Scan barcode
A review by jujelly
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
4.0
[4.5]
galadriel is a fucking amazing character. i love her; everything she offers, from her anger, to her bitterness, to her selflessness, to her desperate and scared longing for friendship. she is amazing, and she is a powerful wizard and it does not feel half-assed. it feels like somebody who refuses to use all that power and then harnesses it for good.
her relationship with orion is based on them understanding and accepting each other, though i must say that galadriel is heaps better fleshed out than orion is. he is definitely more of a character with personality this book, but not enough.
not like el.
it feels more like she strings him along, not story-wise, but character wise. he is the backpack with some attributes that we are able to connect with him, that galadriel wears. galadriel who is so grande of a personality, with orion who almost fades a little in return.
regardless,
i adore the conversations, the characters, hell, i even like liesel. there's something real about them. liu and aad, nyoko and cora, all of them.
there's one thing keeping me from giving this a 5 star, though. the cliffhanger we were left with in book 1 did not find its resolution here in this book; there was no menton of it even.
generally it was like there was the mals and the scholomance as the overarching problem, and even that went as well as could, so there was no proper internal conflict.
it all went too...smooth.
i had hoped that at least some angst regarding orion would be introduced, but everything about his behaviour, up to the last action he did is only correlating to the single attributes of orion we've known over the entirety of these two books. it wasn't out of turn or felt out of place, at all.
so i REALLY hope that there will be improvement for his character in the third book.
otherwise, i'm crazy interested to see how everything will fare in the real world for all of them.
galadriel is a fucking amazing character. i love her; everything she offers, from her anger, to her bitterness, to her selflessness, to her desperate and scared longing for friendship. she is amazing, and she is a powerful wizard and it does not feel half-assed. it feels like somebody who refuses to use all that power and then harnesses it for good.
her relationship with orion is based on them understanding and accepting each other, though i must say that galadriel is heaps better fleshed out than orion is. he is definitely more of a character with personality this book, but not enough.
not like el.
it feels more like she strings him along, not story-wise, but character wise. he is the backpack with some attributes that we are able to connect with him, that galadriel wears. galadriel who is so grande of a personality, with orion who almost fades a little in return.
regardless,
i adore the conversations, the characters, hell, i even like liesel. there's something real about them. liu and aad, nyoko and cora, all of them.
there's one thing keeping me from giving this a 5 star, though. the cliffhanger we were left with in book 1 did not find its resolution here in this book; there was no menton of it even.
generally it was like there was the mals and the scholomance as the overarching problem, and even that went as well as could, so there was no proper internal conflict.
it all went too...smooth.
i had hoped that at least some angst regarding orion would be introduced, but everything about his behaviour, up to the last action he did is only correlating to the single attributes of orion we've known over the entirety of these two books. it wasn't out of turn or felt out of place, at all.
so i REALLY hope that there will be improvement for his character in the third book.
otherwise, i'm crazy interested to see how everything will fare in the real world for all of them.