The Golden Enclaves

3.5 stars for the book, 4 stars for the series. The series is difficult to get into but once you are in it gets interesting. This is a case where the whole is more then the sum of its parts.

I tried to read this. About 15 pages in, this is fucking god awful.
The way it's written all in this rambling inner monologue makes it sound like the author is incredibly unsure about the world. Do you usually mentally go through everything you do? “So I take my keys out, then I pick out the one with the round head next to the keychain. It's the one to open my front door. Inserting it is not hard, though I have to jiggle it just a little because the door is a bit old. Otherwise it's not incredibly hard to turn it, though, so I can open the door relatively easily.”
Reading it makes me tired, it's like someone is just having word vomit all over me, while I try not to tune it all out.

I've never really LIKED this series. It was always exposition central to explain away how incredibly dumb and illogical the whole premise was.
The characters were always trash, except Orion, who was verbally abused by ELLLLLLLL every fucking line of dialogue she had with him.
Also, I fucking HATE ELLLLLLL's mother. She did literally nothing to take care of her child, except the hippy bullshit she did for literally any asshole who walked in. She could have protected her better. Could have given her a chance at proper survival. But instead she ignored her child's safety and mental well-being (and being an awful, mean-spirited CUNT) and just picked some flowers and dicked around in a field.
Easy to blame both her and ELLLLLLL's shitty personalities on “le trauma, le depression”, but they don't learn from it. We are supposed to love them the way they are and they are both bad people.

End of rant. This series is bad.

I have thoughts... Not entirely done processing the story yet.
There's a lot of good stuff in here, but I feel like the time spent describing how magic works took the place of the fun relationships and banter that I loved from books 1 and 2.
El is dealing with a lot and we see her struggling to process it. She becomes very passive in several parts of the book, which felt like a very big turn from her usual self. Is that an effect of her trauma, or bad writing/plot development?
El's relationship with Liesel certainly changed a lot. It felt like an odd choice for El's main sidekick throughout the book. Still thinking over this character...
I really wanted to see more of El and Orion together. That was definitely missing from the story.
Mostly I feel like Novik tried to touch on some great themes, like processing trauma, but lost a lot of fun parts of books 1 and 2 that makes it worth slogging through the emotional trauma parts.
I need to read this again, when I'm not recovering from covid and fighting off migraines. I'm really curious what a reread will reveal.

It was a good ending to the trilogy, but I didn't feel as “into” this book as the other two.

2.5

CAWPILE SCORE
C-9
A-9
W-8
P-8
I-8
L-9
E-9
TOTAL-8.57/10

CAWPILECharactersEl- nice shifting of priorities, changes of goals. Orion. Immortal because he's a MAWMouth. Depressed. Given in to the hunger. Liesel Like her efficiency, don't really like her.Ophelia- Evil with a purposeAtmosphereThe very emotional scenes stick out. And we have a nice vision of what it feels like to be thre.WritingBeautiful writing. Elegently connected with the first story. I like that it starts and almost ends with “ I have to Kill Orion Lake”PlotThe Prophecy was half fake. Enclave's still being destroyed, El tries to get orion out, but can't at first. Kills some mawmouths then gets orion out of Ghost Scholomance. Rebuild a couple enclave's because Enclave's are built on Mawmouth's or Pure Mana Victims. War. Have to kill orion/ save orion using Golden Sutras. Adapt sutras for all.InvestmentRead this book in 2 50% chunks, just didn't want to put it down.LogicOpen PaymentsEnclaves built on maw mouths. The way it works makes sense. The prophecy EnjoymentVery minor sex scene felt excess to me. Especially gay I didn't feel anything from her towards that.You're dead. You're already deadMiscMaw Mouths are the basis of enclave's. makes sense the void is always hungry, mawmouths are always hungry
I will be talking about it on Libromancy https://libromancy.podbean.com/ on 10/03/2023

An absolutely perfect conclusion to the series. The thoughtfulness that went into this book elevates my opinion on the first two. Can't wait for a re-read.

spoilers

god i dont like orion at all in any of these books but especially not this one and a lot on the last one (first was kinda fun with him tbh). on the reread of the last graduate i just found him super annoying and unlikable. not to say that characters should all be likable but it was really annoying for the first half of this book to be about him and how important it was to save him but it was such a drag. The series and this book really shine where its about El and her dealing with her anger and her morality when it comes to people who choose the lesser evil. All of the sequences regarding that were very fun to read as they were in last graduate as well. but man the ending and the politicking and the twists just fell short for me. sure they made sense but the buildup was never there and it never felt completely like a puzzle falling together. like why is the big bad mom lady so uninteresting as a villain

all in all a great series but the first book is by far the best because orion feels like a character and not a plot device and El has so much growth without the meandering confusing mess of the amount of characters and a clear goal.

Aughhh! The long awaited sequel!

I really wanted to love this, but it seemed a bit thrown together. We didn't get much characterization of anyone, and there was too much time spent running around to different locations. I was very emotionally detached from this one.

There were some odd and unexpected choices made in the writing of this book. When I got to about 90% of the way through, I panicked a bit internally, thinking to myself, “There's not enough time to wrap everything up!”, and that thought ... wasn't entirely wrong. The storyline I cared about the most did get wrapped up, though, and the writing was beautiful and impossibly gripping as always, and El remained a spiteful furious hope-gremlin, so I deem it a four-star read despite the sometimes questionable bits.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

I'm sure other people will mention this, but there's a weird cheating? possibly cheating? thing going on in this book. It's not really clear exactly how El and Orion defined the thing between them or how exclusive it was supposed to be, but does seem strange that she never even mentions the other relationship to him.El and Orion are separated for a lot of this book. Like, a lot. He kind of falls out of the narrative, and it's weird, and that's part of the reason why I panicked a little when I made it to 90%. Once he finally showed back up, that storyline did get more or less resolved, so I'm willing to let it go. Still an odd choice, since El and Orion and their relationship and the way they mirror and change and save each other seems pretty firmly the foundation of this series to me.Final quibble, SPOILERY FOR THE ENDING: I'm not sure I can buy that Orion would forgive his mom quite that easily. If he had been her only victim, sure! Except she murdered an entire Scholomance class. She slaughtered a large group of children, on purpose. Orion, self-sacrificing hero Orion, nobody's-dying-on-my-watch Orion? He's supposed to forgive that, literally the instant she shrugs and goes “Sorry or whatever,” and then refuse to hear another word about it? Bleh.Now for the thing I loved:Once there was a dark sorceress designed to destroy, and instead she shrieked “FUCK YOU, EVERYBODY LIVES” into the face of the void while flipping the bird with both hands. Once there was a boy crushed and shattered and then revived with an insatiable monster at his core howling its eternal hunger, and he gritted his teeth and bent that hunger toward protecting others and chose to be kind without asking anything in return.Fantastic, unforgettable characters.

Review to come 25/10 stars.