Reviews tagging 'Child death'

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

64 reviews

elfyn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad 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

Wow. I hope we get more books in this world, cause I love it! I thought it was a really good ending, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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passionatereader78's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark 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

What an adventure! Orion stayed in the school after everyone got out. El refuses to accept that he's dead, but is distracted by the crazy turn of events currently going on.  The Enclaves are being attacked by mamouths. Liesel has made it her mission to protect El from herself. As the friends come back together to save the Enclaves they learn a deadly secret that will cost El everything.
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bookswithbethx's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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

4.5

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raila_h's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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bookshelfmystic's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The third book in an original trilogy has a hard task: it has to take the world that’s been established in the first book, the stakes that have been raised in the second, and all of the characters we’ve come to care about and give it all a satisfying conclusion. The Golden Enclaves gives it a pretty good shot, and mostly succeeds. 

The pacing is the main thing dragging the book down. El saves multiple enclaves from collapse, with similar tactics each time, which drags just a bit. We even go to a couple of the locations twice. It’s a way to see the broader world outside of the Scholomance, which is neat, but I would have appreciated more variety. It felt like Novik was starting to run out of plot ideas. That being said, each sequence sets up El learning new information, and each of the big reveals hit with appropriate horror. Especially that
enclaves are built on crushing a child to eternal deathlessness as a maw-mouth
- the adrenaline in this chapter was already racing, and the revelation feels like a punch in the gut. 

It’s evident that Novik knew where this trilogy was going when she started it. Each of the plot threads was sufficiently wrapped up, even El’s relationship with her family. I didn’t even know I needed the scenes with
El’s grandparents in India, but the depth of her grandfather’s love made me cry
.  We get to spend time with many of the characters we met in the Scholomance and a few fun new ones (though I definitely thought Yancy would be coming back later in the book – they spend a lot of time on her for a one-off character). I even started to like Liesel. My last minor complaint, though, is that I still just don’t really buy El’s feelings for Orion. Especially given what we come to find out, he doesn’t really have much of a personality. I fully buy the tragedy of his story, but the romantic part feels a little thin. But I guess the heart wants what it wants. And it did set up a great, emotional conclusion to the trilogy. 


Miscellaneous thoughts: 

-   I started to suspect that
El was behind the destruction of the enclaves
towards the beginning, especially given the prophecy we’ve heard so much about, but I thought it was
related to her using mana at all
. I definitely didn’t call the
maw-mouths
. 
-  I continue to love El’s mom’s Wiccan-esque approach to magic and how different it is from what we see from every other wizard in the world. 

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sophia_t_m's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional 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? It's complicated

4.75

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bchallis's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious 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

4.0

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lanid's review against another edition

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

4.75

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gattolinos_nerdy_nook's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense slow-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

4.0

I am surprised with where this book ended up going and how it concluded the series as a whole. It subverted all expectations I had, but not in  bad way. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I loved how different the world and rules were once we were outside the Scholomance. It was interesting to see how characters changed or did not change once they were in a different environment form the first two books.
There were some new characters introduced and the plot twists that happened in this book were so shocking that I had to put it down for a bit to digest what I had read and then had to go back to reading so I could get answers.

I think this book is a lot more character driven than the first two books. The book overall is still a mix of character and plot but I think how people are feeling and what they are doing because of that drives the book forward more. I feel like this book ended the series well and enjoyed reading each and everyone one of these books.
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crimsonreader's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad 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? It's complicated

5.0

It's been a few hours since I finished the book and I am still almost speechless. It was SUCH a good ride and, as always, Novik literally makes me feel all the things; sadness, happiness; fear; annoyance; helplessness; hope; love etc etc. I couldn't stand having to put it down and I truly do not want to leave this world. I know this is the last book but if we ever get The Adventures of El - Maw Mouth Hunter in any form I will be first in line.
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