Amazon.ca:Customer reviews: The Golden Enclaves: The Scholomance, Book 3

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Mina

What a cool and fitting end to that incredible fantasy trilogy

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on October 2, 2022

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Note: this is the last book of a trilogy, its conclusion and not to be read as a stand-alone. So I strongly recommend to start with „A Deadly Education“.

Review
This trilogy is so so good! The incredible world building, the twists no one saw coming, the stomach-turning revelations and the awesome character that is Galadriel „El“ Higgins… wow. And its conclusion is the great finale I hoped for.
The book starts right where the prequel left off with the awful cliffhanger: Orion pushing El through the doors of the Scholomance, all pupils saved, just as planned, except for Orion. And the first part of the book, El is reeling because of it and has no way to come to grips with this outcome, but then Liesel is suddenly there, in Wales, asking for El’s help, because the London enclave is under attack and a maw-mouth is at its doors… and this is the start of a fantastic trip that only starts in London, but gets El around the world and beyond so to speak. And while she is helping enclaves, she uncovers how enclaves are made, how they are connected to maw-mouths and how the maleficaria in general happen. And it was chilling, I tell you.
Through her travels and the epiphanies she has while doing them, El is able to unravel so much - and I loved watching her. And it’s cool that despite her immense inner growth, she is still seething any other page. I had just as much fun reading about as I had in the first two books, although the plot is even darker than the previous ones. It’s still an impossible mix of fun, and snark and horror and love. Great book, great trilogy.

2 people found this helpful

R Cullen

Not just a great story but a relevant one

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 31, 2023

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Books 1 and 2 were all about the most dangerous school in the universe and how to survive it. This book is about what happens if you do survive; where you go next, and why things were the way they were. All the questions that the characters didn't have time to think about because they were fighting for their lives get addressed in this book - if you've read the first two, this one is essential.

Naomi Novik has managed to write a book that is not just an engaging and fun story, but also an acutely observed and timely parable for our global situation.

Somehow, she has done this whilst also keeping it a quick and easy read. The sheer skill is astonishing; absolutely hats off.

I can't think of a series I've enjoyed more in the last few years. Sometimes a book ends leaving you wanting more; whilst I'd certainly be open to hearing more about this world, I'm not sure it's necessary - this is a full meal, and deeply satisfying. I am going to buy copies for other people, that's how much I liked it.

Six stars. Eleven stars. ONE MILLION STARS.

Claudia

Great Finale

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on September 27, 2022

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Devoured it in one go, a great read.

Spoilers ahead.

Of course, El can’t just let Orion be the last one in the Scholomance and be eaten by Patience. So she desperately tries to get back in the school.
Her mum supports her - and in this last book, El accepts herself, that her power is a thing of balance, she discovers the root of the maleficaria and especially Mawmouths in the hideous practice behind setting up a normal enclave. Evil begets evil, it’s very fitting to show that people wishing for safety and stability can lead to accepting a fundamentally bad thing that is argued away and kept a secret.
So El grows in recognizing that it’s not the same, to profit blindly from evil and do the evil. She stops lashing out, grows more empathetic and allows others to help her. It was very satisfying to see her recognizing her circle and friends.
Just as great to see her reconcile with her Mumbai family and learn that her wise seer relative was hard pressed in making her own choices in the hope of a favorable outcome. About Orion and his fate- I cried.
Thank you for kind of a HEA.
Although I could have lived with a less wise El crushing Orion’s maleficer mum, I appreciate the more adult ending. Thank you for a great trilogy…

One person found this helpful

TeeMee-Kraftqueen65-Obsessive Reader

The Final We've All Been Waiting For-Library Loan

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 30, 2022

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From the beginning, you're off and running with El, pretty much where the last book in the series ended. It seemed like forever since the last one had been released, so I was anxiously awaiting this, ever since a release date was given.

It was surprisingly easy to remember the characters and plots from the beginning books of the series. Blessedly it didn't require the author feeling the need to nudge you along over and over with the constant reiteration of the previous books, as so many authors are prone to do. Page fillers and fluff I call it.

As usual, Novik's books are packed with fast paced excitement that has you on the edge of your set the whole time you're reading. This one is no different.

There were a few times I was slightly confused with what was going on, and I had to read it over 2 to 3 times before my brain finally comprehended what was happening, or made up my mind that in the grand scheme of it all, it didn't matter and just surrendered to the mind-flogging, or eventually just skipped ahead.

I must say, I was pleasantly surprised when it all began to unravel, and I never saw the true evil for where, why, and who the villainous and nefarious wickedness played out to be.
To make it even better, I was blown flat away with the final wrap-up of the conclusion. Couldn't have asked for more from an ending!!

A few drawbacks to the final were as follows:
At times Noviik appeared as lost as this reader was, and rambled on relentlessly.
She would go into these complex, mechanized, procedural details, over-analyzing for far too long, and you'd lose the Fantasy aspect. It felt like I was back in school myself, expected to learn about a subject that was meaningless in the context of the story. I don't know how else to explain it, but it was jarring and would interrupt the overall flow of the storyline. I get it that Seraphina was half-dragon and that they tended to lack emotions and appeared to love detail, and that all her so-called friends were on the fast track toward brilliance. It just needed to be toned down a bit.
It reminded me of that loud coworker we all seem to have in our lives, that has to spew trivial knowledge and statistics in the middle of a Friday afternoon meeting to be sure we understood they were on a much higher level then the rest of us. We get it-shut up already so we can move on already.

One other drawback was the fact that it took 3 years total for the entire series to be published. As much as I read, it's not always possible to remember every single word, action, or scene from book 1 to book 3. I don't want a history lesson, or a rewrite, but a quick one or two sentence reminder to flush the memory with, would have been appreciated.

Overall, I give this final book 4 stars, and 4 stars for the entire series. Highly recommend for Fantasy lovers everywhere.

2 people found this helpful

Jody Gentian Bower

Just When I Thought This Series Couldn't Get Any Better

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 18, 2022

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Naomi Novik doesn't just deliver a "satisfying" ending to her Scholomance trilogy; she turns everything we know about her wizarding 'verse on end and makes us see everything differently. The clues were there all along (and I've already started re-reading the series to enjoy how cleverly they're worked into the story), but I certainly did not see where the story was going to go. El made us aware of the inherent unfairness of the enclaver system in the first two books, but she and we never dreamed just how wrong things were, or how they became that way.

Some people complain about how "whiny" El can be, but 1. she's 17 when we meet her, and how many of us were perfect at that age? And 2. she's got a destiny, and it's not the typical hero-sweeps-in-and-saves-the-day-through-one-brave-act destiny; it's a destiny that will take years if not all her life to fulfill. And she has to keep committing to it. El reminds me in some ways of Terry Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax, the most powerful witch ever born, who has to fight every day not to give in to what she COULD do with her abilities, to not take the easy (for her) way out and just MAKE people straighten up and behave - knowing that's the path to the dark side, as it were. Both of them are guided by an implacable inner moral voice, and both of them rage against it - but they listen in the end. (As others have said, if you think God is telling you to do the very thing your ego wants to do, that's not God talking. The right thing is rarely the thing we'd LIKE to do.)

I also couldn't help but think of Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." El refuses to walk away or accept things as they are. Novik is not one for easy answers. She knows the world and people are complicated and difficult - but she also believes that most people are good at bottom, even if their thinking is mistaken, and that forgiveness and love are the most powerful weapons we have.

I have to address one of the reviewers who was upset about the sex scenes (if you can even call them that, they're mostly left to our imaginations). First of all, El told us in the second book that she is bisexual - if only "mildly" so - and that she found Liesel attractive. And yes, she believed Orion was dead, so no, she wasn't "cheating." I find it more upsetting that someone would write hundreds of words about how wrong it was for El to take a moment of comfort in a terrible time, yet have no reaction to the real horror that fuels the enclaves: the suffering of children.

8 people found this helpful

nlondonhousewife

Loved this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 6, 2023

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If you haven't read the first two books, don't start here!

If you have, then this is all and more that you were looking for from the author. Each one of these books comes to a decent conclusion. They leave you looking for more but don't finish unnaturally. The conclusion to book 2 may be heartbreaking, but it would be a decent enough place to leave the audience.

So you come to this book, wondering how it can satisfy the painful ending of its predecessor, building on the story of the first and second, yet still remain a decent book in itself. It meets and exceeds your expectations, bringing a sense of completion to the world building, answering questions that you didn't realise you had until the answers were provided. It turns things on their head and leaves you in a world where the villains are all too believable, their crimes both too horrifying and yet too mundane.

It is a really good tale, written well and moving at a fast pace. The female leads stands strong in the centre, and unlike many of these stories, isn't made smaller by the conclusion, by her friends or the romance element.

It's a brilliant book in a brilliant series.

2 people found this helpful

Random User No. 42

Dark Revelations... and I might have whiplash.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 2, 2022

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Great book, some progression flaws and a ton of room left in that universe for other series/spinoffs/novels to be written.

Characters:
I can't think of what to say here.
El and her friends are such great characters.
Not going to say anything about Orion because I would definitely end up writing spoilers.

Plot progression:
This book got a lot done, but left a lot of space for a sequel or spinoff.
While this book does serve as a reasonable conclusion, it seems very rushed-to-the-end in how it was written when compared to the previous two.
I will be sorely disappointed if nothing else is written in the Scholomance universe.
The Scholomance deserves a spinoff series for the next generation (and some big catastrophe to progress the plot of course).
Liesel deserves a spinoff series for her revenge.
Nobody can tell me otherwise.

The title:
Some dark revelations about enclaves are sure to surprise you in this book.
The ebook page title puts this right in front of you then kind of tells you that it's meaningless with the whole "tiktok made me read it".
Most people aren't on tiktok and I doubt tiktok paid for that bit of advertising/promotion, so I don't get why it's even there tbh.

Plot vs length:
While book 1 was just over 300 pages, book 2 had over 900.
Book 3 had about the same amount of plot-relevant content as book 2, but it all got jammed into 400 pages.
I will admit that book 2 did stretch on a bit, but if the author was trying to keep the books short, she could have easily made this one into two books.

One person found this helpful

Mainer

Weakest book of the series but still good

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 1, 2022

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After the cliffhanger of the second book, I expected to jump right in to see what happens next. But...I found the beginning a little slow, and while El is entitled to some whininess, I thought it went on a bit too long. Once the action picked up, it didn't slow down, but that came at a cost to character development. In some regards, I thought El reverted to her behavior during the first parts of the first book. She can also be impulsive and just a bit too self-righteous at times. While I didn't expect romance to be a main part of the story, I did think relationships have always been a substantial portion of the Scholomance books, not just El with Orion but with her various classmates too. Here she went a bit too far into "chosen one" territory for me.
I also found the ending "mushy" as if Ms. Novik couldn't make up her mind. She's one of my favorite authors and writes fantasy that is not YA but has younger characters with dark overtones. The ending to the Golden Enclaves was unsatisfactory to me, with the idea that everyone together can save the one. A core theme of the books is sacrificing one for the good of many and the struggles therein, but it seemed more like the sacrifice of one WHO IS NOT A MAIN CHARACTER is not viable for what is ultimately a dark fantasy series. I don't want to give spoilers, but the ending was very YA-ish.
It's still a great series, and the lore was interesting. The reader learns much about magic in this last book, not just the mechanics but the overarching systems at play here. I give it 3 1/2 stars rounded up.

Kathleen G. Albrecht

no spoilers- loved the book.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 1, 2022

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I have loved reading this series. And her writing and the way her main character thinks are hilarious at times. Often people stumble with a series in their last book. In this book- although a third of the way through, I felt a bit lost and went back ( because this author does not waste any literary real estate when writing so never skip or you miss out) and got the foreshadowing she had there which helped me understand the ending so much better- then I could put the book down. For me- there was a real deeper meaning to the story humanistically, and the very satisfying conclusion to the story spoke to me about our connections to people, our self-doubts, and our need to sometimes isolate and just do it all on our own- but yet we cannot.

No matter how much power people ascribe to us or we actually have. and in this book- power is through mana. And what is mana? In this book, she describes Mana more fully- in all different cultures how Mana is made. And mana is in some forms love for self and love for others and love for our community- and in some cases- even non-violence!.
the central character has always been so very angry, so pissed off for very good reasons, and yet she learns lessons that I think all of us have to learn in terms of controlling only what you can- and realizing the universe may have a plan that you can only slightly intercede in. All the secondary characters got important roles- which was fantastic of the author.
Her mother was wonderful and fleshed out more and very important in understanding how El, the central character, becomes who she is- now out of the school- and that all the lessons from her mother- are just as important in all the knowledge she got from school- .

So I wanted to write this review in hopes the author sees it, or anyone else who felt as I did, and realizes it moved me to tears at a few points because of how invested I felt in the main character and how in love I fell with a few others.
But most of all El may be at first the most cynical of all people- you realize the real cynicism is all the other adults in the alchaves- and she is really without malia. In other words, for us mundanes- without malice.

It's a lovely series of books. I imagine years later, like some other authors I love, I will go back and fall into her story again. Thank you for writing this book.

9 people found this helpful

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Chouette

Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on December 22, 2022

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J'avais peur, en ayant lu d'autres avis, d'être déçue mais l'intrigue bien qu'un peu longue était intéressante.
J'aurais aimé un peu plus de profondeur mais j'ai bien aimé tout de même.

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5 star		70%
4 star		23%
3 star		5%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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