A Deadly Education is my number one most recommended book of the summer, hands down. I've recommended it to my dentist, to every one of my writer friends, and to a woman at my knitting group about fifteen minutes after I first met her. I recommended it to my friend who is going through chemo and feeling awful and sick and insomniac--she loves it, she read it at three AM and then checked out books two and three as ebooks, which one can do at three AM, and read those too. When I mentioned it at my knitting group, another knitter overheard and chimed in: "Oh, yeah, that book is so, so good. Definitely read it."
It's a good book. A good series, actually, with a fantastic arc from the beginning of book one to the end of book three. I mean, this book opens with the determination to kill Orion Lake and by book three... well, we come full circle and yet the meaning of everything is entirely different. The structure of this trilogy is <<chef's kiss meme>>.
I've heard some people hate the protagonist's voice but I love her to pieces. She's catty and young and angry, and she has every goddamn right to be. I can imagine some people not falling in love with the way the worldbuilding onfolds, which is confessional and detailed and circuitous, with sometimes-monologuing explanations, rather than the more typical (for current books) in media res opening that displays worldbuilding via dialogue and action. Even if you love in media res (which I do), it's not ideal for every story, and I think this story is served very well by the style in which it is written.
Those are the only possible quibbles with A Deadly Education, and they're hardly worth considering. This book is fun, vivid, violent, romantic, snarky, gory and harsh and beautiful, and by the end it is quietly so goddamned revolutionary. Very, very good work.
Comments