Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Last Graduate

This book was... such a disappointment. I absolutely loved the first book, an easy five-star read, and I was so hopeful when I started this one.
But somehow, something changed between the books. Suddenly, both main characters turned into what felt like the worst versions of themselves.
While I had liked El's snarky comments in the first book, this time, many of them seemed mean-spirited, sometimes borderline abusive to Orion.
Orion too. He was a great character in the first book, and I liked the 'naively heroic' act he put out, including his flaws. But this time around, he barely even appeared, and when he did, he was mostly whining or being saved by El. Like... what?

In general, I hated the way El's power was developed because... honestly,

the moment she got the power sharer, she was literally OP.
And all that talk about 'because ONLY I can save them,' 'I am the only one who can do this', and her general skill to simply kill anything with any spell.
Until it mattered, at which point she started to be kind of... useless? I don't know. How her power or anyone's skills worked against that many mals really didn't seem to have been explained well enough for me to understand why she suddenly had issues. And why couldn't they have just run around that mawmouth? Huh?

And I don't even want to look at that ending. I had to read the last pages twice because I couldn't believe just how stupid the characters were acting. Or maybe I still missed something, but...

why the hell didn't they both leave?! Why did Orion decide to stay?

This was so stupid...

Added to this that I had to start and skim most pages in the middle of the book as basically nothing happened (besides endless worldbuilding and El going off of five mental tangents in the middle of action scenes, somehow?), and... yeah. I wanted to give two stars after that endless middle part but went down 0.25 stars for that ending.
As a comparison: I needed less than two days to finish the first book, with me being endlessly amused by all kinds of little things and situations. It took two weeks for me to slog through the second. I don't even know if I laughed once. It mainly was eye-rolling and groaning instead.

It really is frustrating because I loved the idea of the setting and where it could have gone with it... but after checking out what's going to happen in the next book, I certainly will not continue to read this series.
What a frustrating experience.

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bujo_bellel's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny 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

5.0

I am thoroughly devastated with that ending. Like actually cried. I will definitely be reading the last book and am already sad that it would be the last. I would definitely miss reading about Galadriel and Orion. I really loved their relationship in this book, I think it was a very good build up from the first book. Still don't get her Mum's warning about Orion, maybe it's just heartbreak or something like that. I really liked El's character growth, how she slowly became someone who was willing to save everyone. I am really happy that she could get everyone out of the gates.

of course not Orion but yes.

I really loved the friendship between Galadriel, Aadhya and Liu. I think it is very heartwarming to see that they are so close after seeing what they went through in the first book. Especially El and Aadhya. I think this book has a good mix of humour, teasing, all the happy stuff and all the death, basically all the deadly stuff. I think it was very heartening when everyone started to help each other out instead of only helping themselves, shows how there was still humanity in all of them despite what they have faced. HIGHLY recommend.

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risaleel's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny fast-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

5.0

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lisa_m's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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

4.5

I didn't expect this series to get that much better but it did! I loved the story in this one! All the friendships and working together because you choose to and not just because you need to hit me just right. The ending was amazing as well and I immidiately continued reading the 3rd book. I'm very excited for the conclusion of this Trilogy!

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blacksphinx's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful 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

Just when I was complaining that a certain main character hadn't done anything all book or exhibited any sort of personality, we got some nice time for them to open up and bloom a bit before the brutal cliffhanger of an ending.

It's lovely watching our protagonist grow as a person, opening up, learning to ask for help, and forming close friendships with other girls. (The unexpected LGBT+ representation was a nice bonus!) There was at least one plot point in here that didn't really make any sense to me, but the emotional through line and building themes stop me from giving it less than five stars.

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