ears
The Laschamps Excursion (Pronounced Las Champs, or in SoCal, LA’s Champs)
The Chicxulub Impactors  (Or just Impactor)

Books Reviewed

Fiction

Smoke by Joe Ide
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler
Trio by William Boyd
Outlawed by Anna North
Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams
Tropic of Stupid by Tim Dorsey
The Sun Collective by Charles Baxter
Aphasia by Mauro Javier Cárdenas
The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem
Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino by Julián Herbert

Non-fiction

The Light Ages by Seb Falk
Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
The Last Million by David Nasaw
New Money by Lana Swartz
Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb

Book Review: “Deadly Education” by Naomi Novik

Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

With the success of Harry Potter, there is a minor industry for “Boarding Schools for Magicians”  (e.g., The Magicians, Magic for Liars , The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School).

Novik introduces The Scholomance, which is not exactly Hogwarts.  A fully automated school for young wizards, Scholomance operates on Darwinian principles. No coddling by protective teachers—the kids are on their own. A constant stream of hungry mana eaters (malia) plagues the school, killing a fair fraction of the students.  Only the strong and paranoid survive.

Young Galadriel is a Junior by now, with no friends and a bad attitude.  To be fair, she has inherited a powerful affinity and natural ability for mass destruction.   I.e., this is her personal wheelhouse, like it or not.   (“All shall love me and despair!“)  If you want to wipe out a city, she’s your woman.  But this is not a particularly practical everyday specialty, so she suppresses her powers, and keeps to herself.  She isn’t leading the popularity pack.

The school is a product of the social hierarchy of magicians.  Fortunate magicians live in ultra-wealthy enclaves, protected from the rampaging malia and other problems.  Other magicians struggle to live, and, indeed, often die young before even knowing their own powers.

Inside the Scholomance kids from the enclaves clump together for protection and to share resources.  They accumulate followers and servants who hope to be invited to join the enclave after graduation.  In the mean time, the weaker kids are picked off by malia, increasing the survival of the rich.  (The cynical, including Galadriel, are certain that is why the rich guys let poor kids attend for free.)

It turns out that the balance of nature in school has been upset by Orlando Lake, super slayer.  His born affinity—he can’t help it—is to rescue people and kill malia.  He’s very good at it, so good that he’s changed the magic ecology in dangerous ways.

Oh, and by the way Orlando falls for Galadriel, because, what else could happen?  The young couple isn’t dating, though they do appear to be an item to everybody in school.

Our young wizards have to fight like crazy to survive junior year, and then they have to figure out friendship and love and growing up.

And somehow survive senior year and graduation.

This is marked as the first of a series, so there will be sequels.

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1. Naomi Novik, Deadly Education, New York, Del Ray, 2020.

 

Sunday Book Reviews