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THE LAST GRADUATE

by Naomi Novik ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 28, 2021

A sequel that repeats the mistakes of its predecessor while failing to break new ground.

A teenage witch with a natural affinity for dark magic prepares to run a deadly graduation gauntlet in this sequel to Novik's Deadly Education (2020).

Galadriel "El" Higgins has finally reached her senior year at the Scholomance, putting her one step closer to her ultimate goal: get back home or die trying. After getting a sneak peek at the monster-packed hallway she must survive if she wants to graduate, the witchy teen returns to her classes and cliques with scarcely more insight than before. El knows enough to realize that her mana stores are a fraction of what they should be—come graduation, she will lack the magical juice she needs to kill monsters and make it out alive. Her fake-dating relationship with Orion proves to be a lucky "in," netting her a new string of tenuous alliances as well as access to a wellspring of free mana. But what could be a compelling adventure story falls apart here, as the novel relies on relentless bouts of infodumping to keep readers up to speed on where the Scholomance's monsters come from and what they can do to unsuspecting students. None of these paragraphs-long blasts of information recount the details of El's last excursion, however, and so readers who have forgotten Novik's previous novel, or who have never read it at all, will find no springboard ready to help them dive into the author's newest offering. Those who stumble upon this volume risk being unmoored, as the narrative picks up immediately following the events of its predecessor, without stopping to introduce anything, including the narrator. Ultimately, El's seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of every monster in the school, combined with her continued refusal to enter into any genuine alliance with classmates, leaves readers to wonder what she could possibly have left to learn—or fear—in the Scholomance.

Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12886-2

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Del Rey

Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021

FANTASY | GENERAL FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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Finalists for 2022 Hugo Awards Are Revealed

THE FAMILIAR

by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 9, 2024

Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.

In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.

Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.

Pub Date: April 9, 2024

ISBN: 9781250884251

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024

FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | HISTORICAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FANTASY

More by Leigh Bardugo

by Leigh Bardugo

by Leigh Bardugo ; illustrated by Dani Pendergast

FOURTH WING

From the empyrean series , vol. 1.

by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2023

Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.

On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.

Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.

Pub Date: May 2, 2023

ISBN: 9781649374042

Page Count: 528

Publisher: Red Tower

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024

FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY | GENERAL FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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REVIEW: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Book Reviews
October 6, 2021
1,840 views
By Elizabeth Tabler

Last Updated on October 6, 2021

As someone who grew up with a massive love for Harry Potter but is now turned off by the saccharin sweetness of that series, The Last Graduate , book 2 of The Scholomance series is a perfect reminder that it is much more fun to play in the dark, snarky side of things.

“the same kind of calm as going through a crying jag and coming out the other side, where you know nothing’s changed and it’s all still horrible but you can’t cry forever, so there’s nothing to do but go on .”

There are no fundamental protections, except for those you make yourself. The food is terrible and often poisonous and full of larva, the surroundings are terrifying, plus you still have to deal with teenage drama and hormones. Thankfully most of which is tamped down in favor of not becoming something’s dinner. Plus, the children do not leave Scholomance for four years and have limited resources; it is full of political intrigues and a course load that would break the best minds. It is a type of violence that hits you on all sides.

The Scholomance series is not a dark veneer painted over an otherwise sweet and endearing coming-of-age story. No, this is just dark, bloody, and cruel. The good don’t win at Scholomance, mater a fact who gives a damn about good and evil. Just live in any way you can. Beg Barter and steel, and maybe you will see sunlight again. But then, maybe not.

“They were already vulnerable, so when they looked at me they were rabbits looking at a wolf – a half-starved wolf who sometimes snapped even at the hand that fed her because it also kept her on a leash.”

In the first book, we are introduced to Galadriel, who has the bonus of being extremely unlikeable, naturally. She is much like her namesake, immensely powerful, and naturally stands on a precipice between good and evil. Her power and nature pull her towards the dark; she could flatten entire cities and become a dark queen, and all would despair before her.

“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

But Galadriel, or El as she likes to be called, doesn’t want that and never has. This dark pulling is balanced against the lessons from her mother, who is the antithesis of a dark queen, a healer who freely gives her healing for free to all. Much of the book is El waring with the desires of Scholomance to turn El into the dark queen of destruction that she has inside.

The worldbuilding of The Scholomance is mainly flashbacks of moments out in the real world and the terrifying and otherworldly creation of the school itself. It lives outside of reality in a void between worlds. The entire school is vicious, but the whole point is to protect students from demons that want to consume their inner mana. It does a mediocre job, so wizards must accept that half of their children will not make it out of puberty into adulthood without being eaten.

All of this floundering under a Damocles is what any of the students can hope for until El has an idea… “El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules…”

This series has a lot of danger and a lot of heart. But unlike the first book, where we are introduced to El and the rules of Scholomance, here we are familiar with how everything works. It is exciting how we slowly see El take apart everything; who needs rules? And come into her power, both physical and of personality. She starts to believe that she can change everything.

I plowed through this book. Every chapter kept me flowing through the pages. Novik has done a lot of stellar series, and she knows how to keep her readers hooked in. I won’t tell you what happens to El and her found family. Especially Orion, who we meet in the first novel, swings wildly in the other direction for power. That would ruin everything, but wow, is it exciting. And that ending…

I am giving this my highest rating. It is mind-blowing and fantastic. It ended, and I went clamoring for more. Thank god there is another book planned. If you are a fan of dark fantasy, then you will dig it.

Read The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Elizabeth Tabler

Elizabeth Tabler runs Beforewegoblog and is constantly immersed in fantasy stories. She was at one time an architect but divides her time now between her family in Portland, Oregon, and as many book worlds as she can get her hands on. She is also a huge fan of Self Published fantasy and is on Team Qwillery as a judge for SPFBO5. You will find her with a coffee in one hand and her iPad in the other. Find her on: instagram.com/elizabethtabler https://beforewegoblog.com/ https://www.pinterest.com/scottveg3/ https://www.goodreads.com/Scottveg3 https://twitter.com/BethTabler

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REVIEW: ‘The Last Graduate’ by Naomi Novik is an exciting return to the Scholomance

‘The Last Graduate’ throws us back into the deadly Scholomance and the flawed-yet-loveable characters trying to escape it.

I couldn’t help but love every moment of The Last Graduate even when some descriptions were left wanting.

From the Blurb

The dark school of magic has always done its best to devour its students, but now that El has reached her final year — and somehow won herself a handful of allies along the way — it’s suddenly developed a very particular craving… For her. As the savagery of the school ramps up, El is determined that she will not give in; not to the mals, not to fate, and especially not to the Scholomance. But as the spectre of graduation looms — the deadly final ritual that leaves few students alive — if she and her allies are to make it out, El will need to realise that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules.

The Last Graduate picks up immediately where A Deadly Education ended, which reflects the way the school year at the Scholomance works — no holidays. If it has been a while since you read the first novel, it might be worth revisiting it before beginning the sequel, as there is little recap here. El and her friends dive right into their final year coursework and training for graduation. Even though the book is quite long, some aspects felt rushed mainly because it covers the course of a whole year. Particularly towards the beginning I felt as though I was being rushed through the weeks to reach the main plot points.

Nevertheless, it is easy to fall back into the rhythm of El’s sarcastic, witty tone which I continue to adore. There is something completely loveable and, in parts, relatable about her, despite her flaws. In fact, her flaws aid her character and Novik does a great job at showing El’s development as she battles with years of ingrained trust issues and negative self-image. She certainly comes out of this book a much better person than the girl we first met, even if she still has a way to go.

Our other characters were just as enjoyable. Watching friendship blossom between Aadhya, Liu and El was wonderful, especially because each of them needed the friendship just as much as the others. Orion was…Orion. Heroic and awkward, yet loveable all the same. His character felt a little under-developed however, with many of his appearances feeling quite robotic and lacking in personality. I hope book three will offer some development here.

One issue I had was a bit of confusion with the blending of American and British customs and phrases. El is Welsh, and often uses terms that are typically British. However there are times when Americanisms slip through which became jarring when paired with mentions of El’s identity. Similarly, there was little description for character appearances, which meant the somewhat diverse identities of the main characters were lost behind the frequent mention of the New York enclave.

The Last Graduate changes the tune of the Scholomance series ever-so-slightly, as we begin to learn a little more about the world the books are set in. As the plot progresses, we learn more about the building of the school and events happening in the outside world which are evidently building up to future novels which, yes, I already know I’ll be reading.

As dramatic and deadly as the Scholomance is, there is something cosy about this book. Perhaps the ease with which Novik brings us back to these characters and this story, or perhaps the delicious theme of education and magic that adds just a hint of a dark academia feel. I completely devoured this book, in spite of the long chapters, because I simply couldn’t leave these characters behind.

Novik is a queen of dramatic endings, and The Last Graduate is no different. If you enjoyed A Deadly Education then I have no doubt you’ll be loving its sequel just as much, and be as desperate for news of a third book as me.

Plot: it felt rushed in places but otherwise had me hooked from beginning to end.

Characters: I still adore El, even though she might grate on some. Each character is great in their own right.

Writing: captivating, yet would have benefitted from more frequent and more detailed descriptions.

Theme/Message: dark academia enough for cosiness yet fantasy enough for a thrilling ride.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Last Graduate (The Scholomance #2) by Naomi Novik

Synopsis: A budding dark sorceress determined not to use her formidable powers uncovers yet more secrets about the workings of her world in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education, the start of Naomi Novik's groundbreaking crossover series. At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year--and the looming specter of graduation, a deadly ritual that leaves few students alive in its wake. El is determined that her chosen group will survive, but it is a prospect that is looking harder by the day as the savagery of the school ramps up. Until El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules . . . Praise for A Deadly Education "The scholomance is the dark school of magic I've been waiting for, and its wise, witty, and monstrous heroine is one I'd happily follow anywhere--even into a school full of monsters."--Katherine Arden, New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale "Novik deliciously undoes expectations about magic schools, destined heroes, and family legacies. A gorgeous book about monsters and monstrousness, chockablock with action, cleverness, and wit."--#1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black "A must-read . . . Novik puts a refreshingly dark, adult spin on the magical boarding school. . . . Readers will delight in the push-and-pull of El and Orion's relationship, the fantastically detailed world, the clever magic system, and the matter-of-fact diversity of the student body."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

I had friends. Which felt even more unreal than surviving long enough to become a senior, and I owed that, I owed every last bit of it, to Orion Lake, and I didn’t care, actually, what the price tag was going to be. There’d be one, no question. Mum hadn’t warned me for no reason. But I didn’t care. I’d pay it back, whatever it was.

Did I want to immediately jump on here and write a review rather than dive into my next October Spooky Read? No. Did I want to think about this book all day at work and while doing mundane things around my house? No. Did I want to be so out of breath, so insanely drunk on adrenaline and the nerve-wracking peril butterflies borne from pain and panic , thus causing me to stay up all night in a crescendo of feels so inevitably dark, alluring and cataclysmic that I couldn’t help but re-read the same devastatingly amazing scene over and over again until there were undeniable bags under my eyes today? I mean…yes. Yes . Yes to all of this-I totally lied. I am a monster and my monster has been fed THUSLY.

You could ask people to be brave, you could ask them to be kind, you could ask them to care, you could ask them to help; you could ask them for a thousand hard and painful things. But not when it was so obviously useless. You couldn’t ask someone to deliberately trade themselves away completely, everything they had and might ever be, just to give you a chance, when in the end—and the gates were the end, the very end of things—you knew you weren’t any more special than they were. It wasn’t even heroism; it was just a bad equation that didn’t balance.

This is a review that didn’t allow me to start another book, that didn’t allow me to catch up on another review I’m behind on, that didn’t allow me proper sleep even tonight, because the thoughts and emotions and utter helplessness that comes from such an amazing end of a book cannot and will not be contained inside this masochistic cranium of mine. I am bent. I am broken . And I LIVE for the mind-numbingly chaotic chaos that is YA fantasy when done correctly.

Either they’ll tell you to do what you want to do anyway, in which case you didn’t need their advice, or they’ll tell you to do the opposite, in which case you’ll have to choose between sullenly following their advice, like a little kid who has been forced to brush her teeth and go to bed at a reasonable hour, or ignoring it and grimly carrying on, all the while knowing that your course of action is guaranteed to lead you straight to pain and dismay. If you’re wondering which of those two options I picked, then you must not know me, as pain and dismay were obviously my destination.

And make no mistake, this was done right. It was done well . It was evil, cruel, so satisfyingly macabre that I can’t help but sound like a demon as all I have talked about is my withering sanity that surely went south with this weirdly perfect masterpiece of a series (thus far). Naomi Novik is no novice in writing fantasy-Uprooted remains one of the most surprising favorites of my past to this day. So when I saw she was going a possessed school type route (what even is the Scholomance if not a school that lives and breathes as its own entity?), I was all in.

The Scholomance isn’t exactly a living thing, but it isn’t exactly not , either.

If she won me over with, like, random tree monsters and other such nonsense (I hate this type of nonsense, weirdly), then surely one of my favorite types of tropes ever could be written to utter godly heights by this woman.

Naturally as soon as he dared think about what he might want, surely that made him a monster. But as someone who’s been told she’s a monster from almost all corners from quite early on, I know perfectly well the only sensible thing to do when self-doubt creeps into your own head is to repress it with great violence.

I’ll admit the first book shocked me. I knew Novik was an odd writer, for me anyway, but this was….beyond absurd. Weirdly wonderful. And, beyond that absurdity of absurdness I’ve yet to explain, the wordiness is enough to scare anyone off. I used to hate that type of writing, so how Uprooted got through my crusty barriers years ago is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong-I’m all for it now-but I used to not be able to stand it. POINT BEING, this series is so beyond wordy that I’m shocked that so many people got past this book to get to that juicy last chunk of the book. I will admit, even to myself, the beginning was a bit of a chore .

“Sure,” Orion said blithely, and I didn’t literally gnash my teeth because no one does, do they, but I felt as if I were gnashing my teeth. With no justification in the slightest.

I try harder than most-I rarely DNF a book-but I had to push. Look, I am one who really reallyyyy loves those smidgens of romance . One might say they are my driving force. But, when the romance isn’t necessarily…blossoming…I expect other things to keep me occupied. In book one, we got a lot of Orion, but it’s not like he was the star of the show-clearly we are in snarky Galadriel’s head forever and always and it’s an endless rant much like what goes on in my head 24/7 , thus why I love her so hard. I swear-the bitchiness is unparalleled. But we got…lots of action. There were so many things that happened with so many different people in so many different areas that it was just so alluring. So gripping. And that ’we’re not dating but are really dating’ storyline remains one of my newest favorite non tropes. In this one, I felt it was a lot of being in her head, and lots of hanging with her friends doing the same-ish things.

I don’t know that I’d have bent my neck the way she did, apologizing to me and even asking to be friends after I bit her head off. I’m not sorry for doing the biting, I had more than enough cause, but I still don’t know that I’d have had the grace. Oh, who am I lying to? My supply of grace wouldn’t overflow an acorn cap.

Now, okay, I was super sick for book one and lots of book two-I admit I completely scrapped this read when I got to about halfway and there was some serious feels that should have been felt that I most definitely didn’t feel and I knew I was checked out and couldn’t focus-I re read all the first half of the book when I began to feel better and I am SO GLAD I did. The second time around was so much more rewarding-but it still didn’t feel like we got a lot of what I wanted for much of the book.

I’m not some sort of pallid romantic who insists on being loved for my shining inner being. My inner being is exceptionally cranky and I often don’t want her company myself…

Well. Ha ha Novik says, because this book kicked it into overdrive and it never really stopped. The Last Graduate did not go in any direction I would have imagined it to go , and I can’t say I didn’t want things to perhaps follow the school vibes of A Deadly Education a little more similarly but, in the end, I loved how the path the author took showed the journey of El and how she really is a snarky, rude soul that could stand to be nicer to my poor Orion, but what her true self looked like on the inside-who she really was and how she really was deep down- she had more depth in character and personality than perhaps anyone there . It was a very peculiar journey…but I see why the author did it. There was no other way, really, to show just how much El had progressed and changed from the beginning of book one when she was just a miserable outcast who would have blasted pretty much anyone out of the way to secure her place at freedom during graduation to the self-sacrificing martyr anyone would be shocked to see today.

Mum would only warn me off something bad , not something painful . So obviously Orion was the most brilliant maleficer ever, concealing his vile plans by saving the lives of everyone over and over just so he could, I don’t know, kill them himself later on? Or maybe Mum was worried that he was so annoying that he’d drive me to become the most brilliant maleficer ever, which was probably more plausible, since that’s supposedly my own doom anyway.

Much of the book is spent with El and her allies, which was cute, but I’m all for when we began to mingle more as a larger group, more for when Orion got to come out of his shell and we got to actually see some more depth from him, as well. We knew El was deep-but this whole series we were told time and again all Orion knew was fighting mals and that he’d sooner set up a date mal hunting for mana than hanging with friends his age or even show interest in a girl.

“They’re freaked out over Orion.” “After you’ve only been dating two months?” Liu said. “We’re not dating!” Aadhya made a dramatic show of rolling her eyes heavenwards. “After you’ve been doing whatever you’re doing that is not dating but totally looks like dating to everyone else, for only two months.”

And that goes back to what my friend said when she told me I needed to read it: Orion has a hero complex, but it’s so much deeper than that -and, although I didn’t think we’d see it at all in this series seeing as how he is talked and alluded to- we finally got a glimpse into his tortured soul . YES. You heard me right- We have a bonafide tortured hero, here , and damn if I didn’t have to work for it, but I unearthed him and he has a permanent place in my heart . He was an adorable cinnamon roll, sure, but now he is…he’s just…he’s more . And I suppose that goes without saying, doesn’t it, as Novik doesn’t really write one-dimensional worlds or characters . But, I’ll admit, I thought she was going for intentionally flighty here, and I’m so so so glad she cracked open the shell that is Orion Lake and proved my assumption wrong (It only took two whole books but okay).

At least they had certainly stopped worrying about doing any killing of their own. Even Orion had got over being enraged and was just standing gawking at me—in an infuriatingly starry-eyed way, in his case, demonstrating his continuing total lack of judgment and sense.

El is a wonderfully diverse character who says it like it is-she’s selfish, she knows what she has to do to survive, and not much stands in her way as far as distractions go. But what happens when you make friends, find a guy you [won’t admit it but we all know it] would take a bullet (or a mal) for, and see that things just aren’t right, that you can do more . What then? We get to see what humanity means to El when she’s really backed into a corner, when she sees the school isn’t going to settle for one of the most powerful students in history just coasting through and graduating like a ’normal’ person. And that’s where we get to see the El we knew was hiding all along . She did a good job pretending she didn’t care, acting blasé at the most horrendous things…but in each rude remark, each turn of phrase, each knee to Orion’s groin , we saw through it (or at least I did) and, in the end, the school got to see the true El, too.

And yeah, hey, speaking of that before I go, she is just so mean to Orion. I love it, I always did, especially in book one, but wow my heart cringed for the poor guy. Dude’s obviously obsessed with her and she can’t help but glare and put him off at each and every turn-when, clearly, she is just as obsessed with him as he is her. Honestly, if I didn’t say it before (I did), her inner monologues about him were enough to power me through my day. The simple way she’d glare at him if he wanted to run off and hunt mals , how she lectured him to do his homework, how she would glare and coolly dismiss him with a British flair of iciness to make it clear he wasn’t getting to any base was the much needed dark humor that fanned the flames of their weird passionate non-relationship and, at the end of it all, it paid off so spectacularly that the wind was stolen right from my lungs, my knees taken out from underneath me, and the floor disappeared out of seemingly nowhere. That’s exactly what epic is, in case you were wondering.

…and then the bastard looked down at me with his entire heart crammed into his eyes and his face and said, barely a whisper, “Galadriel.”

All in all I did love book one more, just because I’m a book one kinda gal, mostly. They almost always speak to me in unsung ways that are unable to be fulfilled once my heart is full of those puppy love moments, the first dregs of death and destruction , the way the battlefield is set and the story could literally go anywhere from that moment. Second books rarely stand a chance with me , to be honest. But, I’ve found second books have a great little weapon in their arsenal: The end. Book one may be the strongest nine times out of ten, but the second book in a series generally packs a punch so agonizing that book three can’t come soon enough. Alas, that generally leads to a wimpy book three…but I’d like to think Novik is better than that, better than such mortal worries-but I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

Ohmighod I just…I can’t….I want…

Omifuckinggodthiswassogoodsofuckingepicccc

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Book Review : The Last Graduate

A budding dark sorceress determined not to use her formidable powers uncovers yet more secrets about the workings of her world in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education , the start of Naomi Novik’s groundbreaking crossover series. At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year—and the looming specter of graduation, a deadly ritual that leaves few students alive in its wake. El is determined that her chosen group will survive, but it is a prospect that is looking harder by the day as the savagery of the school ramps up. Until El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules . . .

The Last Graduate is the follow up to A Deadly Education . Both entries in the series so far follow Galadriel, known as “El,” and her attempts to survive schooling in a magical school known as the Scholomance. All young wizards are crammed in this competitive school in England to survive the many maleficarias or “mals,” who are attracted by the mana of young wizards and wish to feast on them. This year, El is a senior, and has to prepare for the most deadly part of her education yet—graduation. Though The Last Graduate has the same quirky and sarcastic narration by El, as well as the same setting, I found that The Last Graduate just didn’t work for me quite as well as its predecessor.

Instead of taking delight in El’s long-winded diatribes about magic, enclaves, maleficarias, or the Scholomance, I found I was incredibly tempted to skim a lot of these descriptions in my read through. Instead of being charming, I found these monologues tedious and incessant; El can literally find anything to dump information about and she certainly doesn’t do it concisely. And most of these things that she endlessly describes aren’t even that pertinent to the story at large or the situation at hand. I am a big highlighter when I read, but to my frustration, it was almost impossible to highlight a mere sentence or two with what I thought might be important later, because all of the sentences of The Last Graduate are incredibly long, usually looking like whole paragraphs. To my dismay, I often ended up with whole pages highlighted.

Now, I’m sure this is the exact same writing style as A Deadly Education, which I gave four stars . So why did it bother me so much in The Last Graduate? I think a big portion of my dislike of the writing style in The Last Graduate came down to the fact that the novelty of the world had worn off for me. I was already familiar with the Scholomance, the magical world, and the maleficaria. Plus, El now had friends and people to talk to, but was still going off on these crazy lectures to the reader about how enclave wars worked, or how food got to the cafeteria in the Scholomance, or why you shouldn’t use bean bag chairs in dorm rooms. And like I said, none of these explanations were short and many of them didn’t feel very important. Plus, not much was going on in The Last Graduate, as maleficarias aren’t attacking as much, and all of the students are focused on one thing and one thing only for the entirety of the novel: graduation.

“I don’t think anyone really knew what to do with themselves. We’ve all spent the best part of four years training as hard as we could to be inhumanely selfish in a way we could only possibly live with because all of us were going round in fear for our lives—if not in the next five minutes then on graduation day at the latest—and you could tell yourself everyone was doing the same and there wasn’t any other choice. The Scholomance had encouraged it if anything.”*

I think my other issue with The Last Graduate was that El was no longer an outcast. Instead, it became widely accepted in the entire school that El is the only way the students have any chance of making it out of graduation alive. I think I just personally related to El more when she was a loner or a loner with one or two friends. It was a lot to wrap my head around how quickly someone who was almost universally despised became the most desired alliance member in the entire school, with pretty small amounts of resistance. And El seemingly took on this new role with relative ease, deciding she will save every last student of the Scholomance. Her hero complex soon became even bigger than Orion Lake’s, who we learn is really just more about killing maleficarias than saving everyone.

“I’d been ready to go down to the graduation hall and fight for my life; I’d been ready to fight for the lives of everyone I knew, for the chance of a future. I didn’t need this much more to lose.”

Though El still got frustrated sometimes, there’s less sarcasm, outward disgust at weakness, and a lot less of the angry, snarky character I liked in the first novel. I also could not decide if it was in character or out of character for El to ignore her mother’s advice to stay away from Orion Lake. One part of me thought, “yeah, El doesn’t listen to anyone,” but also the other part of me considered that El has always been first and foremost concerned with survival and would never make these kinds of illogical decisions. El also worries frequently (and rightly so), what giving in to her feelings will cost her, and even tries not to be alone with Orion because she doesn’t trust herself not to act on her feelings for him. So when she finally gave in, it didn’t feel like she was making the right decision. I feel that if Orion and El hadn’t acted on their feelings until after graduation, it would have shown that they cared more about each other surviving and their lives together after graduation. Instead, any act of love felt cheap and convenient, with the excuse that they were afraid they were going to die. This was really frustrating to me, because notably El’s dad actually died, during graduation, after getting El’s mom pregnant. So I feel that El should have the brains not to repeat her mother’s mistakes.

“I came in here and I’ve survived in here being sensible all the time, trying to always do the cleverest thing I could manage, to see al the clear and sharp-edged dangers from every angle, so I could just barely squeeze past them without losing too much blood. I could never afford look past survival, especially not for anything as insanely expensive and useless as happiness, and I don’t believe in it anyways. I’m too good at being hard, I’ve got so good at it, and I wasn’t going to go soft all of a sudden now.”

But there’s not a lot of learning from example going on with El, which disappointed me. After deliberating, I came to the conclusion that it made some sense for a teenager, who thinks they may not make it alive out of graduation, to throw caution to the wind.. However, I lost a lot of respect for El in her developing relationship with Orion Lake, merely because she stopped thinking with her head and was acting with her heart. As a whole, El was a lot less “intimidating dark sorceress who could destroy the world” and more “typical teenager in love for the first time and making stupid decisions, who just happens to have a lot of magical power.”

Despite being less thrilled with El’s characterization and her relationship with Orion, I still really enjoyed her friendship with Liu and Aadyha. I also really liked that El was forced to get to know a lot of her classmates when working with them to survive graduation. My favorite character by far was the ruthless and abrasive Liesel, who seemed to fill the hole left behind El’s transformation into a possible and very willing martyr. I laughed out loud a lot when Liesel was barking orders, forging alliances, teaching El the proper way to compliment someone in order to forge said alliance, and so on. I hope that this is not the last time I see this character, or someone like her, because she was such a riot.

Less of a riot for me was the shocking cliffhanger ending of The Last Graduate. I even tried to turn the page for more, because I didn’t think The Last Graduate could possibly end on such an abrupt, surprising note. I haven’t definitively decided how I feel about the cliffhanger yet: I’m somewhere between respect to the author, Naomi Novik, for having the guts to end her novel so recklessly and frustration that The Last Graduate ended where and how it did. I can’t believe I have to wait however long until the next novel comes out in the series to find out what happens. This ending cut off The Last Graduate before I could find out what I most want to know from the series, such as, but not limited to these following questions:

Will El really destroy all of the enclaves? And will it be with dark magic, or the fact that she’s magically united everyone by her actions in The Last Graduate?

Will El see her friends again?

Will El’s mom ever approve of Orion?

Is there a better way to keep young wizards safe?

What will El do outside of the Scholomance?

What really happened to the Bangkok Enclave?

Does Precious really have any powers?

I can only hope that a follow up to The Last Graduate will answer these questions and the many others that I have that aren’t spoiler free. Even though the ending was incredibly unexpected and jarring, I think it did increase my interest in reading the next novel, as I found I was woefully indifferent to or undecided on a lot of the events that happened in The Last Graduate. I just hope that it is unlike the ending to A Deadly Education, which felt like a pretty big tease due to the fact that that novel left off at El receiving her mother’s warning to stay away from Orion Lake, only for him to not cause any trouble for most, or all of The Last Graduate (depending on how you view it).

I also could not help but to feel that there wasn’t a whole lot of substance to this novel in other regards as well, as all the characters constantly were focused on preparing for graduation. Though this made sense with what was at stake, it sadly meant that most of The Last Graduate felt solely like filler or mere build up for the next entry in the Scholomance series. And the cliffhanger didn’t help with those feelings, as the novel cut off literally seconds before the next part of El’s journey could begin. However, i f you enjoyed A Deadly Education, you will most likely get a kick out of this next chapter in El’s story, even if a lot of the new series shine has worn off in this sequel.

*All quotes subject to change at publication.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the last graduate.

About the Book

The specter of graduation looms large as Naomi Novik’s groundbreaking New York Times bestselling trilogy continues in the stunning sequel to A DEADLY EDUCATION.

In Wisdom, Shelter. That’s the official motto of the Scholomance. I suppose you could even argue that it’s true --- only the wisdom is hard to come by, so the shelter’s rather scant.

Our beloved school does its best to devour all its students --- but now that I’ve reached my senior year and have actually won myself a handful of allies, it’s suddenly developed a very particular craving for me. And even if I somehow make it through the endless waves of maleficaria that it keeps throwing at me in between grueling homework assignments, I haven’t any idea how my allies and I are going to make it through the graduation hall alive.

Unless, of course, I finally accept my foretold destiny of dark sorcery and destruction. That would certainly let me sail straight out of here. The course of wisdom, surely.

But I’m not giving in --- not to the mals, not to fate and especially not to the Scholomance. I’m going to get myself and my friends out of this hideous place for good --- even if it’s the last thing I do.

With keen insight and mordant humor, Novik reminds us that sometimes it is not enough to rewrite the rules --- sometimes, you need to toss out the entire rulebook.

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Publication Date: June 28, 2022
Genres: Fantasy , Fiction
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN-10: 0593128885
ISBN-13: 9780593128886

Literature & Fiction
Genre Fiction

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The Last Graduate: A Novel (The Scholomance)

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The Last Graduate: A Novel (The Scholomance) Hardcover – September 28, 2021

Purchase options and add-ons.

Book 2 of 3 The Scholomance
Print length 400 pages
Language English
Publisher Del Rey
Publication date September 28, 2021
Dimensions 5.8 x 1.4 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10 0593128869
ISBN-13 978-0593128862
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Praise for The Last Graduate;naomi novik;a deadly education;scholomance;ya fantasy books;magic

Editorial Reviews

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey (September 28, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593128869
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593128862
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.8 x 1.4 x 8.5 inches
#1,539 in Coming of Age Fantasy (Books)
#5,559 in Epic Fantasy (Books)
#5,739 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy (Books)

About the author

Naomi novik.

An avid reader of fantasy literature since age six, Naomi Novik is also a history buff with a particular fascination with the Napoleonic era and a fondness for the work of Patrick O'Brian and Jane Austen. She lives with her husband and daughter in New York City along with many purring computers.

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The Bibliophile Chronicles

Book review: the last graduate – naomi novik.

A budding dark sorceress determined not to use her formidable powers uncovers yet more secrets about the workings of her world in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education , the start of Naomi Novik’s groundbreaking crossover series.

At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year–and the looming specter of graduation, a deadly ritual that leaves few students alive in its wake. El is determined that her chosen group will survive, but it is a prospect that is looking harder by the day as the savagery of the school ramps up. Until El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules . .

Book one ended on a massive cliffhanger and The Last Graduate picks up right where A Deadly Education finished. The reader is immediately transported back into the world of the Scholomance and I was immediately hooked. The story did feel a bit slower-paced than the previous installment but I was completely engaged with seeing El and the other students work to figure out how they will survive graduation. I really enjoyed Novik’s writing style and it was so easy to get completely wrapped up in the story for hours at a time.

JOINT REVIEW: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Jennie: Janine, Sirius, and I reviewed the first book in the Scholomance series (originally slated as two books; now a trilogy). Sirius gave it a C- and said she wouldn’t be reading this sequel, but Janine and I, though we had some reservations, ended up liking A Deadly Education quite a bit – I gave it an A- and Janine a B+. I was really quite excited to pick this book up and even more excited to review it with Janine.

Jennie: The Last Graduate begins with the same scene that A Deadly Education ended with. Our heroine, El, has survived the group attempt to fix the machine that cleanses the graduation hall, giving the year’s seniors a fighting chance at survival. She’s in the cafeteria for the induction of freshmen students, when one unexpectedly gives her a letter from her mother. El had not expected anything because her mother isn’t wealthy or connected, and bringing in letters for students at the Scholomance is a big deal since it reduces the weight allowance that freshmen have; they need every ounce to hope to survive the coming four years.

Anyway, the short letter ends with an ominous declaration: “Keep far away from Orion Lake.” Orion is El’s maybe-sort-of-almost boyfriend, who she spent the year of A Deadly Education getting to know (not without some setbacks; El’s default is sarcastic insults and Orion’s is wide-eyed cluelessness).

El doesn’t know what to make of her mother’s warning, but like any teenage girl being warned off of a teenage boy, she doesn’t like it.

Janine: I really liked the way El came to the decision that she would disregard her mother’s warning. Orion was the first person in the school to like and befriend her, and warning or no warning, she wasn’t going to turn her back on that. I came up with more than one theory for what was behind the warning, but when the reason was finally revealed, it was surprising, not anything I guessed at, and yet it felt inevitable, too. That was masterfully done.

Jennie: The next day, the first of the school term, there’s more not to like (El’s personality and the nature of the Scholomance often conspire to bring about less-than-ideal circumstances). El finds herself assigned to an isolated classroom with a pack of freshmen.

Janine: Another thing I really liked was El’s interactions with the students she starts thinking of as her freshmen. At first, she’s determined not to watch out for them—she reasons that if they don’t learn to do that for themselves, they won’t last a day—and then she ends up playing the white knight after all, but she’s grouchy over it. That was so loveable and so El. She personifies the reluctant hero.

Jennie: Agreed – she’s lovable and also fascinating because we know she has this capacity for darkness but she’s also a better person than many of her classmates (to be fair, the nature of their world and the Scholomance seems to toughen up the young wizards early on).

Later, El realizes that the mal attacks she must fend off in class are pretty much the *only* mal attacks in the school, which is unutterably bizarre and inexplicable. It is also frustrating to Orion, who is almost manic in his mal-fighting inclinations, and who draws mana – essentially, wizard energy – from killing mals.

Janine: El, Aahdya, and Liu conclude that the school is intent on pushing El into the malificer “track” to gain mana from the students she’ll kill (the school needs mana to run on). To get the mana to combat the mals the school sends El’s way, they invite New York enclaver Chloe Rasmussen to join their alliance.

Jennie: The plot of The Last Graduate felt a bit episodic to me, and not entirely cohesive, which makes a summary difficult (for me anyway). El is dealing with several problems, some of which are more life-threatening than others (most are at least a little life-threatening).

The New York Enclave continues to want El to join them, especially as it becomes clear to the entire school that El’s not just some random weirdo but a seriously powerful wizard. El has no intention of joining a powerful enclave, but that’s something she’s still coming to terms with after thinking for years that joining a powerful enclave was *all* she wanted.

Word comes from the outside (via the one survivor) that the Bangkok enclave has been wiped out.

Janine: I loved the minor but crucial thread about Sudarat, the surviving freshman. It was poignant. I got teary in one scene.

Jennie: The destruction of an entire enclave is an unusual occurrence – the whole point of enclaves is that they provide safety. Various factions inside the school begin to worry that a Wizard War may be going on in the outside world. This in turn leads to some of those factions thinking it would be better to take El out rather than let her join New York. So now El has humans that want to kill her along with the mals.

El herself is coming into her own understanding of what graduation means, what her plan is for surviving and helping her alliance survive, and how far she is willing to go to defeat the Scholomance once and for all.

Then there’s El’s relationship with Orion, which felt like it got short shrift early in the book, but took center stage later in the story. I missed him early on; I know The Last Graduate isn’t a romance but I really like Orion as a character (even if I occasionally share El’s exasperation with his quirks).

Janine: I missed Orion and El’s friends-to-sweethearts relationship in the first half too (it was magical in A Deadly Education ), but there were some lovely shifts in their relationship later on in this book, and huge payoff for the romantic drought near its climax, both in the lull before the storm and in the very last scene, which…wow! I felt we were offered a deeper and closer look at Orion, too. I’ve always felt affection for him but by the end of this book he had developed into a fully-fledged (albeit quirky) romantic figure.

Jennie: The lack of focus on El/Orion early on did give some of El’s other relationships further room to develop. I particularly like the growth of Chloe, the New York enclaver who went from enemy to sort-of-frenemy to actual friend to El in the first book.

Janine: Eh. Not a Chloe fan here. She does her best but how privileged she is relative to El and El’s other friends still bugs me. If my theories about book three are correct, though, Chloe may play a crucial role there, so I can see why it was necessary.

Jennie: Also, El gets a familiar, a little mouse named Precious (the name is comically/ironically cutesy given that El is so…not the type to have a cutesily-named pet).

One thing that has confused me about the Scholomance is how often it seems to conspire in large and small ways to make the students’ lives even harder than they would otherwise be. Some of it is explained by the idea that a certain amount of sacrifice (in the form of students) is needed to protect the other students, specifically the Enclavers whose ancestors are responsible for creating the Scholomance. But sometimes it seems like the school is just sadistic for no real purpose – for instance, the food in the vending machines is generally very dodgy and borderline inedible. Another example is evidenced several times over the two books and described thusly:

Distances in the Scholomance are extremely flexible. They can be long, agonizingly long, or approaching the infinite, depending largely on how much you’d like them to be otherwise.

I suppose that could be another way the Scholomance puts certain kids at a disadvantage deliberately with the intention of generating fresh blood (literally). Or maybe it has something to do with the nature of the magic in this world, where it seems like intentions can have an effect on results, both good and bad. But often it comes off as capricious, and I wish I understood it better.

Janine: I read this very differently but I can see how it would be confusing.

Spoiler : Show

Jennie: The Last Graduate can be seen as a classic bridge book between the opener and closer of a trilogy – it advances the plot and characters (and El’s character really does come into her own in a lot of ways) and sets up the finale (with another – even bigger! – cliffhanger than the first book delivered). As such, middle books can be the red-headed stepchildren of trilogies – no one’s favorite.

I actually did like this quite a bit. Still, there’s a lingering sense of…dissatisfaction is too strong a word. What it comes down to is that I love the characters and the writing but I was slightly tepid on the plot.

Janine: Same here.

Jennie: A sequence in which El leads other seniors on a mock obstacle course (which can, of course, still kill them) set up in the gym and meant to prepare them for graduation felt like it took up a *lot* of the book. It wasn’t boring, but I felt like it could have been shorter.

Janine: I have noticed that in a few of Novik’s books (most notably in Uprooted )—she can draw out her action sections too long. The nature of the obstacle course kept that from being too bad here, though. I actually geeked out on the cool visuals of the gym, and some of the training action (especially early on) was exciting.

Jennie: The book felt like it was divided mostly between “action” and “El figuring things out” and I think maybe it needed a little more of her interacting with other characters. I don’t know.

Janine: Yes, I agree with that. I ended up having three major issues.

The episodic nature of the plot, which you mentioned earlier, was my first issue. I’m much more likely to be riveted when there’s a powerful central thread that pulls me the whole way through.

Another issue I had was the expansion in scale. A Deadly Education was a personal story; it focused on El and a few others, on how she changes from outcast to embraced friend. Here the stage is wider; this book is largely about how El’s relationship with the entire school. That’s interesting, but for me, a story thread that is about the character’s heart is even more satisfying than one about a situation (however interesting a situation) that affects them and everyone around them. Not every reader feels that way, of course.

As an aside, it’s an easy prediction to make that book three will have an even larger scale—the entire world of wizards and witches—and I think it will have epic personal stakes too. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that somewhere in there the prophecy that’s been foreshadowed will have to be reckoned with. Because of that, and because of how The Last Graduate ends, I agree 100% that The Last Graduate is a bridge book.

Jennie: I’ll admit, I am excited to get out into the larger wizard world.

Janine: Me too. I think it’ll be amazing.

My third reason for liking this one less than A Deadly Education (although I did like it a lot) is that A Deadly Education is a feel-good story that ends on a euphoric note and this one isn’t.

Caveats aside, this book had a ton going for it. It’s hard to talk about most of that without spoiling the book, but I loved El’s relationship with her homeroom of freshmen, El’s dreams for a future involving a spell from her golden stone sutras, little Sudarat, the unsettled question of where Orion would go after graduation and the way El handled that, a couple of awesome artifices, the shifts in El and Orion’s relationship and the terrific development of Orion’s character. There were lovely smaller scenes, too, such as one in the cafeteria involving an injured student.

I’m giving this a B+. Jennie, what’s your grade?

Jennie: I *loved* both the cafeteria scene with the injured student and El’s dream about what she wants to do when she graduates.

It’s another A- for me, maybe a bit below the A- I gave A Deadly Education . I am so excited for the final book, though.

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has been an avid if often frustrated romance reader for the past 15 years. In that time she's read a lot of good romances, a few great ones, and, unfortunately, a whole lot of dreck. Many of her favorite authors (Ivory, Kinsale, Gaffney, Williamson, Ibbotson) have moved onto other genres or produce new books only rarely, so she's had to expand her horizons a bit. Newer authors she enjoys include Julie Ann Long, Megan Hart and J.R. Ward, and she eagerly anticipates each new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Strong prose and characterization go a long way with her, though if they are combined with an unusual plot or setting, all the better. When she's not reading romance she can usually be found reading historical non-fiction.

Oooh, I really liked the first one despite a few large issues I had with it but I am still unsure if I want to read this right away or wait for the third book to come out so I don’t have to deal with cliffhangers, lol.

I might wait since the cliffhanger in thr first one did end on a hopeful note which doesn’t seem to be the case with this book which will make it even harder, lol

One thing that irked me in the first book was how the racial aspect was handled. Despite the cohorts being from all around the world they felt very generic or surface level stereotypical and sometimes offensive.

Does that get fixed at all or does it still have that overtone of locs=dirty (which i know wasn’ther intent but is how it came across) or this culture only comes into play for the language aspect without actually adding anything to the story?

I’ll be back for the review once I’ve read the book. Delighted to see you recommend it.

@ J : Since it’s relevant to your decision-making, this cliffhanger has huge ramifications for book three.

I believe the locs issue was fixed. Novik also posted an unqualified apology on her site–the classiest one I’ve seen an author give:

https://www.naominovik.com/apology/

@ Darlynne : I can’t wait to hear what you think!

@ Darlynne : I’ll look forward to your take!

@ J : Oh, sorry, I missed the second part of the question. It’s been a while since I read the book but I don’t think there’s much more sense of the different cultures than in the first book. Novik is careful to make El sound more British than the Americans–that was true of the first book too, though–and there is one very brief scene where Jacob, a Jewish boy, takes out and pulls on a prayer shawl to say a prayer.

But the latter didn’t make sense to me because he’s from a kibbutz and being kibbutz-born myself I can tell you that I have never met a kibbutznik devout enough to do such a thing. The kibbutzim were all founded by socialist atheists and shared some characteristics with communes. A lot of children and grandchildren of that generation still live there and I don’t think so much has changed on the religious front. At least that was the case when I was last on a kibbutz, thirteen years ago. Novik is Jewish, too.

I guess what I would say is this: the book isn’t, as far as I can tell, offensive like its prequel (there’s definitely nothing as glaring as the locs=dirty thing). But it’s also not a place to go looking for insight into other cultures or a deep understanding of their traditions. For that, you’d have to read Spinning Silver .

I really enjoyed it too. (I’ve also reread the first several times.) I did feel Orion was missing in action for a good deal of the book, and I’m not sure that I’ve got a handle on him yet. (My daughter who is about half the way through is convinced he will turn out to be evil, which I half hope is true.) But I enjoyed the widening out of the story – I’m still half-reading it as a climate change book – and while I normally hate cliff hangers, this one worked for me. There’s something about the book covering the school year – my brain is happy to accept that there’s more to come that doesn’t belong in that year’s story. (Be fascinated to know your theory: I haven’t got one yet though I’ve high hopes my daughter will have one – she’s dyslexic, so reads very slowly, and catches lots of things I miss. She remarked, a quarter of the way in, that the school is like another character in the story.)

@ MMcA : Glad you enjoyed it as well! I really don’t think Orion is evil (there’s been no hint or foreshadowing of that IMO) but given that the theory I came up with last year (you may have to click on the links twice) was totally wrong, take this next one with a lot of salt:

Buried Comment: Show

Somewhere in here is where the conflict with the enclaves will come in. My husband thinks Orion’s parents and the rest of New York will probably think El used Orion and then left him to die and so they as well as the their allies will attack her. I think maybe or maybe not. I think it’s more likely that El will want to go into the void to save him and try to force the enclaves to help her and everyone will think she’s a psycho and try to kill her for that. I don’t know if she’ll turn into a bringer of death here or later on but if she does it will be in self-defense.

For whatever reason, New York will eventually come around to trying El’s plan (remember Orion’s mother runs New York and she’ll of course want him saved if there is any chance that it can be done) and that’s where I think Chloe will come in. She’ll help convince them that El isn’t evil.

The main reason I got so depressed after finishing the book was that I didn’t see a way for Orion to survive even if he won his battle with Patience. The school was not only going into the void but breaking up into pieces. And even if he survived, how could he be found? it’s not like people can be found in a place that others can’t go into. Even if those who go into the void return within seconds their sanity and their old personality are gone, and that would apply to Orion too.

And so I didn’t see a way for El to save him and with that, no possible happiness for El. She loves him so much, his last act was so noble, and he sacrificed himself for her just as her dead father did, and in the same way . She’s lived with the heartbreaking consequences of that all her life and seen how much her mother has suffered as a result since the day she was born. And Orion saved her multiple times even before that, saved innumerable students, and was the first friend she ever had and that meant more to her than anything. I couldn’t imagine an ending that wasn’t bleak.

But then I came up with a theory for how he might survive in the void and how she might find him and get him out: it occurred to me that mals can survive there. So, what if Patience did get Orion and he’s inside her? He’s got the spell for the London shield (El probably insisted he learn it) and a ton of mana from all the mals he just killed so he can hold it for a while (at least until he starves). We know they can set a honeytrap that attracts Patience and we know El can kill maw-mouths (not one the size of Patience but she can learn). And we know El’s mother can do healing spells better than anyone else’s. The real challenges will be getting out of the maw-mouth without killing everything and everyone inside it and also how to build another structure inside the void in a race against the clock.

This theory saved the ending for me but I don’t know where the war between the enclaves comes in. I think either there isn’t one or El will interrupt it. And of course all of this is only a theory.

And now I want to hear your thoughts on all this and your theories, from as many of you as want to share them. I’ve been dying to discuss this with other people. You can hide your spoilers by using our shush tags. It looks like this, minus the spaces inside the square brackets:

[ shush ]Write your spoiler in here[ /shush ]

@ J : Definitely still has the weird racist overtones. It doesn’t seem like that’s her intent, but she handles it poorly in the telling. There’s constant mention of ethnicity accompanied by a sprinkle of racial stereotyping. It’s distracting tbh.

Spoiler warning in case I mess up the tags.

@ Gale : I guess I see the decision to split the enclaves along national lines as a practical one that makes sense in the context of the story-telling. The mentions of ethnicity are a natural outgrowth of that.

There were times that it made me uncomfortable but I think, for me at least, it’s just a sensitivity or even oversensitivity to the idea of splitting people up along racial, ethnic or nationalistic lines.

I’m not sure what you saw as racial stereotyping but for me, again, there was maybe a little discomfort at the Chinese enclavers trying to kill El. But ultimately I didn’t think that there was anything negative in the portrayal of those enclavers – if anything, El herself seemed to understand the motivations of those who felt like they had to take her out.

@ MMcA : No worries, I fixed it. The only thing to do differently is to delete the spaces inside the brackets.

I agree that the theme of book three will be “What if the community doesn’t cooperate?” Although I see it through a lens of the social inequality issue rather than as a parable for climate change, it works either way. But that can play out through any number of plots; for example the enclaves could turn on El because they don’t like that she saved the kids and jettisoned the school; it takes a lot of the social power that keeps them at the top away from them. It’s not even incompatible with my theory; they can attack El early on, before she comes up with a way to rescue Orion, or they can attack El, Orion, and their allies just after Orion is rescued from the void. I think this could be part of how the prophecy will be fulfilled or come close to being fulfilled, too, and I agree the ending of the series will be optimistic.

I have heard a theory similar to your daughter’s on Goodreads, but I see Orion very differently. I also had a theory that Orion was created by malificers after reading book one. It seems less likely to me after book two, though still possible. But whether he was or he wasn’t, I still think he’s a person with a lot of decency. His anguish over Louisa’s death and his failure to save her read as genuine to me and I also think El has been portrayed as a good judge of character. It doesn’t seem in keeping with her portrayal for him to pull the wool over her eyes so thoroughly.

My theory on Orion’s obsession with killing mals is that, just as El says late in the book, he loves it because he’s so good at it and because it puts him in the zone. Many people are obsessed with the skills and abilities that are their strongest and get unbelievable satisfaction from performing them.

Because I am a writer, I think about stories from a writerly perspective. I think that Novik made Orion such a questionable misfit because El is a questionable misfit; it’s the key to their attraction and their chemistry. When Orion says, “Come on, El, you know that’s not true. There are normal people and we’re not. I’m not,” he’s talking about the core of the bond between them. The reason he befriended her to begin with despite her aura was because that made him feel less abnormal and because she didn’t treat him like a hero; the reason she didn’t see him as a hero because she was his equal, and as her aura made her an oddball too, his weirdness doesn’t kill her attraction to him.

Further, I think it makes no sense for him to be evil because as you said, the books are generally optimistic. Even this one had some truly triumphant moments. For the boy she loves and trusts so much to turn out to be evil isn’t optimistic, particularly if it forces her to kill him or if she’s pregnant.

With regard to her mother’s warning, one of the things I found most interesting is not just that Gwen warned El, but that Aaron from Manchester’s parents agreed to take out some of their son’s weight allowance to fit the letter with the warning in, even though El’s mum didn’t give them anything and only talked to them. Why? It can’t be just about El’s well-being or even saving her life; Aaron’s parents would surely much rather see their own son survive than El or even Orion.

So the reason has to be greater than that, and I think the reason is the survival of all the enclaves and of wizard society. I think that Gwen either foresaw or talked to a seer who foresaw that El’s love for Orion would set her on a course to the dark side, and I think it is the emotional effect of Orion’s seeming death on El that will cause that. For this reason I don’t think the sex scene was necessarily there for El to get pregnant; it could also have been there as one of the reasons Orion’s death will push her over the edge.

That’s a great idea about the Golden Stone Sutras. I didn’t think of that before but I think you’re right that the spellbook will play a part in El’s rescue of Orion. Maybe (if my theory is correct) it will enable El to construct a new structure within the void that will serve as a place to set the honeypot and entrap Patience? Or even to build a kind of ship that can sail through the void in search of him, although that seems less likely to me.

@ Jennie : You’ve reminded me that the confrontation between El and the kids from China bothered me a bit too.

I was disappointed to find out that the book has a sequel coming. This ending felt too perfect (even if it is definitely a downer.)

But in addition, books 1 and 2 are totally self-enclosed. They take place in the same place, with the same general stakes. We know very little about the wider world, and the scope will have expanded dramatically.

Yes, there should absolutely be more books in this universe. Recontectualized legends from the past. People dealing with the fallout from the future. But El shouldn’t be the central protagonist. She has achieved her goals and become one of the most powerful people alive. Let someone smaller walk in that shadow.

@ Necarion : You make an excellent point. However, if that was where El’s story ended it would make such a markedly different change in tone from the A Deadly Education , given El’s character arc in that book and its upbeat, heartwarming ending, so as to feel too disjointed from it and the contrast between the two books would be too jarring. Also, I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to hide the spoilers in your comment!

I’ve read both books multiple times by now. At first I viewed El as a sort of incarnation of Kali, especially after she took out the maw mouth in book 1, and I’m still left with that impression after the final scene of book 2. As to what this might mean, I’m unsure, my knowledge of that mythology is scant, beyond the idea of the cyclical nature of reality, which may be part of the reason the story is structured as it is.

SPOILERS . . . . . . . . . . .

I do wonder what it means for the story arc that someone prophesied to destroy the enclaves acquires the original spells for enclave construction. One possibility is that there’s a link between creating an enclave and creating mals that has been obscured or forgotten since the sutras were lost. El hasn’t finished the sutras by the end of book two, so perhaps she’ll discover something that motivates her to destroy enclaves.

Also, recalling that Gwen’s mother was done in by a malificer who had probably also killed her father, I’m wondering if the Higgins women aren’t under a curse vis-a-vis their men-folk. So I’m onboard with the idea that El is pregnant. And also, reluctantly, with the idea that she’ll at least consider killing Orion. Novik uses a lot of foreshadowing in these books, and the first sentence of book 1 points strongly in that direction, (again, cycles).

I suspect the gates may play an important role in book 3, El stops her incantation just short of its last syllable, so even if the rest of the Scholomance crumbles into the void, the gates might survive. Who knows what could stroll through? Orion? Patience? Cthulhu? After all, the gates are intended to keep mals out, not in.

This also leads me to wonder what is waiting for El at her induction point, or if she even gets there. The enclaves have had a year to consider the role she and Orion played in repairing the mortal flame generators, especially the fact that El turned Carlita’s defensive spell into a weapon against the giant sucker worm. Maybe she gets hijacked before she can return to her mum, or maybe she’s greeted by some heavy hitters from London who are holding Gwen hostage. Assuming the majority of the previous year’s seniors made it through, which I think is a safe bet; the enclaves surely know something’s up.

And how will the enclaves react to the destruction of the Scholomance? From El’s perspective control of the school was the primary bone of contention between New York/London and Shanghai. Once it’s gone, what will they do? Have they already embarked on a war because of Bangkok? If not will they find something else to squabble over? Probably.

Finally, I see a lot of darkly humorous inversions in this tale: El and Orion making love while hissing amphisbaenas rain down to their deaths. Patience and Fortitude, named for the lions guarding the New York City library. And finally El herself. standing like Lady Liberty, glowing like a lamp beside the gates that will disperse the graduates to freedom rather than concentrating them in hell.

@ Erasmus :

POSSIBLE SPOILERS . . . . . . . . . . .

Neat theories. I really like the idea that Clarita from the previous year’s class has told at least her own enclave about El’s power and now they know about her on the outside world. Clarita is one of my favorite secondary characters in the series—I loved how she cared enough about El and Orion to try to help them survive at the end of book one, after all the griping she had done about them before that.

Re El killing Orion—but why? What could he do that would require it, unless some spell turned him evil? We’ve seen no evidence that such a spell exists and I don’t think Novik would introduce a new element as major as that as late as book three.

I agree with you about the cyclic nature of the books and so I also expect some of the things from the first two books to recur in book three. Here are my thoughts on that.

There will of course be mals involved in the story and that probably means that El will have to contend with Patience because that’s the greatest and most terrifying mal. The prophecy will of course loom over El’s choices and actions and there will be some kind of conflict between El and the enclaves, at least some of which will be over something El does or did to create a more level playing field. Gwen will be around so there will be healing spells and the contrast between mother and daughter, as well as their loving relationship. El will probably persuade people to cooperate and collaborate even though they will start out reluctant. There will be an amazing challenge/feat for El to overcome with the help and support of her allies. The Golden Stone Sutras will have an important role to play. There will be snarky narration. And from having read some of Novik’s other books, I predict a relatively happy and possibly even romantic ending.

I have also been thinking about the prophecy in a new light, and that is considering the possibility that as in many, many fantasy novels and in some myths, the wording of a prophecy is misleading. I went back and reread the mirror’s prophecy (“Hail, Galadriel, bringer of death! You shall sow wrath and reap destruction, cast down enclaves and level the sheltering walls, cast children from their homes and—”) and I spotted a couple of places where I think the phrasing may be misleading.

“You shall sow wrath and reap destruction” sounds at first like El will destroy people or property but if you stop to think about it that isn’t what it means. “Reap destruction” means she or her home or her community will be destroyed. As in “you reap what you sow.” Had the mirror said “You will sow destruction and reap wrath,” that would be a perfect fit for the scenarios we’ve all been imagining—she’d destroy the enclaves or at least their status and they of course would be furious. But what the mirror says is the exact opposite—El will infuriate them and they’ll respond by destroying her or someone/something of hers.

Then there’s “cast down enclaves and level the sheltering walls.” Since I read this the first time I’ve wondered if there’s some trick here, else why wouldn’t it say “level their sheltering walls”? I re-examined this notion recently, thinking “Hmm, what other sheltering walls could she level/have leveled?” And of course we now have an answer to that.

After having these thoughts, I reread the prophecy made by El’s great-grandmother when El was a child, that El “was a burdened soul and would bring death and destruction to all the enclaves in the world if I wasn’t stopped.” At first I thought that was a lot less ambiguous but “wasn’t stopped” doesn’t have to mean stopped via being killed. It could also that she uses her earthshaking powers to threaten to kill and destroy them if they don’t cooperate with her on her goal (whatever that may be) and that she’s upset enough to mean it. And so they stop her by reluctantly agreeing to go along with her plan and eventually collaborating with her. That’s happened in the first two books so it would also be cyclical.

(Don’t get me wrong, I still think there will be a huge conflict over the enclaves’ unfair power advantages and that by the end of the third book the playing field will be more level than it was.)

Do you (any of you) have any thoughts and ideas on whether the prophecy is likely to be misleading and if so, how?

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS . . . . . . . . . . .I’m inclined to discount the mirror’s prophecy for the reason that Aadhya explained to El in book one; using the crush-a-pit-full-of-victims spell to smooth the silver pour was in effect imposing her will on the materials rather than coaxing them into cooperating. So I think the mirror’s wording is probably a reflection of El’s own self-doubt and dread rather than a ‘true’ prophecy.

More telling, I think, are the Tarot cards that fall into El’s lap while she plays canasta with Liesel: Death (signifying change); The Tower (signifying chaos and destruction (and possibly the fate of the Scholomance itself)); The Eight of Swords (signifying self-imposed limitations). This seems to be the crux of her character arc. El is an intelligent, extremely moral person, always trying to see the other’s point of view to an extent that could get her killed. She could have ripped Jack’s power to save herself after he knifed her, but she wouldn’t stoop to his level. She could have blasted the Shanghai group during the Field Day attack, but Yuyan had actually been polite to her once, and that was enough to send her down the path of ‘yeah, I understand why they want to kill me’. But having that kind of empathy also implies a strong degree of self-loathing that she must overcome.

As to her great-grandmother’s prophecy, since we aren’t given the exact wording I’m not sure how much can be read into it, but I think there are at least two ways ‘a burdened soul’ could be interpreted. First, because of her conflicted relationship with her self-image, which seems to have stemmed from Gwen’s parenting techniques and strict mana path, the burden could be her mother’s love which might in fact be smothering.

Second, and here I think someone else has commented on the peculiar nature of Orion’s abilities and how he might not be ‘normal’, what about the maw mouth that latched onto Gwen when she graduated? She bears the scars, and El was fascinated with them as a child. But why exactly can’t a wizard escape the grasp of a maw mouth on their own? Is there some kind of venom injected? Or is there an infectious magic that subdues their victims? I’ve long suspected that something infested El in her mother’s womb, and that was the source of her rage and the burden on her soul. And also the reason for Gwen’s ‘attachment parenting’ as an effort to save her. So far as we readers know there are only two people freed from a maw mouth’s grasp, Gwen and Tomas from Argentina, who El rescues at the gates. Perhaps one of them, (probably Gwen) will provide some insight into this in book 3.

Or maybe my speculations are nonsense and El is simply a smart girl who looks around at the world her elders have created and thinks ‘what rubish!’ Just like the rest of us.

@ Erasmus : I agree re. discounting the prophecies obviously, but what I mean is this: in light of the fact that prophecies in fantasy fiction are often worded in such a way that they mislead the reader *and* the character they concern, in an intentional bit of misdirection by the author, what do you think of the specific phrasing of these prophecies? Do you discount the idea that Novik is trying to mislead us with her phrasing (I’m referring not only to what the prophecy–on the face of it– says, but also the way the sentences are structured, the order in which the words are strung together), or do you think it’s more likely that she is? And if it’s the latter, in what way?

Nice analysis of the tarot cards, I love it! That it was a pinpointing of El’s personality characteristics never occurred to me, but you’re so right.

“Burdened soul” could mean almost anything, IMO. My interpretation is that El is burdened by a lot of angst and cynicism because of the way she’s been rebuffed all her life. So another piece of her personality, formed not by the effect on the maw-mouth on her but by painful experience.

Well, let’s unpack the mirror’s prophecy in light of what we know by the end of book 2 and test it. “Hail Galadriel, bringer of death!” It doesn’t specify whose death. But at that point in the story all we know about El is that she’s very unpopular, assumes that’s because there’s something wrong with her (like a lot of teenagers), and that she’ll wind up going to the dark side. Something she struggles very hard to prevent. But by the end of book 2 she’s killed a shed load of mals. So that part was actually true. “You shall sow wrath and reap destruction,”. She certainly makes a lot of people angry (and frightened), especially the Shanghai enclavers who take a run at her twice in book two, not to mention Magnus who tries twice to harm her in book 1. As for reaping destruction, the ending of book 2 pretty much covers that. So the first two clauses have proven correct. “cast down enclaves and level the sheltering walls,” It could be argued that this too has already happened by the end of book 2, at least metaphorically in that by insisting that everybody graduates, she’s leveled the field and cast the enclavers down from their positions of privilege. But I’m not so sure, given the many possible meanings of ‘cast’, which include ‘deposit’ and ‘bring forth’ (as in premature birth). So it could actually refer to her plans for the future, though I’m not sure how “level the sheltering walls” might work into that, unless for some reason enclaves become unnecessary as a result of her actions. (Like, maybe magic goes away. No magic equals no mals, end of story. Literally.). “cast children from their homes and–” Again it could be argued that this has already happened because the whole student body graduates. But I’m not sure of that either. So, is Novik playing the readers as well as the character? I think yes, and rather handily. As to her ‘burdened soul’, I’m not quite ready to accept that as simply her angst and cynicism because of the following passage about Cora, “…but it was more than that: she was aces at spirit magic, her family had a really long tradition of it, and she had clearly thought–and probably still did–that I was carrying some kind of unpleasant baggage on mine.” We’re frequently reminded that there’s something disturbing about El’s presence, i.e. Aadhya telling her that ‘she feels like it’s going to rain’ in book 1, and not only to wizards but mundanes as well. And this brings me back to the maw mouth as a possible source of malaise rather than El’s own interpretation of it being the result of the principle of balance, ‘Everybody loves Mum, so it’s only right that they should hate me.’. What a hellish burden to foist onto a child, if that’s really how magic works the world would be better off without it. But that’s the thing about this magic system, it’s so dependent on expectations and beliefs that perhaps it isn’t a ‘system’ at all, maybe it’s just a convenient myth created by the powerful, like the Social Darwinism that seems to be the Scholomance’s underlying philosophy. Maybe what El will wind up doing is changing the narrative, and thus the way magic works.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS . . . . . . . . . . .

“Hail Galadriel, bringer of death!” It doesn’t specify whose death. But at that point in the story all we know about El is that she’s very unpopular, assumes that’s because there’s something wrong with her (like a lot of teenagers), and that she’ll wind up going to the dark side. Something she struggles very hard to prevent. But by the end of book 2 she’s killed a shed load of mals. So that part was actually true.

“You shall sow wrath and reap destruction,”. She certainly makes a lot of people angry (and frightened), especially the Shanghai enclavers who take a run at her twice in book two, not to mention Magnus who tries twice to harm her in book 1. As for reaping destruction, the ending of book 2 pretty much covers that. So the first two clauses have proven correct.

Except that the implication of the sowing and reaping metaphor is that the reaping is an outgrowth of the sowing, in other words–the destruction is a direct outgrowth of inciting the wrath. There have certainly been attempts to destroy El out of fury–Liesl’s comes to mind–but has anyone succeeded? I don’t recall it if so. Which suggests that this will happen in the next book–someone else, or multiple people/entities, will wreak destruction on El because her actions incited them to wrath.

“cast down enclaves and level the sheltering walls,” It could be argued that this too has already happened by the end of book 2, at least metaphorically in that by insisting that everybody graduates, she’s leveled the field and cast the enclavers down from their positions of privilege. But I’m not so sure, given the many possible meanings of ‘cast’, which include ‘deposit’ and ‘bring forth’ (as in premature birth).

Yes, I think that’s not over yet, at least as far as “cast down enclaves,” because leveling the playing field has been such a strong theme thus far that it is clearly not over. If the school’s fate is part of it, then it’s only the beginning. And I love your idea that it might also refer to her plans (via the sutras) for the future.

However, with the addition of “level the sheltering walls,” do you think the two actions have to be connected, or do you think it’s possible that the mirror is referring to something separate–that they are two separate things? Because other than the fact that enclaves have walls, I see nothing to suggest that they are two parts of the same act.

“cast children from their homes and–” Again it could be argued that this has already happened because the whole student body graduates. But I’m not sure of that either.

I agree on this too. I would like to think that there’s something more to this than just a reference to the dorms because if it is that seems like a bit of a cheat. Dorms aren’t really homes. Especially at the Scholomance. But on the other hand, I can’t see El making children homeless, can you?

As to her ‘burdened soul’, I’m not quite ready to accept that as simply her angst and cynicism because of the following passage about Cora, “…but it was more than that: she was aces at spirit magic, her family had a really long tradition of it, and she had clearly thought–and probably still did–that I was carrying some kind of unpleasant baggage on mine.” We’re frequently reminded that there’s something disturbing about El’s presence, i.e. Aadhya telling her that ‘she feels like it’s going to rain’ in book 1, and not only to wizards but mundanes as well.

That’s a great point. I had thought the disturbing nature of El’s presence is the nature of her magic, the fact that she is by nature a dark sorceress, even if by choice and dint of effort she is something else. But you’re right, it doesn’t have to be that.

But..if El was infected or affected by the maw-mouth as an embryo, wouldn’t Gwen sense it? I mean, given the kind of magic Gwen has, if not Gwen, who?

(I have seen speculation that El will somehow rescue her father from inside of Patience but it seems unlikely.)

Thanks for this Janine and Jennie! I ran across your very interesting review and discussion when looking up the possible release date for Book 3 in this series (arggghhhh…the Book 2 cliffhanger!) I have been thinking about you two recently since I re-read MWT’s Thief series and then The Lymond Chronicles over the last few months (I’m trying to get back into reading more lately after a lengthy hiatus). I will have fun exploring the books that you both have recommended over the past couple of years.

But..if El was infected or affected by the maw-mouth as an embryo, wouldn’t Gwen sense it? I mean, given the kind of magic Gwen has, if not Gwen, who?

This may be the reason for Gwen’s particular parenting style and strict-mana adherence as an effort to save her child. We haven’t actually met Gwen yet, and the only details we know about her are El’s recollections, which may not tell the whole story. This is after all a first-person narrative, and as such may not always be ‘reliable’.

@ Elle : Elle! Are you the Elle who was on a Yahoo book club in the mid-2000s? The one that Sherryfair and a few others were on? If so email me! janineballard@gmail. I’ve missed you!

@ Elle : Oh, gosh! I loved The Lymond Chronicles back in the day but I don’t know that I have it in me to read them again!

@ Jennie : I actually started to listen to The Game of Kings as an audiobook (*challenging* with all the untranslated Latin, French and Spanish bits!) on a long drive but then dove into the actual books when I got home. I finished the whole series in a little more than a week. The experience was somewhat different since I remembered the main plot points of course, but I still really loved the books.

@ Erasmus : Good point!

I loved The Last Graduate so much. I love the scope of it, how many people are allowed to be smart and good and how even the ones who aren’t are still worth saving. ♥♥♥

@ taiey : I agree; there’s a real moral complexity to the characters that you don’t necessarily see in this type of book often.

One small note about the irony of El’s familiar being “Precious”: it’s not just that the name is cutesy, it’s another Lord of the Rings reference — what did Gollum call the Ring?

@ David Goldfarb : Ooh, good point.

@ David Goldfarb : It is a great point – wouldn’t have occurred to me, since I’m not much of an LOTR person.

@ David Goldfarb : ‘Bless us and splash us.’

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The system is the monster in Naomi Novik’s engaging The Last Graduate

The second book in novik's scholomance series sees her deepen the social themes that powered 2020’s a deadly education.

It’s very difficult to talk about Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series—the second installment of which, The Last Graduate , arrives September 28—without the words “Harry Potter” eventually slipping into the conversation. The surface-level comparisons between Novik’s YA-friendly blend of fantasy and horror, and J.K. Rowling’s paper-devouring juggernaut, are obvious: the magical academy stocked with under-supervised teenagers, the chosen one who spends his time saving classmates from enchanted threats, the dark wizards lurking around every corner. But the contrasts are also stark enough to demand comment, most especially the central striking aspect that separates Novik’s tightly focused novels from Rowling’s billionaire sprawl: They’re actually about something.

The BiblioSanctum

A book blog for speculative fiction, graphic novels… and more, book review: the last graduate by naomi novik.

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Mogsy’s Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Book 2 of Scholomance

Publisher: Del Rey (September 28, 2021)

Length: 368 pages

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Naomi Novik should consider herself lucky we’re not in the same room right now, because I can’t decide if I want to screech in her face or give her a hug while crying tears of pure joy. Yep, The Last Graduate was THAT good, but ugh, that ending! I’m still in a state of shock.

First though, a bit about the book. As it is the direct sequel to A Deadly Education , this one cannot be read as a standalone, and as such you should also be aware that the following review may contain spoilers for the first book if you’re yet not caught up. The story follows protagonist Galadriel “El” Higgins and her friends at Scholomance, a school for magically gifted children. In order to graduate, students in their senior year must pass a final challenge by running a gauntlet against a swarm maleficaria, or “mals”, which are monsters that feed on magic. Not everyone comes out of it alive, and in fact, each year a good number of students are expected to fall to the mals, so most would-be graduates train hard and adopt an “everyone for themselves” mentality in order to increase their chances of survival.

But this year, El is looking to change all that. Figuring out that the school itself has a mind of its own and a need to protect as many students as possible, she comes up with a plan to save everyone. Of course, such an endeavor is going to require a ton of mana as well as everyone to work together, and she’s not sure she can make either one of these happen. Luckily though, she’s forged several alliances since coming out of her shell, taking others into her confidence and allowing herself to trust some of her classmates. One of them happens to be Orion Lake, a talented monster hunter who is also very sweet on El, but she’s not quite sure what to make of him yet. Having a dark prophecy hanging over her head has a way of complicating things, making her nervous and reluctant to take things further with Orion. So instead, she decides to focus her attentions on ending the deadly situation at Scholomance, devoting hundreds of hours into training exercises and getting everyone ready for the big day, which is fast approaching.

What a difference from the first book! I won’t lie, there were parts of A Deadly Education I struggled with, and most of them had to do with El, whom I found insufferably ill-tempered and unlikeable, and the fact that she was downright awful to everyone around her certainly didn’t help. However, being forced to interact and actually work with her fellow students seems to have done wonders for her personality, making her rethink the loner life as she finds new purpose in trying to change things for the better. Now that El has become more caring and less self-absorbed, she was also much more pleasant to read about this time around. Needless to say, she’s easier to sympathize with when I’m not gritting my teeth against her belligerence, and it made reading this sequel feel like a whole new experience.

And yet, the style and pacing of the story remained quite consistent with the second half of the first book. While A Deadly Education opened with a somewhat drawn out and sluggish intro, it ultimately made up for that with a killer ending, and I was glad to see that The Last Graduate was able to snatch up that momentum and keep running with it. Obviously, as a sequel, it had the advantage of being able to jump right into the action, but on the whole this one also felt more evenly balanced and better paced. Having a timeline for graduation and an endgame to look forward to definitely helped moved things along, and with everyone working towards the same goal, the result was a sharply focused and less meandering plot. There was even time to work in some relationship development between El and Orion, as well as other little detours involving the history and motivations of Scholomance without being too much of a distraction.

All in all, everything in the first book was either rectified or improved upon in The Last Graduate . Perhaps the only thing that was worse was the cliffhanger. If you thought the one at the end of A Deadly Education was bad, ooh boy, you have no idea, mwahahahaha! Just as it appears things might be finally settling down, the rug gets pulled out from under us again, making you realize Novik’s far from finished with us and the fun’s just begun…

So glad I decided to continue this series. While I can’t honestly say I appreciated the whiplash I got from that cruel and abrupt cliffhanger, The Last Graduate was otherwise very enjoyable, easily my favorite sequel of the year, and definitely one the biggest surprises.

More on The BiblioSanctum: Review of A Deadly Education (Book 1)

31 Comments on “Book Review: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik”

Oh I didn’t realize that she had a new book!

Like Liked by 1 person

That she does! This series is her current project, and it might be a trilogy I believe.

Since I’ve had A Deadly Education on my “wanted” list since… well, forever, I’m very glad to learn that not only the series moves forward at a consistent pace, but that it becomes even more engaging. Given the author’s propensity for these cliffhangers, though, I might wait for the completion of the saga before delving into it: waiting patiently is NOT what I do best… 😉 Thanks for sharing!

Yes, save yourself the frustration and maybe wait for the entire series to be done before starting. Seriously, these cliffhangers are killing me!

I’d written off A Deadly Education after reading a handful of reviews, but maybe it’ll be something I read after all because this second book sounds good. Might wait for Novik to finish the series before I start it though … cliffhangers make me grumpy! 🤣

Yeah, people either seem to love or hate the first book. I was kind of in between so I decided it might be worth continuing the series. I’m glad I did, since I loved this…but ugh, yes, that cliffhanger was worse than most…

I sort of wish I hadn’t DNF’D the first book if this was so good, lol.

The first book was kinda rough, I would have DNF’ed if I was in the habit, though to its credit the second half got better!

I’m going to try and read “A Deadly Education” again. It started out a bit slow and cliche for me, so I put it on hold. Your review sounds like the story gets better with the sequel.

I hear ya. I did not get on too well with A Deadly Education either, I really had to push through. But, if you do make it, at least you know the second book will be better! 😀

So… do both? Everyone likes a screech-hug lol

I didn’t survive a Deadly Education, but I’m glad that you (mostly) enjoyed book #2! 😁

LOL you would not want to be subjected to one of my screech-hugs…

That’s what you have kids for 😝

Now I am afraid to read it! And El wasn’t annoying to me in the first book. I laughed at her snark and dry humor :-))

Oh then you are going to LOVE this one…I can’t wait to see your reaction, heh heh heh…

I’ve been curious about these books and I just might give them a try. I like the covers and this one sounds exciting. Seems like not many people liked the first book.

Yeah, most of the reviews I see on Goodreads are either 5 stars or 1 star/DNFs. Such a contentious novel!

I’ve never actually reak Novik yet but this one sounds really great!

Ooh, she’s written some great stuff. My favorites of hers are His Majesty’s Dragon and Uprooted. As much as I enjoyed this one, I’d definitely would start with one of those first, haha 😀

Oh right, I meant to try book 1, but never got around to it

I’ve not tried the first book, and it’s not really been on my radar, but I’m glad to hear how much you enjoyed this one, even with the cliffhanger ending. Those can be so frustrating sometimes, though I suppose they can also be very effective.

Yep, it’s a testament to how much I loved this book that I was willing to forgive that cruel cliffhanger…it was pretty brutal 😛

I’m still hesitant about Deadly Education, Novik’s books for me are miss and miss 😉 But I’m glad you loved the sequel, so maybe, maybe I’ll break and try this series 😉

Haha, she’s probably half hit, half miss for me. Like I loved His Majesty’s Dragon, but the rest of that series lost much of the magic. I also loved Uprooted but was meh with Spinning Silver. That love/hate pattern appears to be continuing with this series 😛

I must confess that I was kind of put off from this series by the reviews of the first book but you have tempted me with this – although cliffhanger endings – boo. Lynn 😀

Yep – I have complicated feelings for cliffhangers. This was one especially cruel though.

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Book Review

The last graduate (lesson two of the scholomance).

Naomi Novik

Readability Age Range

14 to adult
Random House
New York Times Bestseller

Year Published

Prophesy says that Galadriel “El” Higgins is destined to destroy the world. And most other teens at The Scholomance—a magic school for young wizards—hate her and think she’s an evil sorceress in the making. In fact, the school itself wants her dead.

Fun school memories might be a little tough this year.

Plot Summary

She could always call up a lava-spewing volcano in the lunchroom that would parboil all the nasty students glaring at her.

She could do that.

I mean, that’s what they expect from her anyway, right? And boy, would that wipe the sneers off their faces!

But Galadriel “El” Higgins won’t do that. Really , she won’t.

El may have been prophesized to someday be a world-destroying terror. Most students probably see her as a noxiously evil sorceress in the making. And now that she’s in her senior year, she’s really shown a skill set for mass destruction. (I mean, if someone’s written a spell that’ll destroy cities, slaughter crowds or torture people, all she has to do it glance at it and it’s in the old noggin.)

But that’s not El. Not really.

Besides, big destructive spells take large amounts of mana. That’s a limited resource that requires hard work to generate. And El isn’t going to waste all of hers just to melt the faces off some kids who tick her off at lunch. Not if she wants to graduate from The Scholomance.

The Scholomance is a magic school that has no teachers or administration. It teaches the kids itself–magically delivering everything from meals to books and lesson plans. That is, of course, when it’s not directing lethal “maleficaria,” or “mals” for short, in the youngsters’ direction.

Mals are part of the learning curve, you might say. They pop out of every crevasse and heating vent when you least expect. And if you don’t have the proper store of mana or the right spell at the ready, you are quite literally monster meat.

So, stirring up volcanoes in the lunchroom just doesn’t make sense, no matter how you slice it. And that’s especially true in light of the fact that nearly three-quarters of every graduating class is dead and devoured in the school’s graduation ceremony each year.

Yeah, learning ain’t easy. Of course, living … might be even harder.

Christian Beliefs

Spiritual powers are intricately woven through the fabric of this story. But faith is only mentioned once in the form of a “religious” individual who prays in Hebrew.

The only other reference to a deity or creator shows up in El’s run-on disdain for the whole idea:

“You don’t want mysterious unexplained advice from someone you know has your best interests at heart and whose judgement is unerringly right and just and true. Either they’ll tell you to do what you want to do anyway, in which case you didn’t need their advice, or they’ll tell you to do the opposite, in which case you’ll have to choose between sullenly following their advice, like a little kid who has been forced to brush her teeth and go to bed at a reasonable hour, or ignoring it and grimly carrying on, all the while knowing that your course of action is guaranteed to lead you straight to pain and dismay.”

Other Belief Systems

On the other, far darker, side of the coin, however, is all the black magic in the mix. Spells are cast in all languages. (Some are actually spelled out.) There are some healing and defensive spells cast, but most magic here tends to be dark and destructive. And the mals are all destructive, spirit-like creatures that regularly crawl out of some shadowed place with the hopes of ripping flesh, breaking bones and generally eating the defenseless whole.

The Scholomance itself is revealed to be a construct created entirely of magic. When dark magicians originally cast the school into existence, they unintentionally added a number of imperfections. And those imperfections have turned the school’s original task of protecting its charges into something far more malicious and deadly.

Authority Roles

There aren’t any that fall into this role other than El’s memories of her mum.

Mum is actually a healer who warned El to stay away from things that would drive her in the direction of darkness and evil. And El—who generally tends to be sarcastic, grumbling and dour, and who really dislikes most everyone around her—slowly pieces her mother’s advice together into a choice for good. In spite of her deadly surroundings and generally nihilistic viewpoint, El decides to use her abilities to save others.

El’s spells are still very deadly and destructive, but she uses them to help masses of other, weaker students. And she slowly gains and sways friends at school who help her in those goals.

Profanity & Violence

While The Last Graduate isn’t filled with profanity, the foul language we read can be pretty extreme, including f- and s-words. Some colloquial phrases can be quite crude, too.

Brutal violence, on the other hand, is a mainstay here. Buildings, people and creatures are injured or destroyed en masse. There are many instances of skin being stripped away and bones exposed. We hear about bodies drained of blood and organs popped. And though the mals are regularly gutted or torched or liquified, there are many bloody human injuries as well. And it’s all served up in a mishmash of horror and dark dread.

Potions are consumed and distributed that do everything from poisoning to healing others.

Sexual Content

Of the few who actually like (or merely endure) El, Orion is a guy who is head-over-heels for her. El tends to treat him like an irritating rash—though other teens adore him. Eventually, though, her feelings begin to change. They kiss and embrace, Then things get much more heated to the point of the pair stripping off their clothes and having sex. (The act isn’t crudely described, but it’s pantingly clear enough.)

El thinks her way through her menstrual cycle calendar and the impact that further intimacy might have. The only thing that truly holds her back from an intimate romp appears to be the possible physical consequences.

Pairs of males and a pair of females kiss intimately. And both couples are warmly embraced by friends.

Discussion Topics

Things to discuss between parents and kids regarding issues raised in the book.

Get free discussion question for books at focusonthefamily.com/magazine/thriving-family-book-discussion-questions .

Additional Comments

Fans of the Harry Potter young-magicians-at-Hogwarts books have long been looking for a replacement series that they could dive into. And author Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series has been dubbed by many to be just that, albeit from a very dark and grim perspective. That alone will draw the attention of young readers.

But those readers and their parents should know that this second book in the series, The Last Graduate, is filled with very dark and often brutally gruesome magic castings and monster attacks. While there are positive parts in this tale encouraging teen friendship and personal sacrifice, the monsters are deadly, the humor is cutting and sarcastic, the language is foul and the sensual moments can get pretty steamy.

This densely overwrought novel will appeal to some, but it’s far from Potteresque.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not necessarily their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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Book Review: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik book review

*I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. Book review thoughts and opinions are my own. *

Book: The Last Graduate

The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) by Naomi Novik | Goodreads

Author: Naomi Novik

Publisher: Del Rey Books

Published Date: September 28th, 2021

Series: The Scholomance The Scholomance Series by Naomi Novik | Goodreads

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Book Blurb:

Book Review:

I’m going to start a bit backwards here and say “WTF?!?” to the at ending! No spoilers but holy shit did Novik leave us hanging!! Book 3 is untitled and there’s no tentative release date yet, but it’s already on my TBR…can’t wait!!

Ok, so now onto the book starting at the beginning haha. The book starts off where the last one left of: with a cryptic note from El’s mom to stay away from Orion lake. Like that’s not ominous at all! She has no idea why her mom would give her this warning and isn’t sure what to make of it. As hard as she tries to be, I think deep down she really care for Orion and couldn’t stay away from him even if she wanted to. There’s a bit more steam (spoilers: El and Orion kiss 💏 several times) but it’s pretty low-key.

El and her friends, including Orion, are faced with so many challenges. At one point, the group thinks the school itself is out to get El. However, there is so much more going on and it takes them a long time to figure out what that is and how to approach it. The Scholomance is a place where students fend for themselves and to get out of the school alive this year, they all have to find a way to work together or basically die.

In true fashion, the book is focused on the school itself, with all the layers and secrets it has. This is a true fantasy novel with a magical realism feel for it. Novik does a fantastic job of building up these intricate parts of the school and characters in a way readers can clearly picture. It’s not a school I would ever want to go to, but it makes a great read!

Review of A Deadly Education can be found here: Book Review: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik08/06/2021 (onceuponabookbabe.com)

Other YA/Fantasy reviews can be found here Young & New Adult ~ Once Upon a Book Babe and here: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Magical Realism ~ Once Upon a Book Babe

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Review: The Last Graduate

In A DEADLY EDUCATION, we met Galadriel–better known as El–our heroine with an affinity for destructive magic. As a young witch, she’s a senior attending the Scholomance, a school of magic that is meant to prepare children for a world of deadly monsters. Unfortunately, over the years, the deadly monsters have decided that the Scholomance is the best hunting ground for tasty snacks (i.e.: the students). El, along with her allies and newfound friend Orion, have decided that this is the last year of the Scholomance and make a plan so over-the-top only El could have come up with it: make it so everyone can graduate. And they mean everyone . El doesn’t do anything halfway, and this plan is huge. It has a lot of moving parts and requires a skill-set beyond something an single person can provide. In fact, it will require the help of the entire school to make it work. Unfortunately, El doesn’t like group projects, but maybe this is the one time she’ll put up with it. She is, after all, determined to save everyone. And not just one at a time, like Orion.

Perhaps part of this drive of hers comes from the tragic story of her parents who were Scholomance students. During graduation, her father died in order to save El’s pregnant mother from an indestructible mawmouth. After having lived a life without a father, and being rejected by her father’s family (because of her grandmother’s prophecy that she’ll destroy the enclaves that protect the wizarding world), El wants to keep the inevitable deaths from happening to anyone else. And hopes that in the process she can change her own fate.

THE LAST GRADUATE has a lot of moving parts. Not only are we in for a ride of planning and student-filled chaos, but we also learn a little bit more about the questions that arose in A DEADLY EDUCATION, like:

El's philosophy is "go big or go home" and in THE LAST GRADUATE by Naomi Novik, she wants to save EVERYONE, not just the seniors.

Why does the school exist?
Where did it come from?
How is the wizarding world ok with how it runs and how children die in it?
Wouldn’t it be better to change how things work?

Everything that we learned in book 1 is a building block for all of the things that happen here. And it just grows more awesome as the chapters progress.

I particularly enjoyed El’s progression as a character. Since it’s from her POV we get the flavor of her personality, her frustrations, and her realization that maybe, after all, she is likable. El comes into her own as someone who people can trust and look up to. Even if her grouchy demeanor doesn’t really change a whole lot. The characters around her are recognizable and engaging and play an important role in her character progression, and the story as a whole.

What’s great about THE LAST GRADUATE versus A DEADLY EDUCATION is that it doesn’t suffer from middle-book syndrome. Instead it builds, and the ending is even better than the first book; the middle doesn’t get bogged down quite as much as did book 1. It’s fun to watch the progression, not only of the characters and the storyline, but also of the setting as we learn more about how this world works.

But be ready with book 3, THE GOLDEN ENCLAVES, in-hand, because THE LAST GRADUATE ends with a cliffhanger that will absolutely grab you by the throat.

Recommended Age: 13+
Language: A handful
Violence: Peril and the death of creatures that will eat you
Sex: One scene without detail

Series links: The Scholomance

# 1: A Deadly Education — EBR Review — Amazon — Bookshop.org
# 2: The Last Graduate — This Review — Amazon — Bookshop.org
# 3: The Golden Enclaves — EBR Review — Amazon — Bookshop.org

Author Links:

Naomi Novik — Website — EBR Reviews

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THE LAST GRADUATE by Naomi Novik (BOOK REVIEW)

This book is the sequel to A Deadly Education , which was flat-out amazing if you like slightly dark and broody sarcastic protagonists and unique world building. It’s not often a sequel matches the epic-ness of a really fantastic first novel, but let me say to all of you Deadly Education fans: you will not be disappointed with The Last Graduate .

The sequel picks up right where the first book leaves off. Galadriel – ehm, El – has actually acquired friends, and a not-boyfriend-but-kind-of in Orion. Things could be looking up, but this is the Scholomance and it only moves down. El has possibly the worst senior class schedule ever, and the school seems to be setting her up to eat some of the first-years and embrace the malificer path or be forced to save them over and over. Orion, of course, has been hunting mals since he was entombed in the school, and sees no reason to give up his hunting now. So as the seniors rush to survive their last semester of classes, mals become more scarce, and Orion spends more time hunting them to the detriment of his schoolwork. El’s mouse familiar (I will not spoil the delight of her name here) gains a personality to match her mistress and she quickly became one of my favorite parts of the story, adjacent to El and Orion not-dating, which was delightful.

The second half of the book, like the second half senior year in the Scholomance, is focused on the run to survive the graduation hall filled with mals. As the school presents more and more dangerous scenarios in the gym, it quickly becomes clear to the senior class that their graduation might be unlike any other before. This duology has joined my list of favorite books alongside Novik’s earlier Uprooted , and Robin McKinley’s Sunshine . The world is unique, the characters matter-of-factly diverse, and the plot solid. Naomi Novik is simply a magician. Five stars. Go read it.

J.L. Brown has been in love with books ever since reading the Boxcar Children. Once determined to be an editor, they were part of many First Reads programs and attend numerous book conventions. A change of career path (as happens when in college) led to graduate school, where they study neurological diseases, but they continue to read voraciously in their non-existent spare time. They live with a green-cheeked velociraptor who has the run of the house and has an appropriate fantasy-themed name. All-time favorite books include Sunshine by Robin McKinley, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey.

[…] J L Brown @ the Hive: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik […]

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The Last Graduate - a book review.

I finally got around to finishing the second book in The Scholomance series after having to return the ebook loan before I was done with it earlier in the year. I thoroughly enjoyed the first in the series, A Deadly Education , so here’s my thoughts on this one!

“As a general rule, regardless of the specific situation in which you find yourself, at every step you must take care to preserve or widen the number of your options.”

Goodreads Summary

At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year—and the looming specter of graduation, a deadly ritual that leaves few students alive in its wake. El is determined that her chosen group will survive, but it is a prospect that is looking harder by the day as the savagery of the school ramps up. Until El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules...

“I wasn’t alone anymore. They were saving me, and I was going to save them. It felt more like magic than magic.”

This book was a pretty quick read, but I did skim a lot of the descriptive portions, which may have been a consequence of me reading it in an ebook format. In this book, I liked how we got to see more characters as El branches out and lets people in. Her character develops more as she starts to care about others. We’re also given more information about the school and magic logistics. I liked picturing more of the school and the gym with the added details we’re provided. We’re introduced to so many mals that I want a malifecaria compendium that’s illustrated so I can imagine them all. I still don’t fully understand why El and Orion are such powerful wizards and how they’re the only ones at a school for tons of gifted wizards that can do what they do. The romance part is a really slow burn and when something happens it’s very mild and light on the descriptions. And of course…I disliked the cliffhanger ending that I did see coming but still wasn’t thrilled with it happening.

“People don’t think about us nearly as much as we think they do, because they’re all busy worrying what people are thinking about them.”

My 5 Star Rating in the YA Fantasy Genre: **** (4/5)

Recommendation

You should probably read the first in this series before reading this book, so if you enjoyed A Deadly Education, then you’d enjoy this read as well. This one is for those that enjoy new magical worlds and hero’s journey stories without much focus on romance/spicy scenes. Goodreads recommends this book to readers who also enjoyed Book of Night by Black, The Atlas Paradox by Blake, and Nettle and Bone by Kingfisher.

“I hadn’t any business agreeing to be with someone who told me in all sincerity that I was his only hope of happiness in the world, at least not until he’d sorted his own head out and diversified.”

I hope this review of The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik was an enjoyable read. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this book! Until next time…happy reading!

For more info:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55559887-the-last-graduate

Image credits:

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Sci-fi/fantasy novels are often written to be read in sequential order and The Last Graduate is no exception. Because the books tell one long story, this review contains spoilers for the previous novel – A Deadly Education - pretty much from the first sentence on.

El Higgins has successfully reached her senior year, not an easy feat in a school where a good percentage of kids don’t survive to commencement. She and her friends, most especially Orion Lake, have repaired the cleansing equipment in the graduation hall, which means that for a few glorious days they will have at least a little peace from the largest and most deadly of the maleficaria, the child-eating monsters that roam the academy’s halls gobbling up the unwary.

El is going to need that advantage. Her new schedule has her starting the day in a type of study hall/homeroom, which she inexplicably shares with a group of freshmen. The rest of her course lineup arrives as she and the youngsters are arranging themselves into the safest formation against possible attacks, and it is worse than El could have imagined – she has four seminars, all of them odd and rare which will most likely mean they are independent studies or have a handful of students at best. At the Scholomance that’s practically a death sentence, since maleficaria like nothing better than to find a student alone/nearly alone as it places the odds definitively in the beast’s favor.

El has only begun to wonder if the school is out to get her when the baby vipersac attacks and she has a choice of letting a few of the freshmen die or using some of her hard-earned mana saving them. She does the latter with ill grace, which is a good thing because her maybe/who knows boyfriend Orion chooses the moment they are being besieged to come racing up the stairs to find El, making himself the primary target. They all survive but El misses breakfast so she is definitely hangry as she goes about the rest of her day.

Things only get worse over the next few weeks. Her seminars turn out to be as dangerous as she feared, and she finds herself saving the freshmen in her homeroom class on a daily basis. She is given no time or means to build mana, and her reserves - which enable her to fight maleficaria - grow dangerously low. Every time she goes anywhere or does anything to fix the problem, she is placed in mortal danger. But the school has a reason for its seeming torture of El. It wants her to learn something. Something all the students - and their parents - should have picked up on already. In Wisdom, Shelter is the motto emblazoned on the walls. The Scholomance is determined that at least one student will graduate knowing what that means, even if it has to kill them to make them understand.

We learned early on that Ell is extremely powerful and has the capacity to do monstrously huge workings, emphasis on the monstrous. Using magic for a simple spell to clean her room is beyond her but bewitchments that involve razing cities or destroying entire populations are her forté (or so the prophecy at her birth claims). Since El has no desire to be an evil, world-destroying malificer, she has never seen a purpose to her “gift”.

A lot of the story this time around concentrates on El seeing her powers in a different light and realizing how they can be used to build rather than destroy. Helping her on this journey of discovery is the friendship of Aadhya and Liu and their budding alliance with Chloe, a girl from the New York Enclave who is a genuinely decent human being with the unpleasant task of trying to lure El to New York and away from her home in Wales.

Interestingly, just as El is being given all the options she ever dreamed of to leave the commune she grew up in, she is discovering how very much she has ingested the lessons she learned there. From performing healing circles for casual acquaintances to rescuing those actively trying to do her harm, and extending the hand of friendship to former enemies, she is truly becoming her mother’s daughter. El is still her grumpy, sarcastic, snarky self but she is allowing the heart of gold that has always been hidden by her crusty exterior to shine through.

That’s actually one of the main storylines in this second volume, which is very much a transition book, getting us from where we were at the end of book one to where the author clearly wants us for the beginning of book three. The change in El, as she begins to embrace more fully who she desires to be as a person and a magician while still being true to her grumpy nature, is great. I loved that she is expanding her friend circle and able to be part of a community with others and I loved how the cast of charactersiss so diverse and fun.

The prose is, as always, lovely, and I found myself easily enchanted by the tale of the semi-sentient Scholomance and intrigued by the mystery of what it is trying to teach El.

Less great is that while El is doing all that personal growth, Orion is reduced to almost a footnote until the end of the story. While this narrative is not a romance, the budding relationship between the two was an important part of El’s character arc in the last novel and having it take a background role in this tale left the story feeling incomplete. There are some strong interactions that almost make up for that in the last few chapters but then we have the finale -which is a total clif hanger that places both of them in a horrific situation that is seemingly impossible to get out of.

As I was reeling from the frustrating ‘conclusion’ I couldn’t help but think that there had been lots of ways to avoid it. Another frustration came from a problem inherent to YA: In order for teenagers to be resolving an issue, as opposed to adults, it must be an obstacle that is uniquely theirs and to which only they hold the solution, or the grownups around them must be complete incompetents or totally uncaring. The conundrums surrounding the Scholomance lean towards the latter and I found myself struggling to believe that any set of adults could be quite that negligent.

Middle books in a trilogy often serve as links within the overarching narrative of a series and that is certainly true of The Last Graduate. While I found the characters as winsome, the writing as smooth and lovely and the general plot intriguing as ever, I was frustrated by the fact that it felt as though it was all just buildup for the coming main event and so I was left a bit dissatisfied.

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Sensuality: Subtle

Publication Date: 09/2021

Review Tags: Scholomance series fantasy magic

Maggie Boyd

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THE LAST GRADUATE by Naomi Novik (BOOK REVIEW)
Book Review: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
Review: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
The Last Graduate (Lesson Two of the Scholomance) by Naomi Novik: A One
Summary and Review: The Last Graduate (Scholomance #2) by Naomi Novik

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The Graduate
The Last Thing He Told Me

COMMENTS

The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) by Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik. A budding dark sorceress determined not to use her formidable powers uncovers yet more secrets about the workings of her world in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education, the start of Naomi Novik's groundbreaking crossover series.At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year—and the ...
THE LAST GRADUATE
THE LAST GRADUATE. by Naomi Novik ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 28, 2021. A sequel that repeats the mistakes of its predecessor while failing to break new ground. A teenage witch with a natural affinity for dark magic prepares to run a deadly graduation gauntlet in this sequel to Novik's Deadly Education (2020). Galadriel "El" Higgins has finally ...
REVIEW: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
REVIEW: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. As someone who grew up with a massive love for Harry Potter but is now turned off by the saccharin sweetness of that series, The Last Graduate, book 2 of The Scholomance series is a perfect reminder that it is much more fun to play in the dark, snarky side of things. The first book, A Deadly Education ...
REVIEW: 'The Last Graduate' by Naomi Novik is an ...
The Last Graduate changes the tune of the Scholomance series ever-so-slightly, as we begin to learn a little more about the world the books are set in.As the plot progresses, we learn more about the building of the school and events happening in the outside world which are evidently building up to future novels which, yes, I already know I'll be reading.
BOOK REVIEW: The Last Graduate (The Scholomance #2) by Naomi Novik
The Last Graduate (The Scholomance #2) by Naomi Novik Purchase on: Amazon, iBooks Add to: Goodreads Synopsis: A budding dark sorceress determined not to use her formidable powers uncovers yet more secrets about the workings of her world in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education, the start of Naomi Novik's groundbreaking crossover series.
Book Review : The Last Graduate
Book Review : The Last Graduate. I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) by Naomi Novik. Published by Del Rey Books on September 28th 2021. Pages: 368.
The Last Graduate
The Last Graduate. by Naomi Novik. Publication Date: June 28, 2022. Genres: Fantasy, Fiction. Paperback: 416 pages. Publisher: Del Rey. ISBN-10: 0593128885. ISBN-13: 9780593128886. At the Scholomance, El, Orion and the other students are faced with their final year…and the looming specter of graduation: a deadly ritual that barely half the ...
The Last Graduate: A Novel (The Scholomance)
Rather than hide from any of that, The Last Graduate (the second book in the series) dives right into that, starting primarily with that last question. ... 5.0 out of 5 stars The Last Graduate, A Review. LAS. Reviewed in Canada on October 15, 2023. Verified Purchase. Wow! Another wow story. Tremendous! Well done! Wonderful!
Book Review: The Last Graduate
The Last Graduate is the eagerly awaited second installment in Naomi Novik's Scholomance series. A Deadly Education was one of my favourite books of last year so I was incredibly excited to continue the series. The story follows El and her peers as they battle through their final year in the Scholomance. As graduation looms, El discovers ...
The Last Graduate
The Scholomance books were partly inspired by a pair of Eastern European legends about a school of magic where Satan claims the soul of the last graduate to leave." The book received mostly positive reviews. Elizabeth Tabler of the Grimdark Magazine praised the book, calling it "mind-blowing and fantastic" and that she "went clamoring for more".
JOINT REVIEW: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
Spoiler: Show. Jennie: The Last Graduate can be seen as a classic bridge book between the opener and closer of a trilogy - it advances the plot and characters (and El's character really does come into her own in a lot of ways) and sets up the finale (with another - even bigger! - cliffhanger than the first book delivered).
The Last Graduate review: In Naomi Novik's latest, the system is the
The Last Graduate, the second book in Naomi Novik's Scholomance series, sees her deepen the social themes that powered her 2020 novel A Deadly Education. ... Reviews. The system is the monster in ...
The Last Graduate (Scholomance #2) by Naomi Novik- Book Review
The Last Graduate (The Scholomance #2) By: Naomi Novik [Nominated for 'Best Fantasy' category of the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge] "Senior year, you spend half your time staying alive, half your time on your lessons, and half your time working out a graduation strategy to get you through the hall.
Book Review: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. Mogsy's Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars. Genre: Fantasy. Series: Book 2 of Scholomance. Publisher: Del Rey (September 28, 2021) Length: 368 pages. Author Information: Website | Twitter. Naomi Novik should consider herself lucky we're not in the same room right now, because I can't decide if I want to screech in ...
The Last Graduate (Lesson Two of The Scholomance)
While The Last Graduate isn't filled with profanity, the foul language we read can be pretty extreme, including f- and s-words. Some colloquial phrases can be quite crude, too. ... Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not necessarily their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is ...
Book Review: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
*I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. Book review thoughts and opinions are my own. * Book: The Last Graduate. The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) by Naomi Novik | Goodreads. Author: Naomi Novik. Publisher: Del Rey Books. Published Date: September 28th, 2021
The Last Graduate
About The Last Graduate. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The specter of graduation looms large as Naomi Novik's groundbreaking, New York Times bestselling trilogy continues in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education. "The climactic graduation-day battle will bring cheers, tears, and gasps as the second of the Scholomance trilogy closes with a breathtaking cliff-hanger."—
The Scholomance Series by Naomi Novik
A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1), The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2), The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance #3), The Scholomance: Books #1-2...
Review: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
What's great about THE LAST GRADUATE versus A DEADLY EDUCATION is that it doesn't suffer from middle-book syndrome. Instead it builds, and the ending is even better than the first book; the middle doesn't get bogged down quite as much as did book 1. It's fun to watch the progression, not only of the characters and the storyline, but ...
THE LAST GRADUATE by Naomi Novik (BOOK REVIEW)
This book is the sequel to A Deadly Education, which was flat-out amazing if you like slightly dark and broody sarcastic protagonists and unique world building.It's not often a sequel matches the epic-ness of a really fantastic first novel, but let me say to all of you Deadly Education fans: you will not be disappointed with The Last Graduate.. The sequel picks up right where the first book ...
Book Marks reviews of The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
In the abstract, this is a story about relying on others—but in the concrete, it is about how to survive when the odds are against you. As she did with the first book, Novik changes the game again with the very last line. The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik has an overall rating of Positive based on 7 book reviews.
The Last Graduate
I finally got around to finishing the second book in The Scholomance series after having to return the ebook loan before I was done with it earlier in the year. I thoroughly enjoyed the first in the series, A Deadly Education, so here's my thoughts on this one!"As a general rule, regardless of the specific situation in which you find yourself, at every step you must take care to preserve ...
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik : All About Romance
Sci-fi/fantasy novels are often written to be read in sequential order and The Last Graduate is no exception. Because the books tell one long story, this review contains spoilers for the previous novel - A Deadly Education - pretty much from the first sentence on. El Higgins has successfully reached her senior year, not an easy feat in a school where a good percentage of kids don't survive ...

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