Reviews with content warning for Vomit - The Last Graduate

FIVE STARS IT'S SO GOOD and the time skips are great and i loved this book. i wont lie this is what i needed and im so pissed off at the ending but in a good way and im..asdfno;aje

Content Warnings

saurahsaurus's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious 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

4.25

Content Warnings

adalieslittlelibrary's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious 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

I am sick. This book was spectacular. Never have I ever been pulled into a story so quickly and so completely. I was utterly sucked in from page one. Everything else in my life became a nuisance. I knew I would like this book simply because I loved the first one, but this book exceeded all of my expectations. The characters, the world, the magic system, all of it was just *chef’s kiss. And then, with about 100 pages left, it took a turn that shot it into my top read, maybe ever. I loved every second of this book. And I am absolutely sick that we won’t have the next one until likely September of 2022! Talk about a cliffhanger ending. I am completely and utterly blown away. I felt like this book perfectly catered to everything I need in a book: flawed characters, snarky leads, the lightest dusting of romance, high action, and magic. I honestly can’t even begin to describe how much love I have for this book and cannot wait for the next installment.

Content Warnings

blissofalife's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense fast-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? Yes

4.75

The only reason I didn’t give this 5 stars was because of some of the grammar choices, they threw me off but I loved it and can’t wait for the next!

Content Warnings

bluejayreads's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark

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

4.0

This book has so many problems. I have read several of Naomi Novik’s books so far, and compared to the meticulously-plotted and deftly told previous books that I’ve read, this one is definitely a weaker story. But … Well, I’ll get there.

I like lists, so let’s have a list of the most glaring problems I can remember off the top of my head.

El is even more absurdly powerful than she was in the last book, but doesn’t seem to be surprised by or even notice it, and it doesn’t even cross her mind to question why. I don’t even know if the story wants that question asked, but I want to know why she’s so powerful.
There’s apparently a whole enchanted gymnasium where many students exercise that somehow never got brought up in book one.
Neither did a bunch of framed news articles that are apparently all over the school and are critical to the plot now.
I never got the sense in book one that the school was fantastically big and yet there’s apparently a thousand graduating seniors.
There’s supposed to be a thing about lingering trauma from El’s experience with the mormouth last book, but the climactic moment of that plot thread ended up very anti-climactic.
Several threads from book one that either get dropped entirely or get shoved to the background with no warning or mention.

Most of these problems are continuity issues from the previous book, and none of these are “you only notice if you think about it too hard” issues – they were all glaringly obvious to me while reading. And yet with all those obvious issues, I’m going to come back and say that I loved this book.

The main reason for this is that I absolutely adore the trope of the protagonist being so much more powerful than everyone else and all the people around them being repeatedly astonished as they discover bit-by-bit how absurdly powerful the protagonist is. The Last Graduate is that trope incarnate. In book one El by herself kills a monster that previously had only been killed by a group of ten of the world’s top magicians. In this book she is stronger. I cannot put into words how much fun it was to watch her go from being an overlooked non-Enclave kid to the absolute most powerful kid in school and probably the only way most of them are getting out alive.

I can’t say I entirely enjoyed El’s kinda-romance thing with Orion Lake, but I didn’t hate it and it was brief enough that it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story. There were also some interesting questions raised about Orion and how his magic works. I’m wondering if there’s some underlying reason that there are two absurdly powerful magical teenagers the same age that will get explained in book three.

Yeah, the book has problems. I won’t deny that, and those will probably be detrimental to your enjoyment if you don’t love the overpowered character trope. But I do love that trope and so I still thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I’m very much looking forward to book three.

Content Warnings

stephernay's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous hopeful inspiring fast-paced

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

4.75

Content Warnings

sophiesmallhands's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional mysterious 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

3.75

Content Warnings

More...