A Deadly Education, first in the Scholarmance series, was one of my top books for 2020 and so I had high expectations for my most anticipated read of 2021, The Last Graduate. After being left with quite the cliff-hanger in the first novel, I was extremely happy to get my hands on this novel and dig right back into the dark academia and suspense that left me wondering what would be happening between my favorite couple foil, the dark and mysterious, El, and the oblivious and heroic, Orion.

To start with what I enjoyed, this book seamlessly brought me right back into the setting and storyline with the dark atmosphere I love, characters I was familiar with, and curiosity of what would happen next in the novel. It was great to see El grow out of her shell even further in this novel and find trusting relationships, overcome negative friendships, and become a mentor of younger students. I was happily surprised to find that many more characters came into focus in this sequel and the depth of their characterization really drew me in to them as more than just side characters, but other students to root for and follow on their journey. Once again, this plot had action, action, and action that kept me rooted to the story. Whether it was monsters, the school, or evil students, so much was constantly happening in the story and it was impossible to not get sucked into the drama and conflicts.

Now, there were a few issues I had. One being, the ending. Yet another cliffhanger and even more abrupt than last time. Also, the relationship between El and Orion seemed to fizzle for me. Orion in general seemed to disappear for long periods of time and his character just didn’t connect as it had previously. Lastly, I did feel that there were some descriptions in the novel that had me skimming due to secondary stories and details that were drawn out a bit more than I cared for.

Overall, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first, but it was still thrilling and captivating to the point where I couldn’t put it down until I finished it. I loved the atmosphere and setting and I am already anxiously, impatiently waiting for the third book!

If you loved really A Deadly Education you’ll love this sequel that continues to follow El’s time at Solomance. During the first book I often found El to not be a likeable character but in this book she definitely grew on me. Her and her friends fight the monsters of the school and the book does a good job of highlighting how social status can have a huge effect. I loved the friendships and the character development as well as the shocking ending.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of ‘The Last Graduate’ by Naomi Novik. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

I totally wasn’t expecting to be approved for this one so yay! After the ending of the first book I was eager to dive into the second. The world in this story is so interesting and vivid. And at the beginning I thought we were going to get a fast-paced action-filled book similar to the first one. But the pacing was much different and I think the book suffered a bit for that. The school isn’t attacking this time so that sense of danger is lost. There are long stretches of the characters planning and sitting around and even they seemed bored. While there were some interesting new elements like the gym training ground setting and learning more about El’s magic, this book just didn’t grip me as much as the first one did.

However the cliffhanger got me though and I will be picking up the next book. I also think I preferred the audiobook of the first one and I would have liked to have read this one as an audiobook too. Maybe I’ll try and pick up the third as an audiobook.

3/5 stars

Coming off of the cliffhanger of the last book I went into this with hopeful wonder about what it all meant. While that was kind of put on the backburner a bit in this installment it still had its enjoyable elements. El and Orion's relationship kind of fizzles until the end of the book. However, I really liked the coming together of the characters as they worked out a way to all survive graduation. This is going to be a polarizing book in terms of enjoyment. Readers will either love it or hate it. This one is just as wordy and info dumpy as the 1st book. It also ends on another cliffhanger because apparently that is how you keep people wanting to come back.

Thank you Netgalley for an e-arc of this book.

Let me start by saying I do love this series and I’m anxiously awaiting the third installment.

That being said I think this one suffered from Second Book Syndrome a bit. There was a lot of explaining, a lot of telling, and a lot less showing. Character interactions didn’t really pick up until the last quarter of the book and I felt like it was an awful lot of exposition and politicking. Then finally in the last quarter it moved like lightening and everything happened in an instant.

Don’t get me wrong: the background info was unique and interesting. But after how A Deadly Education exploded in my mind, this felt a bit more like a sparkler after the grand finale. Still fun and enjoyable but not nearly as mine blowing.

However this one does leave you with a gut wrenching cliff hanger and I’m dying to see what happens.

Love this book. It's such a great follow up to the first one, I love the dark academia vibes so much. I'm left with so many questions in the best possible way. I hope there is more of this universe from Naomi Novik.

Naomi Novik envisions a complex fantasy world in which wizards go to The Scholomance for training and education; graduation can be fatal. It follows A Deadly Education as the second lesson Scholomance. El hopes to join one of the wizardly enclaves like New York. She plots with her friend Orion to get all the students graduated and into the outside alive. Great plot.

The sequel in Novik's Scholomance series was just as satisfying as I'd hope—deepening the world-building, elevating the stakes, and giving us more time with these characters I've grown to love. For such a long book, I flew through it in no time—so readable and vividly realized!

Loved it! Even if I ended this book in agony, I loved it just like I loved the first one. Can’t wait for the 3rd!

The most important part of this synopsis is this: The magic of the Scholomance trilogy will continue in 2022!
Run, don't walk to get your hands on The Last Graduate. Second books in a series are hard. You have to grow your characters without dismissing everything from book one and make sure they have adequate conflict and resolution to want to keep reading when book three comes.

Novik hits all those points and more in this sequel. El is such a captivating character and her growth during these literal life and death school days are compelling, interesting, and magical. I love the magic system Novik has built where magic comes with a price. You can pay it now or later. I love the way El's mind works and how she comes to new ideas and conclusions. She is a remarkable character and would still be even if she wasn't the most powerful one in the Scholomance.

In their last year at the Scholomance, El realizes that maybe the school wants more for it's students and maybe she has the power to help save more than herself or her team, but she can't do it alone. The stakes are high in this sequel and I literally can't see where the story is going to go from here, but I can tell you that I can't wait to see what happens.

The second best part of the synopsis is so good I can't write it better. "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."

I really enjoyed this final book in the Scholomance trilogy. Though this genre is generally not one I read often, I really enjoyed the entire series, as there was so much more depth to these books than I expected. The characters were really well drawn out, and I felt like I was there with them. The pages kept turning and I just had to read one more chapter. I highly recommend this series.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

The concept behind this series has always been good and remains so (Hogwarts, except it’s trying to kill all the students!), but the plot hit a bit of a skid in the second installment in the series.

The unique and clever magical system and excellent setting make up for a lot, but when the whole story was building toward the gauntlet of graduation (including several hundred pages of trial and error in this book) and what we end up with is…well, you’ll have to read it and see, but it isn’t great.

Novik has always been far better with detail and concept than action, so I wasn’t expecting a flawlessly written, heart-pounding escape from the Scholomance. But I did expect a lot better than what we got, and the plot still has the same problem that it has always had (there is no real villain or greater enemy), and now has a new issue, which is that this is a magical school setting series that will presumably now need to take place somewhere other than the school.

What we got here is certainly enough to keep one reading, and El remains an excellent heroine, even though the relationship between she and Orion has gone from hilarious and sweet to obnoxious and cringey.

I’m hoping the plot will find its footing again in the third installment of the series, but we’re pretty far from where we need to be as of the conclusion of this book.

The first book in this series took me a bit of time to get into because the first person narrative of a character just filled with so much anger and isolation came off teenage angsty and I couldn't connect with it right away. But I think El has acquired quite a bit of self-awareness and it's become much more of this school group dealing with trauma (while still trying to avoid getting murdered on a consistent basis). The book does a much better job with having El understand the people around her, allowing the reader to connect with these other characters as well, while still maintaining her personality and how she interacts with those people outwardly. I really connected with this book on a strong emotional level, I cried several times, both of happiness and sadness. The book does such a good job of the brutal math calculation of life and how much suffering and anger that generates for El, and how much it drowns and wastes and shames any skills that aren't fighting for survival, and what the loss of that is.

I think the last part of the book is going to overshadow most of the discussion regarding this book, which is a shame. I had a lot of questions going into this book of where the series is going to go from here, none of which are getting answered other than, there better be another book coming.

I ended up borrowing the finished copy of the audiobook from my library for The Last Graduate. I DNF'd this book at 40%. It felt identical to the first book, which I didn't really love. So, I don't feel the need to continue the story if it's just going to be a copy of the first book with different classes and similar fights with the demon things.

I have so many thoughts about this book! Some good and some not so good. Where to begin???

This is the second novel I’ve read by Naomi Novik, the first being A Deadly Education and I am ready to admit that I am not a fan of her writing style. I know! I know! Ms. Novik has a huge following and I hope I’m not shunned for this opinion. It is just a personal preference. There is just too much explanation in the first half of this book (and it was the same way in A Deadly Education). The second half of The Last Graduate is better than the first half and that is why I gave it four stars, although it probably really deserves a 3.5.

The Last Graduate picks up immediately after the ending of A Deadly Education. When I completed that first book I was invested in the story. I cared about El and the few friends she had made. I was ready to see how their senior year went and to see who survives the massacre that is graduation. Unfortunately, this novel began slowly and my interest declined. Why do these chapters have to be so long? I enjoyed getting to know El’s friends better and my favorites of course are Aadhya, Liu, and even Chloe. Their character development was much appreciated. Orion has less page time here, but the magnetic draw between him and El is pretty intense. El’s character development was great toward the middle of the book and I enjoyed seeing her become the leader she is meant to be. This book took me three weeks to read, which is a long time for me. I forced myself to pick up the book for the first two weeks because it was so boring. Then right around 30% it picked up and it only took me a few days to finish it. When I read the end I will be honest I was not thrilled that it ended on a cliffhanger. I really don’t want to read another one of these stories. But I will because I need to know how this all ends. I will schlep through another tortuous beginning because I know that the ending will be worth it. Ms. Novik does endings very well.

The Good
The ending - Wow! I was sort of expecting it, but when it happened I was still shocked!
Perseverance - I LOVED how the characters came together in the end and worked as a team. That was amazing!
Character Development - Characters like Aadhya, Liu, Chloe, and Orion are more fleshed out.

The Not So Good
Exposition - It’s too much. Pages of internal dialogue about random things that spiral into more random thoughts. I can appreciate a good backstory, but this was just a mess. There is no way I could ever remember all the info dump that happens throughout the ENTIRE novel.
So many characters - It was hard to keep track of who was who and what Enclave they were in or who they were connected to.
Timing - This book drags so much. The first half is dull. The chapters are long. El just continues to ramble internally about everything.
Another book - Ugh. I really was ready to be done with this series. Please Ms. Novik, write an interesting beginning to book three and stop all the internal dialogue about random things. I cannot take much more.

This is no Hogwarts. As a lover of all things magical I expected more I guess. I hated the Scholomance and frankly still do. I didn’t jive with the “evil” school trying to kill its occupants and I feel the explanation of things was pretty convoluted. In all the years that this school has been in existence no graduates came out and told their parents how messed up it was inside?? I find it extremely hard to believe that the adults were so lazy and preoccupied that they wouldn’t have been trying to fix the system somehow from the outside. In what reality would parents just blindly send their children to an unsafe school and hope for the best? I mean they just stop general maintenance? These parents all suck!

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and Naomi Novik for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Holy cliffhanger!

Finally, we are back in The Scholomance, a dark world full of monsters and magic that I honestly cannot get enough of. It’s their final year, and El, Orion and their friends must survive in order to graduate. But will they make it out alive?

I love the storytelling and how well Novik crafts the bits of world-building while simultaneously developing each character in a way that keeps you entertained. I went into this book hoping for more action and more romance, and this sequel definitely delivered! I just love El’s character so much!

Overall, I felt like the story exceeded my expectations, however there was a big part of the book where I felt it dragged on much too long, this is my only reason for giving 4-stars. I think it may just me, but I thought it was a little too lengthy in general and I wanted it to move faster, but that ending almost makes me think I should read it again, or I suppose I’ll just lose sleep while I wait anxiously for the next book.

I can’t reveal much more about the ending, but be prepared to be distressed!

Thank you to @DelReybooks for my advanced e-galley in exchange for an honest review!

2.5 stars. The second book in the Scholomance series didn’t pull me along as much as the first book, unfortunately. I found the amount of prose narrative to be way too much and it acted to pull me out of the action rather than make me feel a part of the story. Much of the story was long winded and repetitive, to the point that I found myself skimming and feeling a bit bored. And I HATED to feel this way because the first book was so incredibly fascinating! Overall, it’s very “meh” for a sequel and I’m hopeful that the final book will really bring the series back to a good place.

El has spent three years at the Scholomance just trying to stay alive. Now, she has allies and hope that she’ll graduate and make it out. But the school is pushing her, targeting her more. And the more it gives, the more determined she is to succeed, to get out and take the others with her.

El is a strong, sensitive, and sarcastic character. Even those who don’t like her are drawn to her. In a scary school full of maleficaria, El can hold her own and help those around her (whether she wants to or not). Wonderful story! Friendship, a bit of romance, and danger throughout it all. Read Deadly Education first. Cannot wait for the next!

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.

Janine: Thank you! My grade actually rose after that and I’ve read it multiple times (sometimes in its entirety, sometimes just parts of it). I also put it on my best of 2020 list.

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.

Spoiler: Show

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.

I am very late in reviewing this novel! May Naomi Novik and publisher forgive me. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Last Graduate is find our heroine (maybe if her dark prophecy is avoided) Galadriel in her senior year of the Scholomance. While she finds herself with some hard won allies and friends, it seems the school itself is out to get her....or could it have different plans?

It's difficult to talk about this novel because there are so many AMAZING details; battles, outrageous plans, heroism, and another cliff hanger ending that left me shrieking when I finished the final page. I do not want to spoil anything, so I will leave my review with this, Naomi Novik has once again created a world that feels both real and fantastical with actual consequences. I cannot wait for book three, it's going to be good!