Reviews with content warning for Child death - Scholomance – Die goldenen Enklaven

I had this on pre-order and was incredibly excited to finally get to it! It wraps up the trilogy in such a satisfying way that I didn't predict. It was exciting to have the characters finally out of the Scholomance and in the real world; there is a lot of cross continental travel. The only thing that really bothered me was how the travel time was handled, lots of the events in the book are high stakes situations for the characters so just having blank bits of travel was a bit jarring sometimes. This also gave a pretty fast paced non-stop feel to their actions at the same time.

I was pretty tickled when I got to the section where we discover that Orion is a mawmouth, I'd pretty much just been describing the series to a friend and said something along the lines of "he's like a human mawmouth" - and I still felt a bit of a surprise when it was officially droppped.

I think it follows the other two books incredibly well. I's very different but they all feel relatively even in terms of quality to me unlike what can happen with other trilogies. I hope that the series becomes bigger in name and carves itself out a spot in newer fantasy must-reads.

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greymalkin's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

An incredibly satisfying and pleasing conclusion to the trilogy. I loved it and immediately started re-reading the series again for reasons mentioned under the spoiler tag.

It is very rare for an author to be able to drop a twist so late in a series and pull it off. Either the twist is predicated on information that the reader never knew or couldn't possibly know (e.g. That there were two murderers, that one particular song has huge personal meaning for the main character even though it was never mentioned, etc.). But Naomi Novik did a marvelously satisfying job at it. As soon as it came up I was like OMG now so many things make sense!! There were always little moments that felt interesting but not particularly significant, and to have them suddenly all be huge clues as to what was really going on was very very cool. The twist didn't feel like it came out of nowhere and it didn't make me feel stupid for not noticing all the hints. I love when I can be delightfully surprised (and horrified because of the actual content of the twist).

I also really loved that this book focused on El really deepening her friendships and feelings for other people and showing how she could bring together disparate groups even though she's not particularly charismatic or great at social things. I had liked Liesel from the second book but I really loved her in this one. And Orion... my heart bled for Orion.

It took me a while to finish the book because I was deliberately pacing it out, savoring the moments because so many huge things happened all the time it was better to take in the book in sips rather than gulps. And once I finished it, I immediately started reading the first book again. Only a few chapters into the first book and I was very pleased to see that yes indeed, there's a huge clue right there right at the start and yet we had no idea what we were looking at so it meant nothing. Tremendous.

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chamaeleontis's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I loved this book. It was a great way to end the series. But I was a little disappointed by the ending (rushed and has a trope I don’t like), or it would have been 5 stars.

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uranaishi's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful reflective 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? No

4.5

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emmahe's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Too rushed for the third book of such an incredible trilogy. Would have been better split into two books. Expanding the world and lore so rapidly meant things were lost and confusing. Could have been just as impactful splitting and expanding on history, background, character, etc.

It’s still a great series but I think this was a worse ending than the first two books deserved. That being said, it’s still far better than a lot of stories I’ve read. I hope i’m in the minority and Id still recommend people read it.

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schnaucl's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

Naomi Novak absolutely nailed the ending.

I loved the reveal about how the larger Enclaves (and portals) were formed and the discussion about how easy it is to do horrible things if you just refuse to really look at what you're doing. And how terribly realistic it was that people will continue to do the horrible thing because it takes less effort, especially if you can distance yourself from it in some way. We're not creating more maw-mouths, we're just selling the know how to other people and binding them to silence as part of the price.

I also loved the twist on Deepthi's prophecy, and the glimpse into how much it cost her.

It was also really nice to see El's classmates showing up for her.

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