Reviews with content warning for Violence - La cerchia d'oro

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

La cerchia d'oro by Naomi Novik

84 reviews

christinereads1823's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark 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

5.0

Stellar ending to the trilogy. The major plot twist/reveal was so well done, I read it and suddenly EVERYTHING from the previous books made sense. Novik's characters leap off the page and into your heart. El, as someone who is told by the universe that they're destined to be evil and bring destruction to the world and they say no, I will do right and keep saying it over and over again, and her steadfast friends will stay with me for a long, long time.

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louise_outthere's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

What a series ! One of my favorite for sure, I really enjoyed every single book.
This book is full of plot twists we weren't prepared for. The end is quite unexpected, I had lots of fun reading it.
I like the characters development and the relationships are well developed. I still don't get why there's this lgbtqia + passage, it is unnecessary and adds nothing to the series, it feels like it's there to say we checked the box "Reaching the lgbtqia+ community". Apart from that, I would have liked a more developed relationship with Orion, it feels like he's there but not really there, which we can understand at the beginning but in the last chapters is confusing.
Overall, it is well written, you don't get bored while reading it, there's always a storyline making you want to turn the next page.
Congrats for this amazing series !

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aroraback's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful medium-paced

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

4.5

I read this back to back with the second one, so they slightly blur together. I did really enjoy the series, and it reminds me a lot of how I’d felt reading when I was younger.

I liked the affection that was apparent through out the books, how the reader is lead to the prophecy, and that all the pieces seemed to come together.

On the other side, it often felt either rush or repetitive. And I strongly question why one of the smaller side characters was so prominent, and felt they could have been replaced by other larger side characters.

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pj99's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.75

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nerdy_reader_9571's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

While I was glad that this third installment took place in locations other than the one that the previous two took place in, the story felt rushed and almost like two books compressed into one. There were a lot of events jam-packed into this one book with roughly the same amount of constant exposition and world-building as the first two installments in the series.

Overall, though, I enjoyed reading it, and I thought that everything within the story fit the lore of the first two books well and provided a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.

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kelisabeth's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense 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? Yes

4.5

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micallab'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

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shiverowl's review against another edition

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adventurous

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

4.5

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ivi_reads_books's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

4.25

A brilliant ending for this trilogy. Full of twists and turns that I did not see coming. We finally learn how the Scholomance came about.
The book explores themes such as balance, destiny, friendship and fairness

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ladypalutena's review against another edition

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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

4.0

I was correct in my assessment of the first book: by blowing it up from a duology to a trilogy, I feel like there's a lot that could have been trimmed down. I don't think she could have ever put it back to a duology (unless you did two 500 page books), but the story here didn't end up being as satisfying as I wanted.

This is mainly for the following reason:

After two books dealing with mals, and two books of El describing what it's like to take down a maw-mouth, it turns out that in order to create an Enclave, you have to sacrifice someone and turn them into a maw-mouth. So when you destroy a maw-mouth, you're destroying an Enclave somewhere else in the world.

The last hundred or so pages of this book, much like the last hundred or so pages of The Last Graduate, shoves everything in it. It's like the previous three hundred pages barely mattered: the entirety of the conflict happens in the final few pages.

Like, I was expecting some sort of final battle between her and Maw-Mouth Orion, but what ends up happening is she simply holds his hands and tells him that he's already dead, then it takes literally hundreds of people to stop everything from collapsing in on himself and then somehow Orion still survives?

I did really enjoy this series. I enjoyed the magic system, I enjoyed Novik's writing, and I enjoyed the characters that weren't El (which makes me wish for some sort of spin-off for Aadhya or Liu).

Speaking of other characters, while El is busy mourning Orion's death (or at the very least, still planning on going back to the Scholomance to kill Patience and put Orion out of his misery),

she ends up banging Liesel?

This relationship seems to come out of nowhere to me - it's not even remotely hinted at in the last book, and then suddenly they're alone together and El thinks the only thing she can do to feel anything is to jump in bed together? It left a bad taste in my mouth. I guess technically, yes, she thinks Orion is dead so she's not cheating on him, but really? The kid hasn't even been dead for two weeks yet?

All together, I enjoyed the series, and I'd definitely read it again, and try to read it while knowing what I know now about the Enclaves and how everything ends up. It's just not the story I was expecting.

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