Reviews with content warning for Grief - Золотые анклавы

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.

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purplatypus's review against another edition

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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

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oliverreeds'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? Yes

5.0

absolutely crushed

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queenie_ofthe_void's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad 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

3.0

Not sure how I feel about the ending and the pacing. It seemed like this could have been two books, and a lot of side characters fell by the wayside (Chloe, Magnus, Liu, etc). For a final book with a lot of ground to cover, I felt too much time was spent building a relationship between Liesel and El. Not the relationship itself, but that time could've been used to a better purpose. REALLY not happy with how things ended for Orion. His entire arc was learning how to be a 'person' and not 'a hero who kills monsters' but then ended up choosing to spend his life away from loved ones and killing monsters full time. Disappointing tbh.

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trips's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad slow-paced

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

2.0

It just....wasn't a very good conclusion to this series.
The cliff hanger at the end of the 2nd book of course made readers race to get this book, only to be met with a lot of...info dumps that felt unnecessary with it being the finale book, traversing the world with a lot of El angst that was understandable but a bit much, and a conclusion that felt like "ehm...thats it?" in my opinion.

I don't have any problem with El's

foray into a kinda weird sapphic sex relationship with Liesl. I thought it was more amusing than anything because Liesl wanted her harem but in the end, El got more of one (lol).

What I didn't like is that I couldn't feel anything for Orion. I wanted to, what he had done to him was awful but it just wasn't written in a way where I truly felt like "wow this poor kid" instead it was like "well, he seems to be doing ok" (and I don't like that! I should've been crying after it was revealed what

Ophelia

did to him but it just didn't work for me. With that, the villain also fell flat, perhaps because they weren't there all that much, or because of everything written above.

Disappointing, I feel most sad for all the people who love El and Orion together as they got so little in this book!

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mayabaxx's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional 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

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ashlikes's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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

3.5

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mjwhitlock18's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

3.5

For much of this book, El didn’t have a clearly defined goal, and sometimes the plot suffers from meandering twists as a result. There’s a non-zero amount of info dumping, and some of the relationships from previous books aren’t on display as well in this one. I like that everything comes together at the end, but not necessarily tied in a neat tidy bow, because humanity is messy and sometimes shitty tbh. If you enjoyed the first two books, you’ll want to read this conclusion to the series.

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