Today’s links Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy: When Rousseau comes to Hobbeswarts. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy (permalink) The Scholomance trilogy is Naomi Novik’s take on a “school for wizardry”: It. Is. Superb. Novik takes a belt-sander to all the crumbling tropes left by lesser writers to reveal fresh wood beneath, fashioning something breathtakingly new: https://www.naominovik.com/category/scholomance/ Here’s the premise: the wizards of the world live in constant peril from malificaria – the magic monsters that prey on those born with magic, especially the children. In a state of nature, only one in ten wizard kids reaches adulthood. So the wizarding world built the Scholomance, a fully automated magical secondary school that exists in the void – a dimension beyond our world. The Scholomance is also an extremely dangerous place – three quarters of the wizard children who attend will die before graduation – but it is much safer than life on the outside. The Scholomance’s builders all hail from “enclaves” – magical palaces that have also been built in the void – and the enclave kids are the elites of the school, just as their parents are the elites of the world. Outside the scholomance, every “indie” wizard dreams of a place in an enclave, where they and their children might find a modicum of safety. Inside the school, the indie kids suck up to the enclavers…Pluralistic: Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy (29 Mar 2023)