The Golden Enclaves

Having now graduated back into the real world, El reunites with some of her classmates to accomplish her dream of creating enclaves for everyone, not just the powerful few, while also continuing to refuse to fulfill the prophecy that she will bring death and destruction to all enclaves. The immense power she wields brings her many temptations, as several enclaves will give anything to have her protect them from the recent instability of others. With mana freely given by London or New York, she could create far more new Golden enclaves than she could on her own and bring about her egalitarian dream sooner, but would the cost be worth it?

The reveal of what’s really been happening this whole time is very gradual and feels very natural. show more Of course it makes sense that El would be doing the destroying, given the prophecy, but it didn’t seem like she was an unreliable narrator, and we’ve been in her head the whole time.. Everything that we’ve learned previously in the story comes together for an inevitable and satisfying ending. I felt the narrative was bogged down slightly a couple times, but I loved seeing El’s friends come back slowly and in an unexpected order. Overall I enjoyed it very slightly less than the previous two, but it’s still a great ending.

What a series! It really speaks to my heart. There’s no real big bad here, the minor villains are monsters created by human ego and the power to fight against is just capitalism and class hierarchy and artificial scarcity. El really truly changes the world. This is definitely one I’m going to revisit. show less

Ugh, I mean, how? How do you even try to wrap up and epic series like the Scholomance, especially with the doomed love story(ish), and the dread prophecy(ish) and a pragmatic German witch stepping in to boss everyone around (really did not see that coming) and mostly -- no one expected to survive the last book, so where do they even start? And that's the point and the genius of this one -- lots of things you never saw coming. It continues epic. It answers questions I didn't think would be answered and goes places I never expected, and manages to continue the murky refusal to be flat good vs evil. Awesome, terrible in spots, sometimes repetitive, mostly just wonderful. And El. Carving her own path no matter what.

The audio book reader is show more totally excellent, again. Love her work. show less

i do not want to overreact but i think these might be my favorite books now. they do such a good job of encapsulating so many things that i care so deeply about, they are so well-written with such intention and purpose while simultaneously being so good at believably conveying the ordinary rhythms of life that they often manage to help you forget you are reading something planned and constructed at all. you could say they cast a spell on you, and given that the magic system in this world is based on language, that isn't just me trying to make a cute pun.

i am notably always very weak to endings. return of the king is my favorite lord of the rings movie and one of my favorite movies period because it never fails to make me cry. so i am show more speaking with no small amount of investment when i say what an absolutely perfect culmination of everything that came before. golden enclaves is quite a bit more focused and singleminded in its approach. things are really coming to a head and all the central contradictions of the world of wizards are speeding towards confrontations that cannot be forestalled. but this book is able to be that way because it's able to stand on the shoulders on all of the incredible character building and worldbuilding that happened in the first two books. though, there are several bits of character progression that do still come about, one of which caught me totally off guard and ended up being one of the most delightful things about this book even though according to the friend who recommended these books to me The Straights are Not Okay with this particular development.

i want to keep this relatively spoiler free so it's hard to entirely convey my feelings about these books without frustratingly talking around things, but i'll do my best. this book absolutely gobsmacked me on a number of occasions, but all of it was building towards one of the most memorable nights of reading i've ever had, as the final confrontation kept building and building to what seemed like a tragically inevitable heartbreak, and i was just absolutely reduced to ugly sobbing multiple times. the book is also just absolutely imbued with the power of "you can't always just punch the big bad in the face, these problems have always been bigger than any of us, no matter how powerful any individual person is this is not One Of Those stories." even when i was sobbing at times i had to literally hug the copy of the book that i borrowed from the library.

i guess the flippant thing to say here is that i can really relate to el because i, too, have had my life changed by a book i borrowed from the library.

i'm going to be thinking about these books for a long time. i'm going to reread them in relatively short order, because i'm already thinking about how much differently parts of a deadly education are going to read now that i know the whole story. i love these books so much and i am so glad my friend recommended them to me. show less

I am amazed and deeply gratified. I really appreciate what Naomi Novik has done with this series. For the characters and the reader, this is a dark journey – you think you know your story, you think you understand what kind of story you are reading, and then everything is turned upside down and you are left gasping.

This is a book about the so-called good intentions and the price of compromise. It tells of willful blindness, the greater good that needs a sacrifice (yes, it’s horrible, but what can we do, this is how it’s done, after all….), and the convenient and tempting lies people tell themselves.

Yes, this is a cruel and angry book, or rather, cruel and rightfully angry. And yet, it is also humane, and there are people in it show more that make honourable choices instead of safe and selfish ones.

I LOVE EL SO MUCH…

The ending is beautiful.

P.S. I will happily re-read the Scholomance trilogy at some point :) show less

This was an excellent ending for the trilogy. Novik has elevated the magic school series by bringing the final book to the difficult and complicated political world outside the school. I also appreciated that there weren't any purely evil villains, more of a society built in wrong doing and that there wasn't a neat HEA.

I was just tired by the constancy of El's inner dialogues at this point. I had to keep flipping pages back to re-read things because I wasn't quite sure what she was rambling about. And her romantic trysts? It's one thing to have sex with someone when you believe your previous lover is dead. It's another thing entirely to find out he's still alive, have sex with him, and then still proceed to have sex again with the rebound person. Sorry, but that's cheating and I have an issue with that.

Overall, I was disappointed with this conclusion to an otherwise enjoyable trilogy. I guess I was hoping for some big, satisfying ending and on one hand I like how the Scholomance was reimagined, with Orion acting almost as an anchor. On the other show more hand though, I hate the idea of El and Orion having a part-time relationship based on school schedules and monster-hunting. It reminds me of how the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise ruined the love story of Elizabeth and Will Turner. Clearly I'm still bitter about that one. Anyway, I'm sorry that I didn't enjoy this book as much as the first two books in the Scholomance series, but I am glad that Naomi Novik is choosing to end it here. It feels finished in as good a way that it can be. show less

In this finale to the Scholomance trilogy we learn what happens after El, Orion, and her colleagues manage to get everyone out of the Scholomance. Well, almost everyone, Orion stayed behind which makes El determined to find a way back in to get him.

There are some problems to overcome first. Something is killing enclaves, and the various enclaves are on the brink of war. Looking for help uncovers all sorts of secrets. Secrets that could bring the whole system of enclaves tumbling down.

El's plans for the escape from the Scholomance did manage to cut the number of mals in half but didn't do anything for the most awful of all the mals. The maw-mouth doesn't just kill wizards. It keeps them alive inside it in such a way that they can't die. show more And killing them has been a task that requires a large group of adult wizards working together. At least it did until El.

This was an excellent conclusion to a very good series. I loved the worldbuilding. I loved the way El grew through the trilogy. She had so many decisions to make. show less