The Golden Enclaves

Overall, I found the series a highly enjoyable read, once I got used to El as a narrator. I listened to all 3 books back to back in a very short period of time, so they're fairly mashed together in my head and I never had any time to build much expectation of where the story might be going. The books are far from perfect, so my rating is not to say that these are truly 5 star excellent books, but I had fun with them and was thoroughly entertained.

I have to say I wasn't pulled in like the previous book. I figured out some major twists within the first few chapters so the rest of the book became a slog waiting for the narrative to catch up. Also there were really questionable relationship decisions that occurred?? Also also a lack of Orion screen time. I did like the ending and the atmosphere of the book so not a complete dud, but leaving the magic school left some of the magic out of the story too.

Dark Academia seems to be a very in subgenre right now. The Golden Enclaves is the final entry into the Scholomance trilogy that is firmly imbedded into this genre. This story is quite different in feel to the first two in many ways though. First, El has now graduated, so the ‘academia' side is somewhat reduced in this take. Now we have El and her friends jetting round the world, visiting various of the ‘enclaves' that had been alluded to in the earlier books. Whilst expanding the world like this is fascinating in its own way, it is a drastic change of pace and scope from the confined and claustrophobic feel present in the earlier novels. And whilst El has always been defined as a crazily powerful dark wizard (potentially) this book takes that Mary Sue type feeling to even further extremes, so the sense of jeopardy is somewhat reduced.

That being said, the dynamics of the characters remain as entertaining as before. The world and its rules are fascinating in their development. It is wonderful to see where Novik takes her imagination when descibing these amazing wizarding enclaves.

In the end this book suffers a little when compared to the first two books in that it is such a different scope and feel. I miss the tension and the trapped feeling that the first books generated. This is an entertaining and well written grand urban fantasy at this point, but I think its expansion in vision actually weakens it a bit compared to the earlier books. The finale does feel earnt and satisfyingly though, so it makes a fitting end to what is on the whole great Dark Academia series