A review by greymalkin
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

An incredibly satisfying and pleasing conclusion to the trilogy.   I loved it and immediately started re-reading the series again for reasons mentioned under the spoiler tag.

It is very rare for an author to be able to drop a twist so late in a series and pull it off.  Either the twist is predicated on information that the reader never knew or couldn't possibly know (e.g. That there were two murderers, that one particular song has huge personal meaning for the main character even though it was never mentioned, etc.).  But Naomi Novik did a marvelously satisfying job at it.  As soon as it came up I was like OMG now so many things make sense!!  There were always little moments that felt interesting but not particularly significant, and to have them suddenly all be huge clues as to what was really going on was very very cool.  The twist didn't feel like it came out of nowhere and it didn't make me feel stupid for not noticing all the hints.  I love when I can be delightfully surprised (and horrified because of the actual content of the twist). 

I also really loved that this book focused on El really deepening her friendships and feelings for other people and showing how she could bring together disparate groups even though she's not particularly charismatic or great at social things.  I had liked Liesel from the second book but I really loved her in this one.  And Orion... my heart bled for Orion.   

It took me a while to finish the book because I was deliberately pacing it out, savoring the moments because so many huge things happened all the time it was better to take in the book in sips rather than gulps.  And once I finished it, I immediately started reading the first book again.   Only a few chapters into the first book and I was very pleased to see that yes indeed, there's a huge clue right there right at the start and yet we had no idea what we were looking at so it meant nothing.  Tremendous.
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