The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

Title: The School for Good and Evil

Author: Soman Chainani

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 21^st September 2022

Format: Paperback

Pages: 528

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: Soon to be a major Netflix film starring Charlize Theron, Kerry Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Michelle Yeoh, Sofia Wylie, Sophie Anne Caruso, Jamie Flatters, Earl Cave, Kit Young, and many more!
The first in the New York Times bestselling School for Good and Evil series. A dark and enchanting fantasy adventure perfect for those who prefer their fairy tales with a twist.
Two best friends have been chosen to be students at the fabled School for Good and Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy-tale heroes and villains. One will train for Good; one will become Evil’s new hope. Each thinks they know where they belong, but when they are swept into the Endless Woods, they’re switched into the opposite schools. Together they’ll discover who they really are and what they are capable of. . . because the only way out of a fairy tale is to live through it.
Best friends Sophie and Agatha have been chosen to be students at the fabled School for Good and Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to become fairy-tale heroes and villains.
One will train for Good, taking classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication. One will become Evil’s new hope: learning Uglification and Death Curses.
Sophie and Agatha think they know where they belong, but when they are swept into the Endless Woods, they’re switched into the opposite schools. Together they’ll discover who they really are and what they are capable of.
Features cover artwork from Netflix’s The School for Good and Evil film and includes Soman Chainani’s exclusive on-set movie diary!

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Every year for the past two hundred years, two students between the ages of eleven and fourteen to fifteen have been taken on the eleventh night of the eleventh month. One is destined to join the School of Good and learn to become a fairy tale hero, a prince, or a princess, whilst the other is sent to the School for Evil, destined to become a fairy tale villain. They’re divided into the Evers – the School for Good, and Nevers – the School for Evil. The school each student attends will determine what their fairy tale outcome will be. Enter Sophie and Agatha, two friends from Beyond the Woods who are known as Readers – and Readers are something of a novelty at the school, it seems. Sophie has longed to go to the school for years, especially since her father remarried and her stepmother and stepsiblings have joined the family. She feels like she doesn’t belong, like she could be Cinderella, and she is determined that she belongs at the School for Good. Sophie even looks like a princess- conventionally beautiful, helpful, and filled with joy. Agatha is her best friend, and her mother is sure she is destined for the School for Evil, but Agatha, unlike Sophie, doesn’t want to go at all. She wants to stay where she is – and is determined to thwart all of Sophie’s attempts to go. But when both girls are chosen, and swept off to the school, things start to change. Sophie is taken to the School for Evil, whilst Agatha is whisked off to the School for Good – against what both want and think is right for them. But why has the Storian sent them to the opposing schools they thought they were destined for – and why has he called them in particular? All Sophie and Agatha can do is work with what they have been given to understand what has happened and solve the mystery of why they are there and what it means for good and evil, and for fairy tales of all kinds.

As a lover and scholar of fairy tales, I always find retellings of all kinds interesting – depending on how they are done and the layers within them, positing that there are layers to the characters. On its surface, The School for Good and Evil aims to tell people whether they are a hero or a villain through the various classes each school takes. I felt that the characters on the peripheral, the side characters, had two-dimensional ideas of what good and evil should be. That is, until Agatha and Sophie arrive, and things start to change – sort of. We see that Sophie and Agatha have good and evil in them, that they can channel both as needed, and I think the power in their goodness is in the bonds of their friendship – in what they will do to help each other and try to stay together even though the schools are determined to keep them apart. Agatha and Sophie are tested throughout the novel, and forced to become allies with unlikely people – and it seems harder than they thought, and as Tedros comes between them, I felt that I was going to see each character change in ways that nobody – not even Sophie or Agatha – could see coming.

The story is told from two perspectives – Sophie and Agatha – in third person, so it easy to switch between and get a gist of each school – and kept thinking it was quite wrong to tell children they were good or evil, but perhaps that was the point – that assumptions and prejudice never result in anything good, that it leads to blinkers and an unwillingness to talk things through – and that I felt was where Sophie and Agatha came in because unlike the other students, I felt the two friends were more nuanced, more balanced, because there were times I could see shades of grey in them, and a determination to do what was morally right, rather than what was right in terms of the division of good and evil. Despite the school’s determination to separate them and tell them their fairy tale was different to what they imagined; the two girls wanted to remain friends.

What I loved about this book was the fairy tale aspect, having studied fairy tales before. I was able to recognise the tropes and characters, whilst seeing how someone liked Soman could take what we know and turn it on its head – and he has turned it into a series that looks like it will be interesting and popular, so I might go on and read the rest at some stage. It’s the kind of series that I think will look at the good versus evil trope in a different way, and I wonder what the outcome will be – if it will be more nuanced or if we will get the usual good always wins trope at the end. That said, it is the inventiveness of this book that drew me in and had me wondering what was going to happen next. A really good start to the series!