The Golden Enclaves

Naomi Novik
Completed 4/11/2024, Reviewed 4/11/2024
4 stars

Well, I finally enjoyed a book in the Scholomance series.  It all came together for me in this concluding volume.  Once again, we spend a ton of time in El’s head, but this time, I felt like all her rage and frustration was justified and coherent.  And the book takes place after graduation, so it’s not all take class/kill monsters.  We get to the root of the problem with the monsters and the destruction of the enclaves.  We get relationships with wizard parents.  And of most interest to me, we find out what happened to Orion at the end of the last book.  This book was nominated for a few 2022/2023 awards, but I thought this one should have gotten a Hugo nod as well.  

Galadriel, or El, has escaped the graduation ceremony of the Scholomance and helped all the remaining students escape.  However, Orion, who was last with El, pushed her out as the portal closed, leaving him locked in the school with all the mals (monsters) as it goes off into the void.  She goes home to Wales where she grieves for Orion while her mother tries to help her through it.  Eventually, some of her closest classmates come to drag her out of her depression and go back to try to rescue Orion.  They do, but he is not the same person, appearing to be about as bad as the mals he destroyed.  Then they get word that another enclave has been destroyed.  They are called upon to help rebuild the enclave and figure out what’s causing such cataclysms.  Of course, El’s most important task is to figure out what’s wrong with Orion.

As in the first two books, the writing is amazing.  It’s hard to believe that Novik was able to write three books of what goes on in El’s head.  For me, this time, it was completely engrossing.  I was finally empathizing with El and could understand the constant, near-stream-of-consciousness rant that was going on inside her head.  She had clearly grown since the first novel.  She is still kind of a brat, but a much more mature brat, reconciling the fact that she’s one of the most powerful wizards of the last generation or so, as well as the fact that she might not be able to save Orion from the state he is in despite her amazing powers.  I was fully invested in the rollercoaster of emotions she experienced through the whole story.

I also liked that we got the history of the origin of the school and the wizards’ enclaves around the world.  It completed the world building that was begun in the first two books.  It also fleshed out the magic system and the source of the mals.  It was quite gruesome, but brilliant.  Hats off to Novik’s imagination.  I would think it was not easy to come up with a magic system that seems fresh after all the fantasy that has been written over the decades.  

In the end, I have to say that it was well worth reading this trilogy.  I’m glad my book club picked all three books.  In retrospect, it was a good experience.  I bet it would make a good reread knowing the end and looking for all the foreshadowing in the first two books.  I also bet El’s hyperactive, angry mind would also make a lot more sense as we finally meet her mother and her father’s family.  But I probably won’t reread it anytime soon, as my TBR pile grows continuously.  I still have the first three books of Novik’s first series waiting for me on my e-reader.  Sigh.  So many books so little time.  I give this book four stars out of five, and would venture to say that as a whole, the series is a four star series.  If you want to check out the reviews of A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate, click on those purple titles.