The Golden Enclaves
Ratings280
Average rating4.1
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.
i hate this already and i can tell it's not going to get any better, so i will just pretend it's a duology to preserve the magic of the first two books. el is going to mope through the whole thing and i don't want to read that. the book always feels like it's going to be drastically different since they're out of the school and the school was my favorite part so i'm stopping!
I may be in the minority, but this was by far my favorite book of the series. I really love the world & magic mechanics of the series, but the 1st book felt like a lot of setup and the 2nd just started us going. While I did predict some of the reveals well ahead of time, this one was still super engaging. The first 1/3rd took a little bit of time to ramp up, but by midway through it grabbed me. I was totally emotionally invested by the end. There are bits of the magic mechanics that I found a tad confusing, but I kind of just went with it, let it be magic and not bother me too much. The whole book has a lot of wonderful metaphors of how we treat others as individuals vs. as a society, capitalism and how our systems fail so many. Sprinkled in there's also a nod to the power of individual choice, how we choose our path - the timeline of our life rests on our choices and we're meant to be just as we are. Loved the resolution, the characters and how they grow and I'm sad there's not more to read based in this world.
No lo termine de leer porque me hice spoiler del final, pero que buen final. Los anteriores libros tenian partes medio tediosas y supongo que por eso al final empece este y me canse rapido. Aun así, toda la trama es buenisima y 10/10.
Woot! Another series finished! This was the third book of the Scholomance series. In this book we get to see our protagonist leave her magical school and confront the realities of the world outside (including a few prophecies/mysteries that have been floating around for most of the series). This book was really action from the very first page, it definitely kept me wanting to turn pages.
This has been a great, fun series, and a must-read if you're into the whole dark academia vibe. Landing the ending to a series is always difficult, but I'm 95% satisfied with how this one turned out. (It got a tiny bit too into the weeds about how some of the pieces of magic worked for my personal preference, and I was sad to “lose” the school as a major character in this book.) Strong recommend, and looking forward to reading more Naomi Novik!
Rare for a third book of a trilogy to be the worse but this one easily was. I enjoyed the first two, and because it is easy reading sped through this one but it never really clicked.
Todo lo que quedaba por explicar, ha quedado explicado y de qué manera. Sólo me fastidia que Ophelia no haya tenido otro tipo de final. De hecho, me encantaría un cuarto libro viendo cómo se hace realidad todo lo que han conseguido en este. Porque ser buenos siempre es la opción más difícil pero por favor que bien lo están haciendo mis niños
I really enjoyed the first two books but this one took it to a whole new level and I loved it. A great end to the trilogy.
Novik is an absolute genius, and there were so many knives to the heart in this. Her skill with abrupt reveals left me GASPING at many points. I'm very satisfied with how everything wrapped up.
Still a good time, but liked it a bit less than the first two (which I liked very much), mostly because the pacing felt a bit off. More time was spend on things I cared about less and less time was spend on things I cared about more. Also I kinda missed the school setting, because I love a magic school setting ;)
It's got major book 2 vibes from having the love interests be separated for the vast majority of it, but it also has major final book vibes from all the planning to save everyone, and both of those things are not super fun, so. It was fine. I was there for the characters I've grown to love but even those were separated for a while. And we weren't in the school anymore either. Basically, all the fun bits were out and all the serious bits were in. It put a damper on everything. 🤷🏼♀️
The Golden Enclaves (Scholomance 3) by Naomi Novik
This trilogy is “Dark Harry Potter.” Think of Hogwarts with an 70% mortality rate and the main character is more adept with spells that wipe out cities than with cleaning rooms.
But it is sweet.
The first book introduced us to the Scholomance, the school in the void that the magical class ensconces their children in to give them better odds of survival than the real world. The problem is that the Scholomance is infested with the evil product of magic - malia - that lives off the tender and weak lives of young magicians. We were also introduced to Elle, a young witch who seems destined to become the destroyer of the world. We see Elle develop into a player in her class. She meets Orion, a true blue hero, and makes friends.
In the second book, Elle and her friends hatch a plot to save the entire class while ridding the world of malia.
The third book picks up immediately after the closing of the second book, with Elle in the real world but Orion has chosen to remain in the Scholomance to face certain doom. Elle, of course, takes up a plan to return to the Scholomance and kill the malia that she is certain is consuming the essence of Orion.
In this book, we follow Elle as she becomes a player in the politics of the Enclaves that exist half-in/half-out of the void. She meets Orion's parents and discovers a disturbing truth about Orion's mother. She learns something about how malia are created, particularly the vicious maw-mouth, and she learns something disturbing about Orion. Elle learns to fight and destroy maw-mouths. Enclaves are destroyed. War between Enclaves is breaking out. And it all rests on Elle's shoulders to sort out.
Elle comes across as a resourceful hero. Elle is a bit of a Mary Sue in that she always seems to have the right spell at the right time. We do learn that the universe has been set up in a way to create a path for Elle.
A distraction was that Elle's principal emotional setting is “angry.” She's a teenage girl who swings from being angry at everyone for not knowing something she discovered to sulking about her hurt feelings and then back to angry. Novik is not big on emotional nuance, but, then, she certainly knows teenage girls.
All in all, this is a fun, fast-moving book with some big ideas. It is a YA book, but that doesn't mean that it isn't enjoyable reading for older folks looking for some escapism.
I'm talking about the whole trilogy here: it was so worth it! The first book was 3* due mainly to the sheer amount of info-dumping. I found myself skipping whole pages of endless exposition, which didn't really add to the story as a whole. I really liked the premise and the story, and for some reason (the cliffhanger at the very end, maybe?) I bought books 2 and 3 immediately after finishing book 1 and I devoured them (like a Maw-Mouth XD). I have to say that my enjoyment increased the further I went into the story. The info-dumping also got better (decreased) as the book progressed, which contributed to my overall enjoyment of the books.
This is the third and final book in Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy, which means I'll be using this review to talk not only about The Golden Enclaves, but the series as a whole. Let's start with the former. I was not the biggest fan of The Last Graduate mostly because I felt it didn't expand on A Deadly Education enough. I think Novik absolutely fixed this issue in The Golden Enclaves. While the first two books in this trilogy took place entirely within one location, The Golden Enclaves takes its characters all around the world, allowing for a greater diversity in environments that allows the book to really breathe. The increase in physical settings leads to an increase in stakes and information as well. In some ways, The Golden Enclaves feels both like the second and third book in this trilogy. That's a lot to pack into a book that's just over 400 pages, but I think Novik does a fantastic job with it. This is a book that could feel rushed but it doesn't. It moves from beat to beat really nicely and she makes sure to allow her characters to process each event before moving onto the next one. The characters in this book are once again fantastic. I'll get into some of them in a bit but real quickly I want to shout out Ophelia Lake, a truly wonderful antagonist who makes her presence felt despite little time actually being present in the story. All in all, The Golden Enclaves serves as a very strong end to a pretty strong series. I have mixed emotions when looking back on the trilogy as a whole. Let's start with the good. A Deadly Education is absolutely fantastic and will likely remain one of my favorite books I read this year. I think it's pretty much perfect. The Golden Enclaves is another very good book. The series as a whole features one of the most interesting magic systems in the entire fantasy genre, a great setpiece in The Scholomance itself along with some truly spectacular characters. Novik does a fantastic job of making her two main protagonists (El and Orion) consistently engaging throughout. I never quite knew where their characters would end up and I just wanted to keep following them across every page. There's a lot to like here and I certainly can't begrudge anyone who ranks this series among the best they've ever read. But something holds it back from reaching that status for me. It may be the fact that I feel like The Last Graduate does not do enough in terms of expanding the world, making The Golden Enclaves need to do some catch-up work. That's the only real flaw I can definitively put into words here. Other than that I just... didn't love the series the way I wanted to. I still really liked it and will recommend it to others, it's just not the masterpiece I was hoping for. The covers still kick major ass though. No complaints about them.
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
besties... :/
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okay i didn't like this for many reasons but the sex-negative reviews and reviews talking about cheating... it's not cheating when you're not in an exclusive relationship, sorry!! also, learn about polyamory, babes.
Surprisingly strong end to the trilogy. This book accomplished what Kuang's BABEL never managed for me- critiquing capitalism in a refreshing way that doesn't give easy answers. Strong anti-capitalist themes.
A very fitting conclusion to the series, but hopefully the author revisits this world in the future.
The beginning and middle felt quite dry and impersonal, like I wasn't really connecting with the characters and they were just going through with the motions of the plot - and it was like, well what's the point? It got better towards the end so it redeemed itself a little.