Reviews tagging 'War'

Scholomance – Die goldenen Enklaven by Naomi Novik

53 reviews

kelisabeth's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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katy_bee's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I've raced through this series, rather like a mawmouth. I've seen in other reviews that there are issues with the writing style- lots of telling rather than showing- and I agreed. The chosen one trope is very much present so if that's not your thing, beware. But I just really enjoyed them. I got swept up in the world and El's journey. The first half was definitely more page turning. Things slowed a little in the middle but I wanted to see what happened to the characters and have the mystery of the enclave attacks solved and it all came together very satisfyingly. 
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firefenix14's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

LOVE this trilogy!!! This is the second time I've read through this series, first time was early 2023. I blew through these because I love the world and the story. El has so much going on, and the number of shifts and turns in this is amazing and captivating. There are definitely some slower moments within her internal dialogue incorporating more world building/history that I felt were unnecessary, but overall I really loved this series. Something is great about a bitter main character that begrudgingly does the right thing even though it is insanely hard. She never takes the easy way out, that's for sure.
Everything about Orion and what he is, the way her mum tried to heal him, and the resolution between El and Deepthi Sharma was really well written. The emotional conclusion of that felt really satisfying, and her granddad threatening to leave the house/estate was a great show of his real love for Arjun, El, and her mom.
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ladypalutena's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I was correct in my assessment of the first book: by blowing it up from a duology to a trilogy, I feel like there's a lot that could have been trimmed down. I don't think she could have ever put it back to a duology (unless you did two 500 page books), but the story here didn't end up being as satisfying as I wanted. 

This is mainly for the following reason:
After two books dealing with mals, and two books of El describing what it's like to take down a maw-mouth, it turns out that in order to create an Enclave, you have to sacrifice someone and turn them into a maw-mouth. So when you destroy a maw-mouth, you're destroying an Enclave somewhere else in the world.
 

The last hundred or so pages of this book, much like the last hundred or so pages of The Last Graduate, shoves everything in it. It's like the previous three hundred pages barely mattered: the entirety of the conflict happens in the final few pages.
Like, I was expecting some sort of final battle between her and Maw-Mouth Orion, but what ends up happening is she simply holds his hands and tells him that he's already dead, then it takes literally hundreds of people to stop everything from collapsing in on himself and then somehow Orion still survives?


I did really enjoy this series. I enjoyed the magic system, I enjoyed Novik's writing, and I enjoyed the characters that weren't El (which makes me wish for some sort of spin-off for Aadhya or Liu). 

Speaking of other characters, while El is busy mourning Orion's death (or at the very least, still planning on going back to the Scholomance to kill Patience and put Orion out of his misery),
she ends up banging Liesel?
This relationship seems to come out of nowhere to me - it's not even remotely hinted at in the last book, and then suddenly they're alone together and El thinks the only thing she can do to feel anything is to jump in bed together? It left a bad taste in my mouth. I guess technically, yes, she thinks Orion is dead so she's not cheating on him, but really? The kid hasn't even been dead for two weeks yet? 

All together, I enjoyed the series, and I'd definitely read it again, and try to read it while knowing what I know now about the Enclaves and how everything ends up. It's just not the story I was expecting. 
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beccaand's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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ruthannejoy's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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doahdancer's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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danicakvcs's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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erikagibson126's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

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bujo_bellel's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Okay so I was really expecting this book to be like fully mind-blowing and stuff but tbh it didn't really  live up to that expectation. First of, the thing was Liesel was so random, like they didn't even know each other that well and boom they have a thing?? Like? I'm not sure if I missed out something between them in the last books (to be fair I took a long break in between the last book and this one) but I don't actually remember seeing much chemistry between them and just friendship of sorts? And like why was she in a sort of relationship with Liesel when she had Orion and she still had that kind of relationship after knowing Orion was alive like huhh??? The reveal that
El was actually really the one bringing down the enclaves because she had the ability to kill the mawmouths which were actually the foundations for the enclaves
was quite shocking but like it didn't really feel like much after reading the reveals in the past 2 books? The characters didn't really grow that much and the relationship between El and Orion was kind of weird
like the reveal that Orion was literally a mawmouth and that his mother, the next Domina of New York is literally a maleficer because she made him her Mal killing machine that can also extract the mana from them was part of it but still
made this book like kind of not as high stakes? Like the relationship between El and Orion made the ending of the last book so impactful and now in this book it was barely there. The previous 2 books were very high stakes and fast paced but this one is much slower and they're also out of The Scholomance which was part of the reason why the previous books were so engaging. I really loved El's character and I still like her in this book although I missed her usual snarkiness and I guess she really grew to be a bigger person but I miss her insults that are like the funniest comparisons ever but we didn't get to see much of that since El was nicer in this book. Like I really liked being in her head in the past books precisely because of the way she thinks and it wasn't as present in this book. Also I didn't like that El's friends were barely present in this book.. like they were there but for didn't add as much as they used to. I'm also kind of in a book hangover after Iron Flame and this made it worse honestly. Had really high hopes because I loved the other books :(
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