This wasn't quite as strong as the first book, but I think I generally expect that with second books in s trilogy. The last 1/3 of the book really picked up and took off though, and the ending was AMAZING. It's been a while since a book made my heart pound like that, and the cliffhanger was as brutal as it was awesome. Can't wait for book 3!

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Del Rey and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC!

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, if 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.

I NEED MORE! The best authors are skilled torturers and Naomi Novik tortured, slayed, and put that candy cherry on top in this one. You liked El the first time around? Snarky, sarcastic, clever El is your favorite sour patch kid you can't help but savor. The way her mind just keeps moving at 100 miles/hour really brings out your own vicarious anxiety and you can't put down the book until the very last page, and STILL you can't scratch that itch quite yet! Orion and El have the best dynamic, a perfectly fumbling romance with quirkiness to the nth degree. Monsters, action, and powers exceed godly level; it's Dragon Ball Z, Survivor, and Star Wars/Hogwarts all in one. Without giving away spoilers, I can't really say much more except for THIS BOOK IS WORTH IT AND THEN SOME. This series surpasses all others I have read in the past 3 years and that's saying something from a hardcore book nerd.

I cannot thank (and curse because the next book is so far away from publication) NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group enough for this wicked opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Last Graduate immediately throws you back in to world of El. The reader gets romance, action, and comedy packed into a fantastic fantasy read. Each time I finish a Naomi Novik book I am left crying, wanting to hop into the next book. I will be anxiously awaiting the third book.

I read The Last Graduate almost as quickly as I did A Deadly Education, though this time I heroically refrained from pulling an all-nighter to finish reading it (I only stayed up till 3 AM and read the last quarter in the morning, such restraint!). It picks up the very minute that book one left off, and, in true Scholomance form, ends on another gigantic cliffhanger… so I’m already impatient for book three.

This series has so many things I love. Dark academia, a semi-sentient magical school, a Hunger-Games level of messed up dystopian despair… I was thinking about how to describe the Scholomance (the magical construct of a school that wizard children vie to attend because the 1 in 4 chances of survival inside of it are significantly higher than enduring puberty out in the regular world where “mals”, or magical monsters, hunt teenage wizards to eat their “mana”, magical life force energy), and came up with “a school-sized, dilapidated, darkly utilitarian Room of Requirement infested with monsters” which I think sums it up pretty well.

As I was reading this book in the dark of night, I paused to think about why I so thoroughly enjoy how creepy and murderous the Scholomance is. When I was little, I knew there weren’t really monsters in the darkness under the bed, but I was just worried enough that there might be that I’d always run and jump onto my bed after turning out the light to avoid exposing my feet for too long. So a place actually infested with bad monsters lurking in the shadows behind everyday objects, waiting to grab your ankles or worse, feels oddly right. I also have always loved the semi-sentient changeable magical object idea, and a school-sized version of that is very satisfying, especially when it’s this twisted. And: a very difficult wizard school that requires you to be proficient in many languages and study arcane texts, also yes. In addition, the series does a good job of discussing privilege and the consequences of biased institutions.

I’d say on balance, I didn’t enjoy The Last Graduate quite as much as I did the first book, mostly because there was just less new stuff to learn about the school and about El and Orion and the other characters. That’s not to say that there wasn’t plenty of new and interesting information, but it paled in comparison to encountering the world for the first time, and I didn’t feel like the character-driven parts were quite as strong as in the first book, nor was it quite as darkly humorous (maybe more darkly hopeful? Which wasn’t bad, just not as entertaining). I could take or leave the romantic plotline; I don’t find Orion to be a character so much as a plot device, and while this book imbued him with just enough seemingly real emotions to make me doubt my original suspicions that he might not be a real person at all, I’m not totally convinced!

I was kind of hoping that this book would take us outside the walls of the Scholomance, because I’m dying to know what happens outside, but that will have to wait for book three!

The Last Graduate is due for publication in the US on September 28, 2021.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC.

It was so much fun to return to the world of the Scholomance!! I adored A Deadly Education and navigating the world through the internal dialogue of El's snarky, grumpy perspective. The Last Graduate struggled a bit from second book syndrome, the bar was set quite high and the first 50% of the book was a bit disappointing but still quite fun and interesting. The pacing seemed a bit off at the beginning, too much explaining and not enough doing (i.e. I wanted more dialogue less explaining). There was also a bit too much rehashing of what happened in the fist book, restating of how someone feels, and over-explaining of this or that.

But it all picked up in the second half and the action, character development, interactions, discovery was great. Again, not as good as the first book, but kept me on the edge of my seat (or rather my bed ;) ). There are still a lot of questions in my mind that were not answered in this book and therefore set up the finale quite well. And of course that cliff hanger!!!

My love of the first book has not diminished in one bit, even though this second installment was not as good, I am 100% in for the last book. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for providing me this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The story starts immediately when the first finishes. El now is a senior student, things will be different, new classes, new danger and the most important: Now she has allies (maybe friends) and access to resources.

El is still sassy, sarcastic, and rude but here is character development, she now talks with people and be part of a team, she does not need to continue alone. I like the friendships, they are solid, they accept El even with her thorns and mistrust, and I live for El and Orion scenes, they were awkwardly adorable, we need more Orion scenes.

I like more that the first book, the creepy school is even more creepy and dangerous, El and her friends they are preparing for graduation battle, creating strategies, and finally, El makes plans for when she graduated.

PS: The ending!! Beware of the tortuous cliffhanger, read at your own risk and I hope you have a time machine, the third book is a must.

After being introduced to a totally unusual world and school in A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate picks up right where the first Scholomance book leaves off which makes sense because none of the students get any holidays either. El is starting her senior year better than the other 3 years since she has finally acquired friends and is coming to terms with her own dark powers. The second book in a proposed trilogy, it is assumed that readers will have read the first book and indeed this book is much easier to follow since you've already been introduced to the incredibly unusual Scholomance and understand how it works and what dangers are out there for its students.
Seniors only have classes the first semester and then train to leave the school (running the gauntlet through the evil mals who will try and kill them as they leave) during the second semester. We see El maturing, as do her friends including Orion Lake, the boyfriend she has been warned against by a brief note from her mother. El is perhaps one of the grumpiest heroines that you will find but for all of her pessimism, the love and training of her mother shine through even as she tries to push back at it. This was such a fun read and I'm sure I will be rereading it before too long because all of Naomi Novik books reveal something new every time you read them.

Thank you to Net Galley for my ARC

Book two in the Scholomance series takes off right after the end of the first book. The cleansing they were able to accomplish was a success….but it left the school changed. El is having to adapt by finding out more secrets of the school, and she seems to be changing too.

The first book was amazing, and I loved this book too. Naomi Novik wrote one of my favorite books, Spinning Silver, and this book manages to be completely different, but just as well written and compelling.

El is a really interesting character. Gritty, real, scared, brave; she is very complex and while sometimes not being likable, you really come to admire her. The way she changes as a response to what is going on is very organic and never feels forced. I like how she interacts and fits with other characters, both minor and major. It’s just fascinating seeing things through her eyes.

The writing never had that horrible self-aware and self-indulgent quality. It was fresh and authentic. Some books feel like they take work to read, but this was an effortless joy. The world she created feels fully fleshed out, almost tangible. It is clever and original.

Have nothing to fault in this book. I can’t wait for the next one to come out! Excited to see where she takes this story.

#TheLastGraduate #NetGalley

Here's a phase you'll never hear me say again: "I love the mice so much". Precious' little foul attitude had me in stitches. El and Orion's deepening relationship was perfectly written AND THAT ENDING! <<swoonworthy>> Watching El mature and develop as a character was wonderful. I was also releaved to see book 2 pick up exactly where the first book ended. It added to the slightly panicked vibe Scholomance has as a school (and a character in it's own right).

The in depth description of all the kids school work got a little tedious in this book. I lost interest and began skimming those sections part-way through. They just seemed to go on and on. I realize this book is about the school though, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Overall I enjoyed the story. I would've liked to hear more about what was happening outside the school but that sets up the next book nicely (I hope). The cute descriptions of El's freshmen were hilarious. El's character in general is hilarious. This book was absolutely everything that the first book was missing. I'll absolutely be buying a hardback edition when it releases. That fantastic ending just did it for me. Great book.

This was a great second book in The Scholomance series. Continuing where the first book left off, Novik did really well building the friendships between El and her alliance friends, as well as with Orion Lake. It was nice for once to see a romance blossom between two people over a larger time span than just a few days, as many young adult books do. Novik's writing really made you care about what happened to the different characters and she did a great job of keeping track of all of them throughout the book.

"The Last Graduate" is the second installment in Naomi Novik's "The Scholomance" series. It picks up right where "A Deadly Education" left off, with El getting a message from her mother saying to stay away from Orion Lake. The rest of the book follows El and her friends on her senior year as they get ready for graduation and their escape from the Scholomance. But it seems like the school is out for El, purposely putting her in deadly situations, until she figures out what it is that the school really wants.

Once again, Novik's world building is amazing! There is so many details in the world and the way the magical community works. While I love this aspect of the story, the way it is presented is sometimes daunting. Information about the magical world is often inserted in the middle of a major event in the story, which ends up disrupting that event, so that when you go back to it, you kind of forget what exactly is going on. That is really my biggest pet peeve about the book. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this one. Even if that ending was totally evil. Now I have to wait patiently for the next book!

4.3 - Novik, you are killing me! I was so happy to get my hands on this ARC and neglected everything for a while to power read this. El really becomes her adult self in this book. You can see it start shifting in her mind and she doesn't want to look at it too hard, but she knows. She knows what she has to do. I LOVE that the school has a say in what it wants from her and all the students too. I CANNOT handle the ending and I also wanted to knee a certain someone. I wished for a little more Orion & El action throughout the book, rather than just at the end, but I still drank it up greedily. I adore the friendships that were solidified and created with El, and she's literally me hero. This book was more heavy in the construction of the Scholomance itself, which I tend not to like in other books, but really didn't mind the details here. It kept changing shape in my mind. I REALLY wanted to know what El's mom's message meant, and I thought I had an idea, but it didn't get solved yet. Guess I have to wait for all the answers in book #3! AH!

I'm still not over that ending and it's been a week since I finished! Curses, Naomi Novik, because I have to wait to see how it all resolves.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the eARc because this book is amazing.

I'm not going to recap the description and I'll try to avoid big spoilers because it's not out until the fall, but I could not put this book down.

Just as in A Deadly Education, the reader is deep into El's consciousness and everything is filtered through that lens. And El is always thinking, calculating, and in this installment starting to hope. She has more than alliances now, she has friends. And those friendships inspire her creativity and skills. She's not just thinking about getting out alive now, she's thinking about how to upend EVERYTHING. And oh, the school is thinking too...

El is really reflecting more of her parents and her parents' legacies throughout the book and she's becoming a leader. She'll just have to learn to trust herself and her friends if she's going to survive and win.

Loved this world, the students, the school, the creative monsters, and most of all El, her besties, and Orion. Five stars and please give me book 3 NOW!

More of the same.
Meaning, humor, suspense, and magic abound! Keep 'em coming!
This review is in exchange for a free e-galley copy of this book from NetGalley.

Ahh, that ending!
We're back in the Scholomance for El's senior year, as she and her friends try to figure out how to graduate without dying. Although the first half of this book is really slow and a bit hard to get through, the second half pays off as El realizes the repercussions of all the action from the first book and plans for how she can help others escape. There's also the matter of El and Orion's relationship, which progresses despite lots of awkwardness and snarky resistance to caring for anyone by El.
At times it could feel like there was so much information and context given, but I found myself not minding that. It fit with the idea of 4000 teens locked in a tower trying to kill them and the mental gymnastics that students go through with every action and encounter. The relationship between El and Orion is honestly the best part of the book- they're a sort of snarky sulky mal-killing power couple, but I also really enjoyed El continuing to forge friendships, despite the world being inclined to believe that El is the wizard version of the anti-christ. There are hints of the outside world in this book with events happening to the Bangkok enclave, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the world opens up in the third book.

Naomi, Naomi, Naomi... May I call you Naomi? You've so thoroughly played with my emotions at this point that I feel like we're on a first-name basis. First off- how dare? I didn't think you could give me even more anixety over the course of a single novel than you did in A Deadly Education, but I was wrong. So wrong.

But also wow. This could be the focus of a master class on writing morally gray characters and giving them the tools to grow without completely 180-ing their personality in an unrealistic way. In addition to that, my heart was sort of pounding out of my chest in that last chapter and, OF COURSE, I'm left with a another cliff hanger that will have me biting my fingernails down to the quick until the third book is released.

Overall 10 out of 5, absolutely outstanding world-building, beautifully diverse cast, and about 9 characters I am deeply invested in. Will be preordering a copy and closely following the next release.

I never have high expectations for sequels. The Last Graduate, however, was just as impressive as A Deadly Education. The continuing character development of El and her friends felt absolutely right to me. The cliffhanger ending literally made me yell out loud, much to my family’s consternation. This book is action packed with spells, mals, romance and the skulduggery of competing enclaves as El battles to get her friends out of the graduation gates alive. Excellent read!

Unfortunately, I found El's inner rambly monologue to be too much to deal with so I had to DNF this one unfortunately, which is a shame because the premise seems so good.

Although I didn’t like this one as much as I did the first one, I’m still glad I got to read it and it was an good follow up. I can definitely see people really enjoying this one.