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imds's review against another edition
- 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
Content Warnings
Graphic: War, Death of parent, Abandonment, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Body horror, Classism, Grief, Child death, Death, Kidnapping, and Murder
coffeebot18's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
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
A stunning conclusion - to a brilliant trilogy - that makes sense of the events of the first two novels and clarifies El’s purpose . Novik’s magical world is desperately dark, but protagonist El and her people are tenacious in their pursuit of a glimmering, golden hope for a better future.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Body horror, and Violence
Minor: Cursing, Child death, Classism, Death of parent, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Death, and Murder
keen's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
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
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body horror, Blood, and Violence
Minor: Death of parent, Emotional abuse, and Confinement
tigger89's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
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? No
4.5
What a conclusion! It was a pleasure to be back in El's head once again, for pages upon pages of internal monologue. Honestly, if you've gotten this far in the series, you know what you're in for. It was another book of exactly that. I have to say, I liked the ending with regard to the fate of a certain character. Without getting too much into spoilers, I think I can say that Novik foreshadowed enough to make that result believable. But I believe she also could have written the opposite result and made it work just as well. It really could have gone either way, and I felt that her choice was logically and thematically backed up by the rest of the novel, building up to that pivotal moment.
The book starts off slow, as El processes the fallout from the last epic cliffhanger. I actually really appreciated the fact that Novik kept us here, mired in El's feelings, until she was finally ripped out of her own head and forced into the greater plot. Of course it wasn't pleasant to read. It was a devastating description of someone falling into depression, which is a completely realistic reaction to everything that had just happened. Much of the Scholomance trilogy is an examination and deconstruction of common YA fantasy tropes, and this part was no exception. If you were unsatisfied with the romance in this series, I suggest you step back and ask yourself what Novik might have been trying to say, on a meta level, when she wrote it the way that she did.
I didn't find the real-world setting to be as compelling as the school setting of the previous two books. I understand why the scope had to be expanded in order to facilitate the plot, and I thoroughly appreciated the story that was told(especially the horror twists), but something unique was lost when we left the Scholomance behind. Every student has to graduate one day, though. This is a trilogy I can definitely see myself picking up again to revisit in the future.
The book starts off slow, as El processes the fallout from the last epic cliffhanger. I actually really appreciated the fact that Novik kept us here, mired in El's feelings, until she was finally ripped out of her own head and forced into the greater plot. Of course it wasn't pleasant to read. It was a devastating description of someone falling into depression, which is a completely realistic reaction to everything that had just happened. Much of the Scholomance trilogy is an examination and deconstruction of common YA fantasy tropes, and this part was no exception. If you were unsatisfied with the romance in this series, I suggest you step back and ask yourself what Novik might have been trying to say, on a meta level, when she wrote it the way that she did.
I didn't find the real-world setting to be as compelling as the school setting of the previous two books. I understand why the scope had to be expanded in order to facilitate the plot, and I thoroughly appreciated the story that was told(especially the horror twists), but something unique was lost when we left the Scholomance behind. Every student has to graduate one day, though. This is a trilogy I can definitely see myself picking up again to revisit in the future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Grief
Moderate: Classism, Body horror, and War
Minor: Sexual content
kingcrookback's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
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
A fitting/satisfying end, and I genuinely mean that as a high compliment. I was a bit apprehensive after reading The Last Graduate because of the pacing issues, but I suppose "second book slump" is kind of a common problem for many trilogies. I liked how the question of who/what has been attacking and destroying enclaves was answered, both how it tied into the major themes of the series (especially the metaphor for class and privilege) and how the reveal resounds back through the previous books. I don't plan on rereading the series, especially so soon, but I can imagine it would be a satisfying experience. Logically, stylistically, and thematically, it's a consistent series. El continues to have a deep-rooted love for humanity; El continues to have to make difficult decisions; El continues to have empathy for other people (for the most part), even if she deeply begrudges them that empathy. I appreciate Novik for constructing a prickly character with such a heart.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Torture, Violence, and Death
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, and War
Minor: Death of parent and Sexual content
purplatypus's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Violence, Grief, Sexual content, Child abuse, Child death, Drug use, Gore, and War
Minor: Body horror and Death of parent
oliverreeds's review against another edition
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? Yes
5.0
absolutely crushed
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Murder, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Grief, Violence, War, Confinement, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Child abuse, Kidnapping, Torture, Child death, and Gore
3mmers's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Now that the final instalment of the Scholomance trilogy has been released, I’m confident in declaring I’ve identified a pattern. Novik’s series are not particularly similar to each other; she doesn’t have an authorial trademark the same way Donna Tartt’s male protagonists are all the same sort of weird about women, or the internally consistent alternate history in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novels. But within each series, Novik’s books are all pressed from the same template. They tend to be structureally very similar. I discovered this while comparing notes on Spinning Silver and Uprooted. These two are not technically a series, but they’re obviously two of a kind (they even get matching covers). We’d each read a different one but our complaints were mostly the same: a distant and inhuman man surprisingly becomes the protagonist’s love interest at the back of the novel in a romance arc that the book could have done without.
The Scholomance trilogy also follows a very distinct structure. Each book begins with a thoroughly disagreeable first half, followed by an extraordinarily good midpoint during which our protagonist El has an existential realization about the fundamental humanness of humans, even the shitheads. With that change in perspective she is finally able to do the plot, which then coasts to a conclusion. The particular context and stakes of this structure changes from book to book but the underlying pattern is the same every time.
I had high praise for this in my review of A Deadly Education. I was really impressed by how it turned me around on the book. I went from being turned off hard by the kind of goofy monster names and El’s almost comical teen rebellion, to really digging the novel and feeling like it captured some fundamental aspect of the human experience that few novels ever had, basically in the space of a single scene. My feelings towards the structure have becoming increasingly mixed as the series went on. I felt compelled to remove points from The Last Graduate because it had to roll back some of El’s character development so it could do the same plot over again. I wrote that I hoped leaving the school would help us leave the template behind in the final book. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
Despite the fact that it’s getting repetitive enough to be genuinely annoying this time, I’m more conflicted than ever. On the one hand, the midpoint in The Golden Enclaves is the best yet and it’s not even remotely close. I cried real ugly tears at 11am on a Sunday morning about this one. On the other hand, unlike the preceding two books I really did not like the back half of the novel. The great bits are greater, but there’s less of the overall.
To sort this out let’s take a look at the specifics (ie what am I actually talking about). Scholomance is about El doing her often begrudging best to not become the ultra-destructive evil sorceress she is obviously destined to be. Framed another way, it’s about El trying to help people even if they won’t and maybe never will do anything for her in return. This is explored through two different relationships: platonic and romantic, or, people generally and love interest Orion in particular. It may seen unintuitive to split these apart this way — a big part of El and Orion’s whole dead is that she insists on treating him just like anyone else — but it’s what helped me realize why I only like one of them.
In The Golden Enclaves, El helping people in general shifts from saving the students of the Scholomance to unravelling (often literally) the mysterious mawmouths terrorizing real world enclaves. This change is the most refreshing part of the sequel. I’ve avoiding specifics for spoilers reasons, but it’s a novel twist. Its only significant weakness is that these horrible terror mountains are supposed to be really really threatening and are also named mawmouths. One wonders why a monster that has been terrorizing the multi-lingual magical world for most of its history has a name that is so tastelessly literal and also in English.
Anyway.
The secret to overcoming these horrors is about people coming together to create an enclave through the power of altruism. I promise it comes across better in the book; I can’t describe it effectively due to my chronic hateritis (British accent). It’s about the human need for safety, the desperation of escape from inevitable screaming death. To protect your family, your friends, is there anything you wouldn’t do? Physical imagery is usually more effective in visual media, for obvious reasons, but I found theconstruction of strangers crowding around, using the medium of touch to build a haven together, to be uniquely moving. Even now I’m not 100% certain why. Something about the beauty of shared humanity and acknowledgement of the common needs of every person.
I think it’s because Novik brings a rare understanding of power to a trope otherwise dominated by good guys versus baddies and the increasingly unpleasant shadow of Harry Potter. If this was the entire back half of the book I’d be happy calling it my favourite part of the series. Stakes are raised. Plot threads are satisfactorially knitted back into the plot sweater. Emotions are unexpectedly wrung from my shrivelled heart.
But alas, that is not the case, because the rest of the book also exists and it contains the finaly wrap-up of the Orion romance.
Maybe now, at the end of the trilogy, it’s time for us to admit that El and Orion’s relationship just isn’t that compelling. I mean… it’s okay, I guess. I liked it in the first book. But since then it has felt increasingly obligatory. Novik is trying to hard to make fetch happen. I have two issues with the Orion subplots. The most important is that thematically a romance is super limiting. Scholomance is about altruism, even when it’s hard. This is also an fundamentally collectivist point, so it requires a collectivist setting. El needs to interact with lots of people, most of whole are strangers, to have these moments. A romantic arc is the opposite. It’s about personal, intimate feelings towards only a few people that the protagonist can generally rely on to be kind to them in the future. It’s hard to square the circle of El’s exploration of collective feeling and groups working together with the one-on-one nature of her relationship with Orion. Novik never really does.The moment of all the enclavers working together to bring Orion back is anti-climactic because we’ve already had this moment but better at the midpoint of the book. It doesn’t suit the message for El’s ultimate plot to be about saving one specific boy. She’s already good at saving one or two people. Going to insane lengths to save the specific people they care about, often at the cost of others, is a trademark evil villain thing to do! Which is exactly the opposite of El’s whole deal. To be honest, I don’t know how to fix this. The Beijing chapter through to Maharahstra is my favourite part of the series for the way it unravels the mystery of what the enclaves are and the realization of just what people are willing to sacrifice for safety, and that would be totally ruined by reorganizing the book to put Beijing enclave at the climax. But the Orion thing still sucks.
My other issue is that I already didn’t care whether Orion was special. The whole beginning of the series is about treating Orion as a normal dude rather than some heroic genius who doesn’t need to be treated like a person. Revealing thathe is not actually a human and never was lessens that for me. Personally, my interpretation (of which I was quite fond) was that Orion was just autistic, and his special interest had been hunting monsters. He’d gotten very good at it just from being fixated on it and hadn’t cared about anything else. The idea that the series resolved with Orion being the evil monster to complete the set with El’s evil sorceress wasn’t poetic or meaningful. It just felt formulaic. What I liked about this series was the way it different from convention by prioritizing the meaningfulness of El’s friends and wider community. The way she interacts with acquaintances is the best thing about the Scholomance. If I wanted to read about how two non-conforming teenagers rescue each other through the power of heterosexual romance then I could read fucking Divergent. Focussing so much on a personal thing when El’s themes have always been about the collective feels like a regression. For this reason, the series didn’t end on a high point but slightly after it.
There is one more thing keeping me from giving this book a full five stars. It’s the messaging. By message I mean the philosophical takeaway that the book wants you to receive. Sometimes this is called ‘theme’ but that term is so vague I find it easily confusing. Messaging is easy to talk about in The Golden Enclaves because this book is not even remotely subtle about it. It’s clear that the message is something Novik cares a lot about, and as far as artist intentions, one can only say it is successful. Still, I remain ambivalent. Scholomance has always been about altruism about about doing things for other people even if they wouldn’t do the same for you. But it is also about pragmatism and what it is morally okay to sacrifice to do good in an imperfect situation. This second part is where I think the novel stumbles. In The Golden Enclaves, El represents utopianism. She refuses to make sacrifices. She refuses to compromise. She does things her way or not at all. The utilitarian position is represented by Liesel, who has used every tool at her disposal to scheme her way into the safety of the enclaves. The thing is, while the book is very decisive about what it thinks about altruism, it’s much more ambiguous about where it stands on utilitarianism. Sure, El is very aggressively against compromise, but by the end of the novelshe is essentially forced to accept it. About a third of the way through Liesel offers a deal on behalf of the London enclave: they’ll fund El’s golden enclaves in return for her protection. El refuses, because she doesn’t want their dirty dealings, but by the end of the story she has essentially done just that. El’s mum, the only character successful in never sacrificing anything for the greater good, lives on an isolated commune in Wales only helping the kind of people who know enough to get to her because if you refuse any power the only thing you get is powerlessness. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. I’m a pragmatist. Liesel was right about basically everything she said. I don’t actually think it is morally defensible to refuse to do anything rather than to do something wrong. Part of the reason the Beijing chapter was so resonant with me is that I found it not indefensible by sad. I find an ending where El never finds a third way and just lives as a person where unless you frame something in a way they like they’ll flip the fuck out to be pretty unsatisfying.
Despite its underwhelming ending, I liked The Golden Enclaves. Its brightest points are by far the best in the entire series, indeed, the best I’ve ever read from Novik. But at the same time, without the very streamlined goals and the rigid structure of the school year plot line in the first two books, this one feels a lot less focused. I didn’t love the low points and put up with them because the rest of it had been so good.
The Scholomance trilogy also follows a very distinct structure. Each book begins with a thoroughly disagreeable first half, followed by an extraordinarily good midpoint during which our protagonist El has an existential realization about the fundamental humanness of humans, even the shitheads. With that change in perspective she is finally able to do the plot, which then coasts to a conclusion. The particular context and stakes of this structure changes from book to book but the underlying pattern is the same every time.
I had high praise for this in my review of A Deadly Education. I was really impressed by how it turned me around on the book. I went from being turned off hard by the kind of goofy monster names and El’s almost comical teen rebellion, to really digging the novel and feeling like it captured some fundamental aspect of the human experience that few novels ever had, basically in the space of a single scene. My feelings towards the structure have becoming increasingly mixed as the series went on. I felt compelled to remove points from The Last Graduate because it had to roll back some of El’s character development so it could do the same plot over again. I wrote that I hoped leaving the school would help us leave the template behind in the final book. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
Despite the fact that it’s getting repetitive enough to be genuinely annoying this time, I’m more conflicted than ever. On the one hand, the midpoint in The Golden Enclaves is the best yet and it’s not even remotely close. I cried real ugly tears at 11am on a Sunday morning about this one. On the other hand, unlike the preceding two books I really did not like the back half of the novel. The great bits are greater, but there’s less of the overall.
To sort this out let’s take a look at the specifics (ie what am I actually talking about). Scholomance is about El doing her often begrudging best to not become the ultra-destructive evil sorceress she is obviously destined to be. Framed another way, it’s about El trying to help people even if they won’t and maybe never will do anything for her in return. This is explored through two different relationships: platonic and romantic, or, people generally and love interest Orion in particular. It may seen unintuitive to split these apart this way — a big part of El and Orion’s whole dead is that she insists on treating him just like anyone else — but it’s what helped me realize why I only like one of them.
In The Golden Enclaves, El helping people in general shifts from saving the students of the Scholomance to unravelling (often literally) the mysterious mawmouths terrorizing real world enclaves. This change is the most refreshing part of the sequel. I’ve avoiding specifics for spoilers reasons, but it’s a novel twist. Its only significant weakness is that these horrible terror mountains are supposed to be really really threatening and are also named mawmouths. One wonders why a monster that has been terrorizing the multi-lingual magical world for most of its history has a name that is so tastelessly literal and also in English.
Anyway.
The secret to overcoming these horrors is about people coming together to create an enclave through the power of altruism. I promise it comes across better in the book; I can’t describe it effectively due to my chronic hateritis (British accent). It’s about the human need for safety, the desperation of escape from inevitable screaming death. To protect your family, your friends, is there anything you wouldn’t do? Physical imagery is usually more effective in visual media, for obvious reasons, but I found the
I think it’s because Novik brings a rare understanding of power to a trope otherwise dominated by good guys versus baddies and the increasingly unpleasant shadow of Harry Potter. If this was the entire back half of the book I’d be happy calling it my favourite part of the series. Stakes are raised. Plot threads are satisfactorially knitted back into the plot sweater. Emotions are unexpectedly wrung from my shrivelled heart.
But alas, that is not the case, because the rest of the book also exists and it contains the finaly wrap-up of the Orion romance.
Maybe now, at the end of the trilogy, it’s time for us to admit that El and Orion’s relationship just isn’t that compelling. I mean… it’s okay, I guess. I liked it in the first book. But since then it has felt increasingly obligatory. Novik is trying to hard to make fetch happen. I have two issues with the Orion subplots. The most important is that thematically a romance is super limiting. Scholomance is about altruism, even when it’s hard. This is also an fundamentally collectivist point, so it requires a collectivist setting. El needs to interact with lots of people, most of whole are strangers, to have these moments. A romantic arc is the opposite. It’s about personal, intimate feelings towards only a few people that the protagonist can generally rely on to be kind to them in the future. It’s hard to square the circle of El’s exploration of collective feeling and groups working together with the one-on-one nature of her relationship with Orion. Novik never really does.
My other issue is that I already didn’t care whether Orion was special. The whole beginning of the series is about treating Orion as a normal dude rather than some heroic genius who doesn’t need to be treated like a person. Revealing that
There is one more thing keeping me from giving this book a full five stars. It’s the messaging. By message I mean the philosophical takeaway that the book wants you to receive. Sometimes this is called ‘theme’ but that term is so vague I find it easily confusing. Messaging is easy to talk about in The Golden Enclaves because this book is not even remotely subtle about it. It’s clear that the message is something Novik cares a lot about, and as far as artist intentions, one can only say it is successful. Still, I remain ambivalent. Scholomance has always been about altruism about about doing things for other people even if they wouldn’t do the same for you. But it is also about pragmatism and what it is morally okay to sacrifice to do good in an imperfect situation. This second part is where I think the novel stumbles. In The Golden Enclaves, El represents utopianism. She refuses to make sacrifices. She refuses to compromise. She does things her way or not at all. The utilitarian position is represented by Liesel, who has used every tool at her disposal to scheme her way into the safety of the enclaves. The thing is, while the book is very decisive about what it thinks about altruism, it’s much more ambiguous about where it stands on utilitarianism. Sure, El is very aggressively against compromise, but by the end of the novel
Despite its underwhelming ending, I liked The Golden Enclaves. Its brightest points are by far the best in the entire series, indeed, the best I’ve ever read from Novik. But at the same time, without the very streamlined goals and the rigid structure of the school year plot line in the first two books, this one feels a lot less focused. I didn’t love the low points and put up with them because the rest of it had been so good.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse
recorderkfk's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
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
3.75
Immensely satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Would have loved to 15 more pages at the end, but Novak pulls it all together in a story that feels finished, but in someway like life and making change: is still somehow continuing. The book also scales up dramatically in terms of visiting other enclaves from the first two books. If you ever curious about where all the students lived and came from this is the book where you learn all of that.
Highly recommend the entire trilogy, one of the best series that I have read in the last two years!!
* some additional thoughts post reading (reviews right after you read the book are not always the best)
- some of the character choices novak makes don't feel consistent with the previous two books. El's graduation alliance for example is really pushed into the background in favor of other chatacters
- resolution feels a little "happy ever after" on q certain scale.
Highly recommend the entire trilogy, one of the best series that I have read in the last two years!!
* some additional thoughts post reading (reviews right after you read the book are not always the best)
- some of the character choices novak makes don't feel consistent with the previous two books. El's graduation alliance for example is really pushed into the background in favor of other chatacters
- resolution feels a little "happy ever after" on q certain scale.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror and Gore
Moderate: Vomit
wrestleacademic's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
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
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture and Body horror
Moderate: Death of parent