A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

I had a hard time getting into this one at first, but by the end I was sold. Lots of fun monster fights and some surprisingly insightful lines:

“She says it’s too easy to call people evil instead of their choices, and that lets people justify making evil choices, because they convince themselves that it’s okay because they’re still good people overall, inside their own heads.

And yes, fine, but I think after a certain number of evil choices, it’s reasonable shorthand to decide that someone’s an evil person who oughtn’t have the chance to make any more choices.”