The School for Good and Evil

The School for Good and Evil is a fantasy novel by Soman Chainani published in 2013, the first book of a series set in a fictional region called the Endless Woods. The original trilogy follows two friends, Sophie and Agatha, through a school where children are sorted into future heroes and future villains.

The school works by a rule the girls did not expect: Sophie, who wants to be the princess of the story, is placed with the villains, and Agatha, who has never wanted anything to do with fairy tales, is placed with the heroes. The novel builds on tales the reader already knows and then puts its two principal characters in the wrong halves of that arrangement, leaving them to work out what the school is actually for.

Chainani writes for a young readership and keeps the plot moving through lessons, contests and the politics of academy houses. The series continued with further books, and its premise, that the roles in a fairy tale are assigned rather than earned, is the question each volume revisits.