A review by cecinator20
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

adventurous dark slow-paced

• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Slow start after the cliffhanger of The Last Graduate (and leaving the school), but a pretty good finish to the series. I love the magic system Novik created, and thinking back over the series as a whole with what we know at the end is a treasure trove of thought experiments.

My complaints include: some characters don’t get the chance to develop (

Orion, Liu

), some developed in unexpected ways that I’m still not sure the point of (

El with Liesel

), the storylines wrapped up almost too neatly.

I was also hoping we weren’t headed for an Orion-El balanced universe trope, and we kinda were, but not really?