#59 A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

El is a junior trying to stay alive at a magic school that has no problems with their student body feeding the monsters inside. The school has no teachers anyone can see and monsters are constantly snacking on the student body. The monsters eat the magic that blossoms in magic users at puberty. To graduate you have to be able to fight your way to the gate that opens up on graduation day. And families have no contact with their children from the time they go in until the time they come out, if they ever come out. El isn’t popular since people think she is using malia instead of mana. She doesn’t since she was told at a young age about a prophecy that said she would bring the downfall of the magical enclaves. El’s mother protected her from everything and is a well-known mana only magic user but now she is on her own with only the crystals her mom sent in with her to help her store mana.
Orion has been saving as many of his schoolmates from the monsters as he can and the monsters are starving. Orion and El slowly become friends when he realizes that she isn’t trying to be his friend like everyone else since he is the son of the leader of the New York enclave and a powerful magician. The seniors are not happy with Orion since he has been starving the monsters that the seniors will have to fight in a few days in order to make it out of the graduation hall. Orion and El and several other students start to work together to stop them from being sacrificed in place of the graduating class.

The last line of the book is a great kicker when El gets a letter from home that come in with a newly arrived freshman. This is the only way current students get messages from the outside world and there is a weight limit of what the kids can bring in with them. And it endears the new freshmen to the older students so they will keep an eye out on the new arrivals and hopefully help them stay alive.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss