I loved every word of this book and I’m so sad the series is over. It was so fun to be back with El and Orion and they were in for quite an adventure. I already can’t wait reread this one.

When we last left this series I was irate, because Novik had previously said this series was a duology and then THAT CLIFFHANGER! How dare! I thought the series was over and that I was going to have to throw the book against the wall.
This book makes up for that. Mostly.
The pacing of this book is pretty good, especially considering that it would feel out of place if there weren’t at least a BIT of moping after the events of book 2. The magic system starts to go a bit sideways in a way that felt a little convenient to me. But overall this is the conclusion that the series deserves. We see El figure out who she actually is and what she’s willing to fight for, when she (ingenuously) told us in the first book the answers to those questions were 1) she was an evil being and 2) nothing but her own survival was really worth fighting for.
Casual bi representation (sure to anger some and delight others)!

People are going to buy this book regardless so the only real question here is, will she stick the landing? And the answer is yes, she totally does. Love this trilogy and can't wait for it to be out so I can talk about it without spoilers!

Thank you so much to Del Rey Books for providing an ARC so that I might write this The Golden Enclaves review!

As I said in my review of A Deadly Education, I was pleasantly surprised and had my socks knocked off by this amazing series.

As soon as I finished The Last Graduate, I knew I needed The Golden Enclaves immediately. Thankfully, it was releasing in less than 2 months so acquiring an ARC was possible and I jumped straight into it.

There was a huge cliffhanger at the end of The Last Graduate and The Golden Enclaves picks up immediately where it left off.

A Deadly Education was touted to me as a darker Harry Potter, and now that the series is complete, I can confirm that it is as good as Harry Potter and better in every imaginable way.

The Golden Enclaves Review

I have to tell you, I was concerned going into The Golden Enclaves.

I don’t usually read other people’s reviews before reading a book, but I wanted to know if anyone else had gotten an ARC yet. The one I came across was a 2-star, which made me nervous.

Without reading the spoiler section, I saw them say the conclusion to a beloved series was disappointing.

I’m happy to tell you that is absolutely not the case. The Golden Enclaves is a breathtaking, whirlwind adventure that exceeded my expectations in every possible area, with the exception of one.

I’ll share my one disappointment in a spoiler section below. For now, this review of The Golden Enclaves is spoiler-free.

The Plot

As you can imagine from the title, the main focus of the book is really about El taking her sutras and building Golden Enclaves just as she’s always dreamed. However, she isn’t do it the way she wants.

As soon as she escapes the Scholomance, she discovers that the evil malificer attacking enclaves has struck again, and this time London is falling apart. Liesl contacts El for help when the weakened enclave comes under attack from a maw-mouth.

And so starts a string her swooping in to save failing enclaves as more come under attack from the mysterious evil-doer.

The Golden Enclaves is Full of Surprises

One of the great joys I find from reading is guessing things. I like to anticipate the plot twists and character motivations and predict what’s going to happen.

Most of the time I’m right. I’ve written a few books myself, and my brain is hardwired to dissect a story and understand plot devices.

So when I say The Golden Enclaves completely floored me, I want you to understand how massive a deal that is.

In both of the previous books, I was so engrossed in the story that I had no predictions whatsoever.

The characters and events just carried me along, and all the while Naomi Novik was laying the groundwork for the most ultimate of plot twists in The Golden Enclaves.

I didn’t even know she was doing it to me!

The realization that hit me about a full 60 pages before El towards the end of The Golden Enclaves was like a Mac truck hitting me at 75 miles and hour.

As soon as the theory formed in my brain, I scoured my mind for hints of it throughout the previous two books and they were there!

It’s a rare author that knows where Book 3 is going before they event start Book 1. Only two other authors I know are capable of such deep foreshadowing: Brandon Sanderson and J.K. Rowling.

I haven’t felt the emotion that washed over me upon my understanding of this crucial moment since Harry Potter.

The Golden Enclaves Spoiler Section

What Happened to Orion?

The Last Graduate left us with Orion shoving El out of the Scholomance and staying inside all by himself.

So as you can imagine, a significant portion of The Golden Enclaves is devoted to getting back to Orion.

Of course, when El left, Orion was staring down the maw-mouth Patience. And considering the only one capable of defeating a maw-mouth is El, she rightly assumes he’s dead.

So El’s goal is not to save Orion, but rather to kill Patience and end Orion’s suffering.

During this time, Liesl hooks up with El and in a moment of frazzled stress, El and Liesl have sex in an extra-dimensional space at Heathrow airport while waiting for a flight to New York.

What!?!

Okay, this was a shock to the system. Orion’s last words to El were “I love you,” and this occurred not 7-10 days earlier. Most of that time she spent bawling her eyes out.

Fastest rebound ever.

The Twisted Romance

Okay, okay. She believes that Orion is dead.

But about halfway through the book, they rescue Orion because, surprise (or not), he’s not dead. He managed to kill every single mal in the Scholomance, including Patience.

A few pages later, she’s having “I missed you” sex with Orion in the Woods near her yurt in Wales.

The real moment of anger about The Golden Enclaves’ romance comes a few chapters later when El once again has sex with Liesl. This time on an airplane.

Some may call me old fashioned, but this seems like a blatant disregard for the sanctity of a relationship between two people. In other words, she cheated on him.

I can excuse the first time.

She thought he was dead…

…but he’s not.

I just felt that this plot point was totally and completely unnecessary. The only purpose it served, as far as I could tell, was to endear Liesl to El so that El would accept her help, without which she would have be unable to save Orion.

Besides that, Liesl plays absolutely no further part in the story. Sure, she’s there, but she’s not necessary. She doesn’t do anything crucial. Nothing that needs her to have had sex with El, twice, anyway.

Oh, and did I mention that Orion is basically a shell of his former self the whole book. Or should I saw for like a quarter of the book, because Orion is absent for the entire first half and missing (or zombified) a good chunk of the second half, too.

The End of the Romance

Orion never finds out about Liesl, and that doesn’t really seem to matter because the ending of The Golden Enclaves makes it very clear that Orion is staying in the fixed Scholomance as a protector of the children for all time.

I liken this to Will Turner being aboard the Dutchman while Elizabeth Swan is forced to only see him on certain days of the year where he can come on land.

Because that’s exactly the deal El and Orion make.

El is going to travel the world fighting maw-mouths with her ragtag band of heroes, and the only time she and Orion will see each other is between school terms, which apparently will be a thing now.

That’s it.

The End.

The end of the book, and the end of their romance.

It’s a satisfactory book ending, as book endings go. We have a vision of the future and can imagine it ourselves.

But the lack of a Happily Ever After somewhat puts a damper on the mood of an otherwise fantastic book.

Final Thoughts on The Golden Enclaves (Spoiler-Free)

The Golden Enclaves is action-packed from cover to cover. I had a hard time putting this down, and certainly didn’t want to.

El is an exquisitely fantastic character as always. The witticisms are as great as ever and I just love being in her head.

While The Golden Enclaves lacks any sort of massive world-ending battle like we saw in The Last Graduate, the stakes are no less intense and the story absolutely amazing.

The plot twist, or revelation, is one of the greatest I can remember reading in recent years, and instantly catapulted The Scholomance to my top 5 series of all time.

I rated the previous two books 5 out of 5 stars without hesitation, and unfortunately I couldn’t do the same her despite all the good things I’ve said (check out the spoiler section).

I have to knock off a star for the way the romance was handled in this book.

The Golden Enclaves receives 4 out of 5 stars for me.

The Golden Enclaves is the final book of the Scholomance trilogy and I'm glad to be able to say that it is just as wonderful and satisfying as I hoped that it would be. It begins directly after the end of The Last Graduate, with El trying (and mostly failing) to process graduation. The first part of the book moves a bit slowly because of this, as El definitely has issues and spends a lot of time being depressed and angry. However, once the action starts to move the book is pretty much perfect and offers some amazing bits of world building that pull the entire series together. Here we finally get the full story behind enclaves and the world power structure of the magic users, as well as resolution for El and her friends (also, I kind of love Liesel now, she was awesome in this book).

I really don't want to say too much here because the book is better experienced on your own. I will say that when I finished The Golden Enclaves I immediately picked up my copy of the first book in the trilogy so that I could read it again. This is a truly fantastic trilogy, and one of the best things about it is that it's all about choosing to be kind in a world where it would be so simple to choose the easy option. Over and over again El chooses kindness over selfishness, and through her struggle she slowly begins to convince others to do the same. She shows them that there is another choice. I love that these books don't act as if kindness is easy. El struggles constantly when it would be so easy to give in, and it makes her story wonderful to read. With this trilogy Naomi Novik has really cemented herself as a must read for me. I'm sorry that this series is over, only because it was so wonderful. I can't wait to see what Novik does next.

Really fantastic final entry in this amazing series. The character arcs end quite tidily, but maybe at the expense of some bigger drama? The late-game villain fizzles out as the very end gets maaaaaaybe a little too kumbaya for my taste. I mean, I still cried cathartically!! All I want is for El to be happy!!!

I'm really excited to read this series back to back, without the agony of The Last Graduate's cliffhanger.

I have already read the first two books in this series, and have loved them and everything else Naomi Novik has ever written, but I was wondering how the author would handle this volume, AFTER graduation, and what on earth she would have the longsuffering El DO.
I didn't need to worry. This was a great trilogy ender (although if there are more El stories coming I will totally read them!)
I think Novik kept the excitement and pace up perfectly as the graduating class tries to clean up the mess the elders have made. I love these characters and really enjoyed more time with them.
Excited to get this for our library and promote the series as my favorite of the recent surge in "dark academia." This appeals to both longtime SFF readers and teens and newcomers and I am thrilled the book was so good.

A beautiful ending for Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy. Everything you hope for and dread. Friendships made in the Scholomance becoming life long alliances and loyalty. I love the characters and their striving to right some of the wrongs in their world. It made me laugh and cry. I will miss this world and these characters.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC.

I have been aching for this book ever since the ridiculously unfair cliffhanger ending of The Last Graduate, and I am thrilled and relieved to report it did not disappoint. The entire book is full of even more and more satisfying twists than its two predecessors, wrapping up the trilogy in a way that feels right and also leaves the reader desperate for more.

You don’t often get a whole new world building in book three of a series, it’s a lot to unpack for an established series. I knew coming out of the Scholomance there would have to be some, based on almost no information given about the enclaves interior in previous books or how they truly operate. There’s also a lot of explaining and re-explaining, more so than normal for a third book in a established series. So it felt like the first quarter of this reads like a first book. Then the rest of the info dumps and introspective monologues (and there’s A LOT of them, like almost every other paragraph) can get tedious at times and almost felt unedited. All that aside, here is what I did like. El’s grief, trauma and ptsd were well written and very relatable. It definitely punched me in the feels and made me cry more than a few times. Once the gang gets backs together it really starts getting going on this quest that things just keep piling on top of, however it moves along quickly after that. Orion made me sad, El and Orion made me sad. All their scenes I cried. I did enjoy meeting everyone families and enclaves. As well as the differences in each enclave. I liked that people showed up for El even when she thought she wasn’t worthy of it or didn’t realize the impact she has made on them. I’ve really enjoyed El’s journey. I think I cried the entirety of chapter 16. That was a nice and tidy HEA and I have thoroughly enjoyed this entire series. This would have been a five star read for me if it didn’t have so many info dumps and inner monologues, it was just too much.

I very much enjoyed this final installment of the Scholomance trilogy. I was concerned the final book wouldn't live up to the others as it's not set in the Scholomance, but it was a fun adventure! The Golden Enclaves was quite different than the prior two, and the world-building wasn't quite as precise, but that didn't distract from my enjoyment of it. 4.5 stars

I love this series. While reading, I wondered if Naomi Novik could pull off an ending in one book, but she did. I thought I had the world figured out, but then there were twists to show how horrible this magic world is. Everything had a reason. Do a reread of the previous book(s). There are a lot of characters, and there isn’t a reintroduction of everyone.

This review is based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

3.5/5

I've had a great time with the Scholomance series overall. I had some quibbles with the pacing and logic in this book (it felt like the characters took some logical leaps on a few notable occasions), but I liked El's character growth and developing friendships, and the aftermath of the plan to rescue everyone from the Scholomance. There were a few major reveals that represented the climax of the major mysteries of the series--some where quite satisfying (such as the discovery of the source of the destroyed enclaves) while others felt a little convoluted (such as the source of Orion's power). Nevertheless, this was compulsively readable, and a good ending to the trilogy.

I've waited so long for this final book in the trilogy and it wildly exceeded my expectations. I love El's simmering anger at the petty annoyances and deep unfairness of life. The character and world building in this series is top notch. Naomi Novik does a wonderful job of ending this series and leaving us wanting more. If you're looking for a traditional happily ever after, read this book and you'll get something much much better. I've always recommended A Deadly Education to my book clubs and in reader's advisory programming, now I can recommend the entire trilogy!