Vita Nostra  is weird, and this review is gonna be pretty rambling, this book is hard for me to put into words. Yes it’s a magic school book, but ohhh boy oh boy, it is not a normal magical school book. I could say it plays with and twists the usual magic school tropes, but throws them out the window in a cosmic horror vortex might be more accurate. It also did things to me, twice three times I dreamt about it and woke up in the middle of the night feeling exactly like the main character after doing her schoolwork. And this is not the “I’m waiting for my letter from Hogwarts” wish fulfillment kind of story, this the “I’m so thankful this shit ain’t real” kind. 

It starts cheerful enough, a girl enjoying a seaside holiday with her mother. But then she meets Farit Kozhennikov, and her free will becomes a thing of the past as she is forced to attend this mysterious school or face life threatening consequences for her family.

Did I mention it was weird?  The beginning was weird, the middle was weird, and the ending felt a bit ambiguous. But it works, it worked really well for me. Someone else was saying how judging by the normal criteria we use when talking about books, it sounds lacking. It takes ages for any character except for Sasha to get contoured, the plot is slow and half the book revolves around trying to study, you never get information when you want it, the setting isn’t particularly developed, the worldbuilding only gets vaguely explained.  But put together, it works amazingly, it made me deeply relate to Sasha, even getting her tunnel vision, focusing on schoolwork to the detriment of interpersonal relationships, and general life. It was interesting how we only got to see the other characters through Sasha’s lens, and how my perception of them changed as her goals changed. I think that, frustrating though it certainly was during the first third, the way the information was revealed ended up working really well for me. 

There are 3 parts to the book, each covering a year of school. The transition and shift in perspective from year 1 to year 2 might be one of the best-written things I’ve read. I wish I could tell you more about it but those would be spoilers. 

There’s a lot of gloom and doom and omnius lines such as “ you will be dismissed and simultaneously buried”. These teachers do not play around. Failing exams is literally a matter of life and death, the student’s or a loved ones. There is nothing light or optimistic about this school. 

One of my main questions while reading was, would the payoff be worth it. And yeah it was, but also I’m not sure. The third act was amazing and gripping, satisfying and raised a lot of questions, especially on whether the means justify the ends, but there were still questions left . I suspect this might be a bit of an expectations thing, I’m used to authors holding my hand, explaining everything and having it all make sense in the end, and here there were plenty of “but why” questions left. Rather than hand holding, Marina and Sergey Dyachenko throw the reader and the character in the deep end and demand they learn to swim before sinking. 

I had a couple of issues with the translation, things like using dollars and miles instead of keeping the original. 

I mentioned above that the ending was ambiguous, and I guess I feel ambiguous about it. It lets you make up your own mind, so for myself, I chose the optimistic reading.

I don’t know who to recommend this to and who to say it might not be a good fit for, on paper it’s a terrible fit for me, stressful, complicated, hard to follow at times, dark, but I absolutely loved it and I think it’s going to be one of the books that stays with me for a long time. 

Bingo squares: Any r/fantasy bookclub, local to Kiev, Moscow, California, small scale,