A review by gowlstick
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

dark emotional 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

I had this on pre-order and was incredibly excited to finally get to it! It wraps up the trilogy in such a satisfying way that I didn't predict. It was exciting to have the characters finally out of the Scholomance and in the real world; there is a lot of cross continental travel. The only thing that really bothered me was how the travel time was handled, lots of the events in the book are high stakes situations for the characters so just having blank bits of travel was a bit jarring sometimes. This also gave a pretty fast paced non-stop feel to their actions at the same time.

I was pretty tickled when I got to the section where we discover that Orion is a mawmouth, I'd pretty much just been describing the series to a friend and said something along the lines of "he's like a human mawmouth" - and I still felt a bit of a surprise when it was officially droppped.


I think it follows the other two books incredibly well. I's very different but they all feel relatively even in terms of quality to me unlike what can happen with other trilogies. I hope that the series becomes bigger in name and carves itself out a spot in newer fantasy must-reads.
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