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From Lambda Literary Award finalist Linsey Miller comes this thrilling stand-alone fantasy about the lengths we'll go to get ahead—an incredibly fresh, twisty love letter to dark academia...with a body count.
Perfect for fans of A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid, Gallant by V. E. Schwab, and All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody and C. L. Herman.
There is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…
First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway's only hope of a good future is passing his elite school's honors class. It's only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.
If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students' lives are forfeit.
And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.
Fabian isn't worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that's why he befriended them.
As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.
"The detail is astounding. The suspense rises subtly as the year progresses, and the storytelling is engrossing. Stunning." —Booklist (starred review)
"The premise has all the elements dark academia readers wish for: magic, politics, a gothic-tinged setting, and swoonworthy romance. However, Miller mires the narrative in minutiae, exhausting readers' attention over trivialities that feel irrelevant, leaving more important elements (specifically the overall worldbuilding and magic system) to falter...Intriguing but frustratingly unfocused." —Kirkus Reviews
"Esoteric prose occasionally stifles a compelling premise. Miller nevertheless devises a fresh, physics- and chemistry-driven magical system and utilizes cerebral close-third-person storytelling and biting narration to confront the twisted politics of dark academia." —Publishers Weekly
"The story meditates on themes like the cost of education, self-worth via academic success, and survival versus sacrifice inside a horror story. The characterizations are a little thin, but stakes are high, the premise is fun, and the pacing makes for a delightful binge read. Small doses of gore and horror heighten the stakes of this magical survival story. Recommended for general purchase." —Library Journal
"A brutal and breathtaking dark academia novel that explores the price of education and the sacrifices that are made to attain it, That Devil, Ambition was a heart-pounding read from start to poignant finish. Linsey Miller never misses." —Kamilah Cole, bestselling author of So Let Them Burn
"A richly imagined, wickedly sharp treatise on betrayal, love, and cunning—and more pointedly, who pays the price for all three." —Margaret Owen, author of the New York Times-bestselling Little Thieves series
This information about That Devil, Ambition was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Once upon a time, Linsey Miller studied biology in Arkansas. These days, she holds an MFA in fiction and is the author of the Lambda-nominated What We Devour. Her other works include the Mask of Shadows duology, Belle Révolte, The Game, the first three books in the Disney Princes series, and various short stories. She can be found in Texas writing about science and magic anywhere there is coffee.
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