The Last Graduate

I have no words... This was a freaking disaster.

Likes:
* The 360° that El did in this book. Yeah we always knew you were a softie.

* El is such a damn unreliable narrator. It's more glaringly obvious in this book.

* Also, she keeps going off on tangents every time she starts explaining something. A guy comes up to her to ask her something and she starts telling us about 3 different things that happened in the past and her long-ass thought process

Naomi Novik's Scholomance is the Battle Royale version of Harry Potter. Definitely darker and more violent although the end of book 1 left things looking a bit on the up. The Last Graduate picks up pretty much where book 1 ended - El has helped cleanse the graduation halls and that means the number of evil magical creatures (‘mals') has dropped significantly. Now El and her friends are in their graduate year, working out how to survive the gauntlet.

This is definitely an antidote to the cloying sweetness of typical wizarding school type novels. Harry Potter may have popularized the trend, but this dark and snarky take is much more up my street. The threat in this second book is toned down a bit from the first - the power and alliances of El are better understood and controlled so you know the survival rate is going to be higher. But there is still a delicious darkness, a griminess that permeates everything in this world

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, introduces us to Galadriel (I do not know of a more perfect name for a character), a young student starting her junior year at a wizarding academy called Scholomance. The survival rate for Scholomance is around 50%. You do not fail out; you are blown to bits, eaten, have your skin flayed off in strips, have your soul sucked out, or suffer psychological damage. To graduate, you must run the gauntlet through an obstacle course of creatures from hell all bent on devouring your mind, body, and soul.

“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.

I really enjoyed this book, even though I found it a little bit hard to read at some points. The chapters are way too long and the plot felt dragged and so slow sometimes that it was getting boring, but it picked up near the end and it got better.
And, of course, we have that brutal cliffhanger, just like the first book had. This one was even worse though and I'm so curious to see what happens in the next book.

The Last Graduate
Naomi Novik

CAWPILE SCORE
C-8
A-9
W-8
P-8
I-8
L-8
E-9
TOTAL-8.29/10

CAWPILECharactersEl- wants to be wanted for herself and not for her death abilities. Orion-been conditioned to want to kill mals. Its his affinity super reinforcedThe School—just wants to protect the students Chinese Enclave kids—don't trust her, don't do their combat runs. othersside characters also felt pretty invested.AtmosphereEmotion of the school and the kids. The feelings the gym creates after its “fixed”WritingGood writing. Very well done being in El's head. Descriptive enough to get a feel with being over the top.PlotEl's class is next up to graduation and the school is off. Mals only seem to be coming for El and her schedule is crazy. The Graduation Obstacle course runs are insane and only get worse. Only with El can you make it through. The School is tired of failing and wants all its students to be protected. The school isn't evil. They come up with a plan to draw all the mals in and kick the school into the void. They do. Patience and Fortitude come back but its just one. Orion pushes El out of the gate.InvestmentVery invested 1st in thinking that the school is trying to kill El. Then that something is going wrong because not enough mana is being released from deaths. Then can they pull it off what will go wrong when they attempt it.LogicThe way that El was thinking things were going to happen and they did or didn't was logical and the plans that everybody made to “fix” the school. Literally everyone comes up with the same idea is so trueEnjoymentLoved this book, missed a little of the romance until 60% throughMiscFixing the gym with the attack against her. Finally able to use those spells of destruction for a good purposeOrion's idea of a date. Getting the familiars Seeing the graduation hall empty. Patience and Temperance Ate everything else then each otherORION pushes her through the Gate and stays behindThe Maleficer getting his spelled turned back on him. Mal's want to obey her? Control over them. Lots didn't attack until she was there. Bean bag at ChloesEverybody thinks it's a trick that she hid until now.Powersharers—Orion can't stop pulling almost literallyA good use of a Honeypot
I will be talking about it on Libromancy https://libromancy.podbean.com/ on 09/25/22

  I spent a lot of my review of A Deadly Education (this book's predecessor) talking about how good the book felt and looked.  I will start out this review by saying that everything I said there regarding the aesthetics and feel of A Deadly Education holds for The Last Graduate.  The book looks amazing and feels wonderful to read on a purely physical sense.  With that out of the way let's get into the contents of The Last Graduate.    While the physical quality of The Last Graduate matches its predecessor, the actual text does not.  It's still a good book that will treat any fans of the first, but it doesn't feel like a true groundbreaking work the way the first book did.  If I had to point out one failure in The Last Graduate, it's that it doesn't introduce enough new things to justify its existence as a standalone novel.  Sequels can sometimes be hard to write because the intrigue of exploring a new world isn't there for a sequel the way it is for the first book in a series.  Typically authors get around this issue by simply expanding upon the ideas and concepts introduced in the first book.  The Last Graduate does not use this method nearly enough to keep the book fresh.  Like A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate takes place entirely within The Scholomance.  The Scholomance remains an awesome setting for a book, but it's a lot less intriguing when you know all about it.  Part of what made A Deadly Education so fun was learning about the weird tricks of the Scholomance.  This feeling of excitement naturally doesn't exist to nearly the same degree here.     I don't mean to make it sound like The Last Graduate is totally pointless.  Many plot threads from its predecessor are picked up and furthered in satisfying ways.  The main thing I'm talking about here is the El-Orion relationship, but plenty of other relationships are further explored.  We also see some legitimate growth from El, which is very fun to see.  The final chapters are also legitimately breathtaking up until the very last sentence (which perfectly sets up the conclusion of the trilogy).  There's definitely some good stuff here.    Ultimately The Last Graduate fails to live up to the lofty expectations set by its predecessor.  It's far from a bad book, it just left me wanting for more. 

This series is not good. It's not good in multiple ways, but let's just start from the beginning.

The main characters are about to graduate from the Scholomance and that means they need to find a way to do it without dying to a horde of monsters. Simple, right?

The thing about the Scholomance is that it is fucking awful. The food is shit and poisoned, you can't leave and there aren't even windows or a yard or anything, you have to do basically impossible schoolwork, including just super quick learning about 70000 languages, you can't get any belongings in once you enter, everything from showers to getting stationery from the closet is dangerous.
It's so DUMB. It's so unnecessarily bleak and edgy and “badass”. I just can't stand this whole thing of everything being bad and literally a whole world being invented just to be so emo about it.
And honest, it's not even well thought out. Half the book is spent on El mentally going through things to somehow patch up the gigantic stupid plotholes in this unnecessarily edgetastic nonsensical world. It's bad writing to keep telling and barely showing
Like yeeeeah, totally, it's productive to fucking get the kids murdered for going to grab some fucking pencils. That develops their skills in... what exactly?

Another thing is the super unhealthy relationship between El and Orion.
She keeps shitting on him and acting like a colossal bitch, but then gets territorial and hates others for being dicks to Orion. Or being too nice to him. Or being anything, because the only person who gets Orion is her and her alone and that is why she keeps calling him names.
Just because the magical world is shitty and corrupt doesn't mean her being shitty to him is any less of a bad thing. Such a typical abusive thing.
Before anyone start, NO, I do not care about life being shitty for El. That is no reason to be an ass to Orion. Who is an okay character. But his name is Orion Lake. Literally the stupidest, most fan fiction name EVER.

Things were also repetitive. How many scenes of characters going through an obstacle course do we really need? How many mentions of them going to lunch or to the bathroom together?
How much stream of consciousness BLAH BLAH BLAH?

The last scene had some nice things, that was okay, but this whole idea is just half-baked, kept somewhat afloat by constant expositional inner monologue. Like did the author just realise in book two that the food the kids eat needs to come from somewhere?

Honestly, it's not good. It's focusing on an aesthetic social media fad (dark academia) and the substance is not there.

This is one of the best audio books that I've ever listened to as the reader was perfect for the 1st person novel. The world building in this series is amazing because it is both detailed and simply described. And while the world of the novel is fantastical, it is highly relatable too. I cannot wait for the next book in this series!??

Orion, tell me you did not just do that. I mean, I knew you would, but I'm still mad about it.
I had a great time reading this. It's just fun. I like that El is so cranky, and I like that Orion gets giddy when El lets something romantic happen, even though he's hardwired to be a mal-killing machine. It's just fun, y'all.
Most of the book is just training, which can get a little tedious, but because we're constantly moving towards new goals, the story doesn't go stale.

2.5/5. Похоже автор начала сливать трилогию. Тональность текста изменилась: упор на хорор-школу снизился, ни сарказма, ни экшена, один несчастный “вот это поворот” в конце. Нас закидывают информацией о произошедшем в первой части, гасят недовыданным ЛОРОМ и только потом вспоминают про сюжет и необязательную (но как же без нее, блин) здесь любовную линию. Было скучно.