The Last Graduate

The Last Graduate (Scholomance 2) by Naomi Novik

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This is book two in Naomi Novik's Scholomance series.

In the first book, we were introduced to the Scholomance, an isolated educational facility where teenage wizards are confined for four years. Apparently, the world is so populated by evil, manna-consuming, entities, aka “mals”, who love the sweet taste of young wizards that wizard society has to exile its youngsters to a school where they can avoid the 9 out of 10 death rate in the real world. Unfortunately, the Scholomance is also infested with mals, so the death rate in the Scholomance is 3 out of 4.

The real death purge comes at graduation when seniors try to run across graduation hall, which has become thoroughly infested with mals. Consequently, all of the Scholomance activities are directed to learning to be one of the few survivors of the death race across the hall.

In the first book, we were introduced to Galadriel. El was at the low end of the social ladder as a loner “loser.” But El knows something no one knows, she's actually an incredibly gifted “Malificer,” a wizard with the ability to use dark magic. Where other kids are learning spells for cleaning their rules, El is being given spells on destroying armies and cities.

In book one, we see El start to move up the social ladder as she makes a few friends and begins to associate with Orion Lake. Orion is a hero - the unique individual with the ability to kill mals and the generous spirit to do so without being asked.

The second book picks up where the first book ended. At the close of the first book, El and her friends had helped the graduating seniors fix the machinery that cleansed the graduation hall of vermin. In this book, El is now a senior and must deal with her last year at the Scholomance, the question of what her class will discover in the graduation hall, what is to be done about the younger kids, and her own feelings about Orion.

The story makes for a gripping fun read as El intelligently and sarcastically negotiates her last year of the high school from Hell.

There will be a third book, so we may follow El out into the adult world.

The Last Graduate is the second book in the Scholomance trilogy. I had really enjoyed the first book during this summer, and I was looking forward to continuing this series (before I forgot everything that happened in the first book)!

The second installment was also quite enjoyable! I think middle-of-series books are harder to make more interesting - you're not fully in world-building mode, and you can't quite bring everything to a nice conclusion. However, my two favorite characters (the snarky, loner protagonist and the equally sarcastic school itself) both were able to continue to grow as characters, and able to throw a few curve balls as well. Both book one and book two end on cliffhangers, so I'm really glad that I started this series after it was finished because boy would I be mad if I had to wait to find out what happens next! I have a few other books in line but I think the third installment in this series will find its way into my hand relatively quickly.

I'm baffled. 1) How can the same author of Spinning Silver, which I found well written, rich and complex, have written this series, which I find the opposite? 2) I truly don't understand how this has a 4.2-star average rating on GoodReads. I tried to make it through after reading that if you liked A Deadly Education you'd like this one. I did like the first book, despite it being very info-dumpy it surprisingly didn't bother me. With this sequel it was all the worst aspects of the first amplified and none of the good. Well maybe the ending is good, like how it was with the first, but it's not worth it to keep going passed 77%.