Is it OK what they are doing to these kids? - Vita Nostra

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Every once in a while, you come across a book that's just special. It is just strange or unique and abstract in a way that you just haven't quite seen before, doing things that you haven't quite seen before. Today, we're talking about Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, and it was just It took my life by storm. I could not put it down. I wanted to keep coming back to it. Every time I was away from it, I was thinking about the book, the characters, the implications. It is extremely complicated, not so much unlike a hard to understand as you're reading it, but much more of a hard to kind of define the ramifications of the moral decisions that are being made by any given character at any given time in the book, and the morality of what is being done, especially to the members of this school, is just so gray, and it's complicated on such a deep level. I don't see enough people talking about it, so I decided this was one that absolutely had to have its own dedicated video, and that's what we're going to do today. Let's talk about Vita Nostra.

[00:01:29]Now, this is a book that was written in Russian and then translated over on into English, and it is kind of like taking the trope of boy goes to magic school, or in this particular case, girl goes to magic school, and kind of just manipulating it and twisting it and corrupting it in a way that makes what is normally a kind of fun and exciting idea of going off to this school and learning these things that, you know, magic or some other deep secret knowledge that not many people get to know and only the special or the talented or the, you know, the ones that are born with the gift get to go and do.

[00:02:13]And there's just like a fun level to those books and this, kind of like I said, it takes that and it twists it and it corrupts it and it taints it and it makes it feel wrong on so many different levels. This is a story of a girl who goes off to the beach with her mom one summer. She is, I want to say, 16 years old at the beginning of the book and she is approached while on vacation by a very strange, dark and mysterious figure who tasks her with doing some morally questionable things. It is inappropriate what he's asking her to do. Not like in an insane, like to an absurd degree, but it's it's it's inappropriate. And then she will be rewarded with gold coins. He then will give her basically the order of you will not go to a regular university. You will go to this special school and you will go to the Institute of Special Technologies and that is where you will learn and that is where you will learn what you were intended to learn. And from there, she learns the secrets of the school and what the school and the people in the school can do and what they are capable of and it goes from there. Now, the mood and atmosphere of this is insane. It's weird. It's dark.

[00:03:44]It's oppressive. It feel It's going to make you uncomfortable as you're reading it through many of the different parts.

[00:03:51]Like I said, very very weird. And then, it's got this sense of almost shifting realities, magical realism to an extent, a dream-like feeling, especially to the opening third of the book. Very much so, it feels like something will happen and then the same thing will happen again.

[00:04:12]Or something will happen and the events will somehow be reset and we'll have to go backwards and we'll have to do something else. Like it's very shifting.

[00:04:22]It's very strange. It feels very much like being locked into a dream as it's happening. Nothing really feels right.

[00:04:32]This guy that's following her around and giving her these chores and giving her these things to do feels creepy. He feels unsafe to be around. He feels like he's up to no good. There's something going on. There's something behind this guy. Even though her mom and everybody else who seems to come in contact with him seems like he's just a really nice guy. And to her, it's of just a very different perspective on the It's very, like I said, very strange, very creepy.

[00:05:05]Just I was was going to say wonderful. It is the reading experience is wonderful. It puts you in this position of m- just m- weird, dark, strange mystery. Then, we move on into the book and we go off to this school. And we are now in a situation where she's in a group with all the other students and they start to be taught lessons. And they're being taught in a strange way from strange people. And they are not allowed to know what they're learning or what the end goal even is. And the structure is oppressive. The teachers are oppressive. The kind of guidance people you're kind of assigned a person to kind of main-maintain and manage and oversee your education in the school, and they are being motivated literally through threats and manipulation and abuse. Mental abuse literally is what's being done to these children in this school. They are being coerced into cooperating through threats of danger. Not threats of danger to themselves, but their loved ones. You do what we say, when we say, how we say, or someone will pay the consequences. It won't be you, but someone will pay the consequences, which feels almost like a spoiler, but it's on the book jacket. I mean, it's literally told there. So, don't get mad at me. But, it is This is how this school is going to be presented. Then, as you go through This goes from her being found by this guy to all the way through her third year of the school where you have to take the final like placement exam. The school's not done yet, but the final placement exam happens at the third year, and this goes right up to that point. And it is 100% at every point in this book completely engrossing and gripping, and you are locked in. You want this girl gone. You want this girl out of this school because something's not right, but at the same time, you're just as invested in the mysteries of what they know. What do they know? What are they trying to teach her? Because these people clearly have secrets. Secret knowledge of the workings of reality itself, and they have abilities they shouldn't have, and they are promising and offering these abilities to these students, but at what cost? And what are they going to have to do to teach that to them? What are they going to have to do to main maintain control of them? And is it right at the end in the end of the day? Do the ends justify the means of what they're doing to these kids in this school? And will the knowledge be worth it? And does the knowledge justify the behavior and the treatment of the people in this school? And you will eventually get the secrets, or at least some of them, and you start to understand what the knowledge that they're trying to convey is. And there will be justifications and rationalizations given as to why it was necessary to do what they did. But at the end of the day, was the justifications and the rationalizations enough to hand-wave it all? To excuse or make it okay? I would say probably not. But that's not the point. The point is kind of going through this and experiencing it and learning. And it is I I I it's hard to put into words without going into full-on spoilers, which I absolutely refuse to do. And it's a 100% morally gray, difficult place to find yourself in with these kids in these school, because they are clearly being controlled through manipulation and coercion. But at the same time, I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that I am an American reading a Russian novel that was translated into English, and the it is a Russian girl, and she is taken into an old abandoned like Soviet facility in order to be taught these things. Like how much of the weird nature and the uncomfortable feelings that I personally get just come from the fact that, you know, I'm an American and raised in such a drastically different corner of the world under such drastically different, you know, circumstances. And what would this have been like from the perspective of a different culture the you know, say the Russians or you know, anybody from Eastern Europe reading this book.

[00:10:11]Would it have have been just as awkward and uncomfortable and oppressive or would it have been more so? Or is it just really speaking to the human psychology on a much more universal level? I really I don't know I don't know. I'm not going to pretend to know. It's just one of those fascinating things that I caught myself thinking about as I was going throughout the book. Actually, like I said, I just constantly found myself thinking about the book as I was reading it, as I was not reading in between reads I would just be mentally going back through what the book was trying to do, what the book was trying to say both from a psychological perspective, from a moral perspective, from, you know, what is appropriate to be happening to these characters in this book. Then as you start to understand the secrets of reality almost essentially, then that starts to unfold in your mind. And then you're thinking about the implications of what this is and what this means and how this would work. And how all of it goes on and into each other. It is amazing and fascinating on many, many, many different levels. It is very deep book and it is a lot to think about.

[00:11:31]Then the last chapter of this book no spoilers, but the last chapter of this book is feels very reminiscent of something like the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey because it flips. It like slingshots you into the abstract in a way that the rest of the book has not. It's been dancing around and dipping its toes into the abstract the whole time, but that final chapter slingshots you into It's like that scene in the end of 2001 where it's like, "Oh, he's in a white house." And then he's old young man, old man, this man, that you know, like it's just a series of strange abstract imagery and then space baby. You know, like that's kind of what this felt like. You just get this weird abstract chapter of God knows what imagery and words and conversations, things being said, but things not being heard and spoken but not it's insane. And then it just kind of is like ends. And you're like, "That was one of the most unconventional and mind-bending, mind-expanding things that I've just been through page one to page 500 or 400, whatever it was.

[00:12:44]It doesn't matter. It was I I I I find it difficult to put words to it.

[00:12:50]I really do. I find it difficult to try and convey what this book was in a YouTube video. It's difficult to say the least. I just All I can say is go find a copy of Vita Nostra somewhere and get your hands on it and give it a try if you're a fan of weird or the abstract or I don't even know. It is magical realism, but it's not. It's girl goes to magic school, but it's not.

[00:13:22]It's yeah, yes. It's yes. It's yes, it's all of the above. Anyway, it's nine out of 10 for me.

[00:13:32]Like easy nine out of 10. There were some things I I won't say like in the revelations that left a little bit to be desired. I think there were if it was I'll have to think about it a little bit more. There were some revelations and when you learn exactly what the kids are, I guess is a way to word that. I was like, oh, that could have been That was That left a little bit to be desired, but there's so much room in the next There's two more of these books.

[00:13:59]There's so much room for that to grow and evolve. This could in hindsight be a 10. But right now I'm sitting on a nine because there were just some things that I thought fell a little bit flat through the reading process. But oh my god, go get it. Go read it. And don't blame me if you hate it because not my fault.

[00:14:18]Anyway, everybody, as always, the link for my Patreon's in the description below. The link for my Discord's in the description below. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.