Young-adult fantasy told in first person through the eyes of El, a 3rd year (~16 years old) female student in the ‘Scholomance’, the magic school of the series title. We as reader are thrown directly into her life at the school, which is completely cut off from the outside world of the adult wizards (there are no teachers here). In this first book of the series, we are then taken a-pace through a series of the school’s non-stop horrors as we learn most of the students die in increasingly gruesome ways; there’s magical monsters at every turn, work assignments that turn deadly, contaminated food, bullies and cliques, and a good dose of adolescent angst. In fact, it’s all quite a good deal of macabre fun, and told with much delightful malice. One of the main themes is how much easier life is if you come from a position of privilege, in this case meaning that you enter the school from a specific ‘enclave’, and thus have a ready-made support network. Without this, students such as El need to find or join such a network by brilliance, drudgery or even offering themselves as cannon fodder. El, however, is so cantankerous, she pushes everyone away and can’t get into the position to show that she is brilliant, namely she has very powerful spells. Although that makes her interesting, it is definitely frustrating that we have an awful lot of text dedicated to her self pity, stubborn pride and even her trying to talk herself out of both. As a counterpoint, we thankfully have the ‘enclaver’ Orion, also acting as romantic interest, who has a gift that means he is courted by all rather than being seen as a person, showing that privilege isn’t necessarily all wonderful either (or at least in this school). The book would be better if we directly switched to other points of view to contrast with El’s everlasting sardonic inner monologue, but I can see that would be complicated for the intended audience. The other negative is that the world is just a too far out there to be believable - as bemoaned by El, it is really is just far too non-stop - but suspend all that because I just need to know how are characters are going to survive graduation, and that’s the next book… #BookReview