Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

63 reviews

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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blacksphinx's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious 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

5.0

What the hell, Novik did it again.

I was getting really frustrated with the first half of the book. At least three times, a character would say a couple of sentences and then El would explain a ton of inferred details to us for several pages. We had some important plot threads established, and pages were ticking by with no progress being made on them. El spent a lot of time not doing a damn thing, thinking for pages about how she didn't know what to do. There was a decent chunk spent on her wanting to accomplish something I thought was extremely stupid and didn't understand her motives - and then, at almost the 50% mark, the chess pieces were finally all on the board and the game began.

I kept saying to myself "there's no way she can solve [plot thread] in [pages left]" and then she DID over and over again until I had every answer I wanted. I actually want to go back and reread the prior two books knowing what I know now, because the reveals in this book were set up long before she started drafting it, there's just no way. It is a little bit of a spoiler to say this, so just skip over it, but watching El walk away from Omelas made me cry. In this present moment of multiple genocides and an ongoing, stubbornly-ignored pandemic, it hit me just right. "You got us all out for good, and they're trying to start a war over the bones. There's a better way. We know there's a better way. And you're trying to find it." 

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catinaflatcap's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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? It's complicated

5.0


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gabeagenda's review against another edition

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adventurous dark 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

4.0


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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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e_haubz's review

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adventurous dark funny mysterious 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

I really liked this book; but I think not as much as I liked the series.

Things I loved:
  • The ending
  • The importance of balance throughout - this gets introduced very early in Book 1, but the payoff isn’t until Book 3
  • Liesel, the absolute MVP of multiple crises 
  • The magic system, and its consistency - and again, balance is key to it, I friggin’ LOVE that El’s mom literally gets around in the world on the strength of her incredible karma, and it works! It’s like the rules by which we want our world to function, but with, you know, monsters too 

Things I do not love:
  • Honestly… still a little confused about Ophelia’s motivations and backstory
  • And I had a hard time, at times, following the logic of some plot points, because El herself is making logical leaps in real time

…but it all came together in the essential ways to make the end make sense. 

So, I feel like I’m over-scoring slightly, but this book went so much deeper into a well-structured magic system, we got more of most of the characters we loved, and we got a glimpse of the outside world in a really fun globe-trotty way - all to close out a pretty evenly-paced series in a highly satisfying way. 4.5 seems right.

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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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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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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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carmineslamp'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

4.0

Ough. ouchie. 

I came into this book wondering how there would be 400 pages of post-graduation, expecting some stuff with Orion maybe bc of the cliff-hanger, but by god, i never expected this. I got 300 pages in and AGAIN, confused how we were gonna keep going. AND IT WAS SO HOT, OMG,,, 

Last chapter was a little underwhelming, but I digress,,

Everything about El coping by (checks notes) (squints) HAVING SEX WITH THE VALEDICTORIAN?? HELLO??? Comedic, almost. ALSO ORION BEING A FUCKING MAW-MOUTH/HUMAN HYBRID CREATURE??? Oh my days, bruv. Smacked the shit out of me. THE WAY MAW-MOUTHS ARE EVEN MADE??? Kys. I was heaving. Liu my bbg,,,

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