The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik: Book Review

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Keep far away from Orion Lake.

The Last Graduate, the second book of the Scholomance series, picks up from this cliffhanger with all the brilliance of the first book - and more! The book follows El through her last year at the Scholomance as her friends (yes, she realizes she has friends!), and she try to rescue every student from the world's maleficaria until the very last graduate.

El's character growth is considerable in this book, always listening to her conscience and driving the story forward - her bubble of 'us' grows from one to three to dozens to hundreds, her sarcasm and impertinence notwithstanding. Orion's character arc provides a great complement to El's as he finally finds himself looking beyond just fighting mals and cares about something for himself.

The world-building is well done, especially as we hear it from El's snarky point of view. We find out more about how this world works along with the magic system. The Scholomance itself is finally seen as an individual entity with (artificial or natural) intelligence as it 'protects all the wise-gifted children of the world'. It actively prods El and the other students towards definite plans and conclusions, even driving the story at certain points.

Novik's masterful writing interspaces the story with world-building as well as character growth. Many secondary characters are given time and space to grow and overcome the politics of the outside world, some even proving we can't truly know what people would rise to do in a crisis. It was wonderful to see many people take the reins on different projects and working together in the end. The book, on the whole, makes for a great second part of the series and ends with a cliffhanger (of course) for the third and final book!

Thanks to NetGalley and the Random House Publishing group for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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[One star for the premise and the whole book; One star for the characters; One star for the writing; One star for the story; One star for the world-building - Five stars in total.]

Overall, a definite recommendation to pick up this series!

Scholomance #1: A Deadly Education Review
Scholomance #3: The Golden Enclaves Review

View all my reviews