Reviews with content warning for Animal death - 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

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storykath's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny tense medium-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

I'm still reeling from the end of the book as I write this, but I'll try to collect my thoughts.

First of all, the whole premise of this series is the perfect mix of thrilling and dark and ingenious. The attention to detail and the immersive storytelling create a fantastic atmosphere. Even though this is the second book, there's still a decent amount of time spent on explanations/worldbuilding, and one of my few criticisms would be that these explanatory snippets, though interesting and relevant, sometimes interrupted the plot in an awkward place. We'd stop in the middle of a conversation to dissect some interesting tidbit, and by the time the conversation went on I'd forgotten what was going on. It was all still interesting to read and I didn't mind it much.
The character growth in this book, especially compared to the first book, is fairly slow and subtle, but it comes through like a punch to the gut at the best moments. Especially towards the end, there were many moments where I audibly gasped or made other incredulous gestures as the threads all tied together. Sometimes it was painful to see the characters apparently not growing or changing for most of the novel, but in retrospect it was an intentional choice to portray them that way, especially since the story is from El's perspective, who doesn't always pick up on what's going on behind the scenes in other people's lives.
It had been over a year since I read ADE, so I was a bit lost at the start of this book - there's not much of a recap or handy reminders to jog your memory, but a quick Google search solved that for me.
The writing style is amazing. There are vivid (and sometimes appropriately disturbing) descriptions, and El's voice as a teenager with the world on her shoulders was authentic, exciting, and often hilarious! Despite the darker contents of the book, El's narration and quick wit provided some great laugh-out-loud comic relief.

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nutm3g's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

5.0

I devoured The Last Graduate like my life depended on it, or more accurately as if I were a maw-mouth on a war path towards my next treat of a graduating Scholomance class. El's heroic journey develops wonderfully, albeit emotionally draining as she comes to terms with her potential and destiny. Orion and El truly appear as opposites perfectly balancing one another out, or as two sides of the same coin. I was delighted at the appearance of two queer couples (mlm and wlw) as well as a vaguely mentioned background love triangle turned triad. The cliffhanger has me desperate to get my hands on the next book in the series, even though I know the first chapter will most likely appear devastating.

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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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.

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stephernay's review against another edition

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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

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wrenxavier's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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