A review by mitskacir
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

4.0

Probably my least favorite of the trilogy, because I really liked the hyper-contained setting of the Scholomance in the first two and expanded worlds often get a bit unwieldy (El was quite the globetrotter in this one, with either rather boring accounts of travel from here to there or big jumps where it was skipped over). I also felt like her relationship with Orion didn't have the same emotional heft - El was certainly busy with other things and they were separated for much of the book, but the payoff at the end wasn't as emotional as it could have been. Overall though, I continued to enjoy it and was eager to listen whenever I could. If I ever reread in the future, I would try reading a physical copy instead of listening to the audiobook - while it was pretty good, the reader sometimes irritated me and I think I would understand it better in text.

2nd read: Still super fun! Reading the physical copy did improve my reading comprehension. A bit hand-wavy with all the magic that leads to the resolution, but it's forgiven.