The Golden Enclaves

This is the third and final book in Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy, which means I'll be using this review to talk not only about The Golden Enclaves, but the series as a whole.  Let's start with the former.    I was not the biggest fan of The Last Graduate mostly because I felt it didn't expand on A Deadly Education enough.  I think Novik absolutely fixed this issue in The Golden Enclaves.  While the first two books in this trilogy took place entirely within one location, The Golden Enclaves takes its characters all around the world, allowing for a greater diversity in environments that allows the book to really breathe.  The increase in physical settings leads to an increase in stakes and information as well.  In some ways, The Golden Enclaves feels both like the second and third book in this trilogy.  That's a lot to pack into a book that's just over 400 pages, but I think Novik does a fantastic job with it.  This is a book that could feel rushed but it doesn't.  It moves from beat to beat really nicely and she makes sure to allow her characters to process each event before moving onto the next one.  The characters in this book are once again fantastic.  I'll get into some of them in a bit but real quickly I want to shout out Ophelia Lake, a truly wonderful antagonist who makes her presence felt despite little time actually being present in the story.  All in all, The Golden Enclaves serves as a very strong end to a pretty strong series.    I have mixed emotions when looking back on the trilogy as a whole.  Let's start with the good.  A Deadly Education is absolutely fantastic and will likely remain one of my favorite books I read this year.  I think it's pretty much perfect.  The Golden Enclaves is another very good book.  The series as a whole features one of the most interesting magic systems in the entire fantasy genre, a great setpiece in The Scholomance itself along with some truly spectacular characters.  Novik does a fantastic job of making her two main protagonists (El and Orion) consistently engaging throughout.  I never quite knew where their characters would end up and I just wanted to keep following them across every page.  There's a lot to like here and I certainly can't begrudge anyone who ranks this series among the best they've ever read.  But something holds it back from reaching that status for me.  It may be the fact that I feel like The Last Graduate does not do enough in terms of expanding the world, making The Golden Enclaves need to do some catch-up work.  That's the only real flaw I can definitively put into words here.  Other than that I just... didn't love the series the way I wanted to.  I still really liked it and will recommend it to others, it's just not the masterpiece I was hoping for.  The covers still kick major ass though.  No complaints about them.