The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) By Naomi Novik

Shima

WHAT.THE.HECK.WAS.THAT.ENDING.

The second Scholomance book is everything you would want after the first one, except it's darker and more delicious.
Except, the ending will leave you in pieces.

Note. I grew up with the generation who waited a year for the next book, after watching beloved characters fall into hell in
The Mark of Athena. This was worse.

Pre-publication:
Reading the first book in a series the day it comes out might be all fun and good until
you realise that means you have
exactly the maximum possible waiting time before the sequel.

I regret nothing
I think

There isn't even a publishing date yet.

Update:
We have a page-count! (Too short, anything would be too short...)
We have a synopsis! (Too vague, What will that message mean for El and Orion?)
We have a publishing date (Much too far away, but hey, a girl's gotta have something to live for.)

ELLIAS (elliasreads)

S T U P I D.

I'm giving this 1 STAR for that ending I don't care how petty I'm being...
The only reason I picked this one up straight after the first one was because of the cliffhanger and here we have yet another fucking cliffhanger- it's the way I'm being played right now!!!! 😡

I still don't know what this series is about and what is happening 60% of the time and yet I still had a good time. But apparently I'm only here for a good time and not a long time because that ending.....

STUPID!!!!!

Anyways this was good so 4 STARS.

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Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽

On sale now! I can't even say how much I loved this book ... okay, maybe except for the jaw-dropping ending. But STILL! If you've read the first book, definitely read this one, even if you weren't so excited by
A Deadly Education. If you haven't, read both!! Here's my full review, first posted on
FantasyLiterature.com:

The Last Graduate completely sucked me in from start to finish! Galadriel has managed to survive three years at her deadly magical school, the Scholomance, with her junior year capped by an epic battle against a fearsome assembly of maleficaria (magical creatures that feast on wizards, especially youthful ones), as related in the first book in this fantasy series, A Deadly Education. Now El is in her last year at the Scholomance and has achieved her goal of becoming part of an alliance of fellow students (albeit a very small, less powerful one) who will protect each other when they run the gauntlet of ravenous mals that line the hallway leading to the graduation exit. And Orion Lake, the best mal-killer in the school, has progressed from mere annoyance to occasionally still aggravating but valued friend. Which makes it difficult when El’s clairvoyant mother sends her an urgent message to keep far away from Orion.

Even more upsetting for El is that now the Scholomance seems to have her personally in its cross-hairs. Instead of working toward graduation, she’s spending most of her time fighting mals that all seem to be focused exclusively on eating her, and perhaps the group of brand-new, hapless freshmen that the school has inexplicably thrown El in with in one of her classes.

I opened the door expecting to find something really horrible inside, and I did: eight freshmen, all of whom turned and stared at me like a herd of small and especially pitiful deer about to be mown down by a massive lorry. There wasn’t so much as a sophomore among the lot. “You’ve got to be joking,” I said with revulsion …

El is in a constant battle against her innate affinity for massively destructive and violent spells, and the Scholomance seems to be pushing her to make selfish choices, saving her mana or magical power for her own needs instead of helping random freshmen who mean nothing to her. But as El battles the mals and her own dark nature in order to save herself and her friends and yes, random freshmen, the scope of her concern for others starts to grow, leading to changes that are unprecedented in Scholomance history.

I initially had trouble getting into the first book,
A Deadly Education. At first El was very prickly and sulky, a difficult main character to like, and there was a lot of info-dumping as Naomi Novik introduced us to the unique world and culture of the Scholomance. But by the end of that book I was fully on board with her character and anxious to see what happened next. And it didn’t disappoint, at all, in fact, The Last Graduate was far more than I expected.

Everything that gave me hesitation about the first book has been resolved. Novik is fantastic when she’s on (
Spinning Silver is still one of my favorite fantasies ever), and she definitely is here. There are game-changers afoot in the pages of The Last Graduate. El and her classmates are led step by excruciating step toward a greater purpose than simply surviving and getting out of the Scholomance alive. I don’t think inspiring is too strong of a word.

The Scholomance has always had an international student body, and Novik better fleshes out the diversity in this second novel, with students from different cultures and races playing more significant roles. She also delves more deeply into themes of (often unexamined) privilege and how that affects choices and options. Along the way there are also some great moments of friendship, as El (still sensitive and snappish) grows closer to her classmates, especially the members of her alliance, and gradually learns that it’s okay to rely on others.

“Stop it!” she said. “I think that’s like the third time you’ve asked to be ditched. You’re like one of those puffer fish, the second anyone touches you a little wrong you go all bwoomp,” she illustrated with her hands, “trying to make them let go. We’ll let you know, how’s that?”

There are also some intriguing new characters, like Liesel, the abrasive, ruthless and utterly brilliant class valedictorian (“If you’re wondering how Liesel came into our discussions, so were the rest of us, but she was both impervious to hints that she wasn’t wanted, and also hideously smart, so we hadn’t actually been able to chase her from the planning”).

I’ll admit to a few qualms about the efficacy of the plan El and her class came up with in the end; it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in the upcoming conclusion of this trilogy. And THAT ENDING. I hate to complain when the rest of the book was SO good, but really it is one of the most jaw-dropping cliffhangers I’ve ever seen. I would suggest that if you’re strongly averse to cliffhangers, you could wait to read this book until the next one comes out … but I wouldn’t want anyone to delay the sheer excitement and fun of The Last Graduate. It has been one of 2021’s reading highlights for me: one of the most exhilarating, delightful and moving books I’ve read this year. Every page was truly a pleasure. Well, except maybe the last one. :)

Previous update: So my daughter (hi, Emily! *waves*) found out I had the NetGalley ARC of this book a few days ago. She loved the first book,
A Deadly Education, even more than I did, so she came home from college for a couple of days, mostly I think to borrow my iPad so she could read this ARC. I told her (a) I loved it, and (b) it has a killer cliffhanger ending. Last night I was on my laptop and she was in the same room reading this, and all of a sudden around midnight I hear this "AAAARRGH!!!" from the other side of the couch. *Cue evil laughter from me*

She loved it. And the ending kills. And that's all we need to say for now, except you DEFINITELY should read this series if you have any interest in something sort of Harry Potterish, except with way more carnivorous monsters.

I received an advance copy of this book for review. SO MANY THANKS to the publisher!

Content notes: Gruesome carnivorous monsters, scattered F-bombs and a mildly explicit sex scene.

Nilufer Ozmekik

Hogwarts meets Deadly Class with Anakin Skywalker’s transition to Darth Vader vibes : this action packed, dark, extremely sarcastic, entertaining second book of the series absolutely hooks you from the first chapter and you wish not to finish in one sit: you hit your head so hard against the wall and keep cursing why you didn’t you go slower, savoring each chapter and enjoy every reading moment!

Especially that ending! That freaking ending! I literally howled like a crying wolf!

The impressive world building, action packed, heart pounding adventures, sarcastic , balanced pace, extremely witty tone of El and her evolving characterization by learning how to control her power and her complicated love story with Orion ( yes, her mother wrote a letter to her to warm El about Orion: but could she stay away from him by listening her mother advise: hell no! ) make your fingers glued to this reading.

I can say this new adventure is more about with will happen to our characters when they eventually graduate after their survival at the final year of Scholomance! What kind of future awaiting for them? Could El and Orion share a dreamy path at the outside world even though it seems more threatening they’ve been through recent years.

I’m not gonna give away more! You gotta read this book and after reaching to jaw dropping, truly heart wrenching, WTH ending, I advise you to scream at the top of your lungs. And start raising your hands to the air, praying for early release of third book!

I’m giving five magical, clever, mind blowing, wizard world, mana-full, happy graduation stars!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/ Ballantine/ Del Rey for sharing the most anticipated book’s arc copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

Nataliya

Reluctant heroes who are not blinded by optimism, who know the stakes and crazy odds and still step up to the plate because sometimes you just can’t look the other way and protect your own hide — they are the best.

(Also, they are a Murderbot.)

“I was still in the Scholomance, and all the miracles in here come with price tags.”

It’s easy to try and dismiss Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series as another book about teenagers in a wizarding school, riding the coattails of Harry Potter books — but that would be far from truth. Despite showing young people in school, it’s definitely adult in tone and themes, digging deep into societal issues and quite uncomfortable topics (class privilege most of all) while still giving an exciting and tightly plotted story, compelling cast of characters, heaps of snark and grim humor infused with a healthy dose of sardonic realism, and stakes and tension that feel real and make you care.

“[…] If you think we’d turn up our noses at reusing some perfectly good and comfortable cushions just because they’d previously been home to a pair of monsters and a half-digested fellow student, you haven’t been paying attention.”

What if your high school graduation wasn’t a boring ceremony filled with weird veneration for sitting through a few years of classes but instead a desperate fight past ravenous hordes of monsters for whom your graduating class is basically an annual dinner buffet? And your school - teacher-free (but not exactly what Pink Floyd had in mind) and infested with those monsters (“maleficaria”, drawn to magic and the vulnerable wizarding kids full of it) provided you with 1 in 4 odds of making it through the four years, which is still better than the chances of a wizarding kid in the outside world — and those chances are even worse if you are basically cannon fodder that allows well-connected wizarding enclave kids to survive. Because magic is not free, and survival is very much tied to privilege and power. It’s a cruel and dangerous world.

Well, welcome to Scholomance! Like Hotel California, there’s a good chance that you will never leave - except as a digested meal of school’s resident maleficaria hordes.

“We’ve all spent the best part of four years training as hard as we could to be inhumanly 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 else was doing the same and there wasn’t any other choice. The Scholomance had encouraged it if anything. Everyone-for-themselves worked well enough to get 25 percent of the students out through the unending horde […]”

Galadriel “El” Higgins is a tough-as-nails loner outcast who managed to survive three years of Scholomance without giving in to her natural magical affinity — laying waste to multitudes through dark sorcery. Even more, she not only managed to save a few lives but even reluctantly made friends, including Scholomance’s brilliant but irritating resident hero/savior/monster-slayer Orion.

“Most people have to study a spell at length to get it into their head. I do, too, if it’s a useful spell. But if it’s a spell to destroy cities or slaughter armies or torture people horribly—or, for instance, to shrivel up significant parts of a boy’s anatomy into a single agonizingly painful lump—one glance and it’s in there for good.”

You see, as much as she’d incinerate you with an angry glare for even suggesting it, El Higgins who’s capable of laying waste to multitudes and has even even her cleaning spells forced on her with a side effect of world domination and possibly a supervolcano, is really an idealist and herself a reluctant hero in the making — but a very reluctant, pessimistic and snarky hero indeed. And with graduation slaughter approaching, El comes to realize that not only does she want to get out of Scholomance alive but that she’d want to see those she cares about (and even those she does not) to not fall prey to monster jaws, not to mention hoping that it’s not only the well-connected privileged enclave kids who get a chance at survival but also those who’d be normally relegated to minion/cannon fodder status.

“I don’t think my appearance was reassuring. I emerged trailing clouds of dark-green smoke flickering phosphorescent with crackles of lightning, the dwindling remnants of the hurricane I’d whipped up to dissolve the shambling army of frozen-mud-things. There was also the large ring of glowing orange-purple balefire spheres orbiting round my waist. The workings all fizzled out as I came through the doors, but they hung in the air just long enough to make a fashion statement of the ‘behold your dark goddess’ variety.”

Image credit to
https://jmaddalina.myportfolio.com/il...)

—————

Just like in the previous book, our focus here is on the stark social contrasts within Scholomance — the multitude of advantages that kids from rich and comparatively safe wizarding enclaves have due to concentrated power, wealth, support and ability to manipulate the enclaveless students into doing their bidding by dangling the promise of possibility of securing a chance to get a coveted enclave spot and allow a chance of survival and security. The enclavers have grown up knowing that they are expected to make it out with fewer casualties while having a much easier time, and many of them do not even see the privilege that they have as for them it’s simply reality.

“Alfie with Liesel and the brilliant team she’d built, Magnus and his wolf pack; they hadn’t spent four years being slowly taught over and over that another kid had the right to live and they hadn’t.”

And now El with her obvious immense magical power and in a strong graduation alliance, not to mention the relationship with the school hero Orion, is no longer a sullen loner but an asset that all the enclave kids would like to see on their teams to further increase their chance of getting through the graduation slaughter intact. She’s now posed to immensely benefit from the quid-pro-quo system in this brutal tribalist and transactionalist microcosm of society. But El is finding it a bit unsettling seeing the long-established pattern of power relationships in the school trying to fit her in that mold. And she is trying to figure out whether she wants to work within the system that now favors her — or whether the system itself, built on the needs of those in power, needs to go.

Obviously those are issues plaguing our society at this time, and in less skilled hands it could have been a shoehorned attempt to be relevant and topical — and as many of these “zeitgeist”chasers it could have been weak and boring and artificial. Novik, however, manages to bring in the issues organically, to incorporate them in the story itself instead of proselytizing, and to treat her characters not as stock mouthpieces of her message but make them realistic people who are well-rounded and are not defined by a sole quality or trait. The kids even outside of the main cast have depth and complexity and therefore lifelike relatability. And character growth rings true and organically comes from the story development.

“Not really,” I said, and laughed a little, jangly and helpless, and put my hands over my face so I didn’t have to look at her, my friend, the first friend I’d ever had, besides Orion, who didn’t count; the first normal sane person in the world who’d looked at me and decided she was going to give me a chance to not hurt her.”

Societal expectations and how nurture shapes people is another prominent theme. We see enclaver kids safe and secure in their ingrained belief that their lives are worth protecting — although after hanging out with El, some see the disparities as an awful unearned gap they are. We see El herself, shaped so much not only by her dark nature but by her hippie commune-dwelling mother into a remarkable human being. But most painfully we get to see Orion Lake, the much-lauded hero whose personality at least in part was shaped by the expectations of those around him, and who is viewed not only as a supposed hero but really as a tool to be used to achieve a comfortable existence regardless of what he would want if he’d only stopped to think for a moment.

“He’d been trained to think he was only good if he ran around being a hero all the time. Naturally as soon as he dared think about what *he* might want, surely that made him a monster. But as someone who’s been told she’s a monster from almost all corners from quite early on, I know perfectly well the only sensible thing to do when self-doubt creeps into your own head is to repress it with great violence.”

————

And yeah, for those of us who are the fans of Martha Wells’ Murderbot series — El is basically a Murderbot (
thanks, Carol!), sullen and snarky and hiding her feelings and made to be feared while ready to lay down her life to protect those who need protection — all while being painfully realistic and grumpily grim about all those humans that need rescue.

“I’ve got to get to class,” I said, and escaped to the comparative safety of my independent study down in the bowels of the school, where the worst thing that was going to leap at me with devouring attention was a flesh-eating monster.”

———

Oh yeah, and if you already heard that there’s an annoying cliffhanger, it’s true. Although here it seems to actually logically follow the story thread, and I was expecting something like that. Needless to say, I’m getting my hands on the next book in the series the moment it’s out.

4.5 stars.

—————

“Everyone else was still on board for exactly the same reason everyone was ever on board with anything in here, which was exactly the same reason everyone ever put themselves into this hellpit of a school, and that’s because it was better than the alternatives. That was all I could be: the lesser evil.”

—————
My review of the first book in the series, A Deadly Education, is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

—————
Winner of the Lodestar Award 2022 (a.k.a. Baby Hugo)

—————
2022 reread after series is completed: Love it dearly. El is awesome.

Maryam Rz.

I’m here for ~~Megara~~ El, my badass queen of sarcasm.

⇓ Companions ⇓

Book series playlist:
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Books in series:
⤷
A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1) ★★★★☆
⤷ The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) ☆☆☆☆☆

Sofia

Something feels so intensely nostalgic about this series. It’s a significantly darker interpretation of the magic school trope, which might be a contributor. But I think it’s the series’ ability to deliver the satisfaction and exhilaration that I’ve been craving, a feeling that I associate with novels I read when I was younger and got addicted to every book I read.

The Last Graduate finds a perfect balance between dark cynicism and a new feeling of hope and warmth that is surprising but not out of place. El is a wonderfully sardonic main character with an internal monologue that never gets old. Her anger and fiery wit, along with the nonstop action and satisfyingly effortless writing, made me speed through this book. The magic system is so contained; it’s gratifying to read something that’s creative without making me stretch my imagination to visualize. This is becoming one of my favorite fantasy series.

5 stars

Namera [The Literary Invertebrate]

NAOMI NOVIK I HATE YOU SO MUCH OH MY GOD

THAT ENDING I JUST

I CAN'T

__

Okay, I've given it a week, and feeling a bit calmer now. Let's try and review this thing.

TLG picks up exactly where ADE leaves off, with El having received a mysterious note from her mum telling her to beware of Orion Lake. To be fair, there's not really much need to 'beware' of him for the first 30% of the book, because he features surprisingly little. Genuinely barely appears in the first three chapters or so.

But when he does, GOD. It's so good. Everything my little literary-romantic heart could desire. El and Orion are absolutely one of the best, most fulfilling YA romances I've ever read.

The plot is everything, too. It's wicked, clever, and very fast-paced, involving plans to escape the Scholomance which just keep getting higher and higher in terms of stakes. There were times when I worried the book wasn't long enough for the amount of plot packed into it, and I was partially right: Novik has compensated by hitting us with an absolutely evil cliff-hanger. I haven't been affected so badly by a cliffhanger since November 2018, when I read The Wicked King. That's how jaw-dropping it is.

Book Three simply cannot come fast enough.

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Phuong ✯

For 95% of this book I was so done with this series, because I couldn't take any more of the inner monologues or the extensive description of every little thing around the heroine, but then the last 5% came and you know what? It was such a serve and that cliffhanger? THAT FREAKING CLIFFHANGER? The only reason why I'm going to pick up the last book next year. I hate it here.
Well played, Noami Novik, well played 👏🏽

┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
THE SCHOLOMANCE SERIES

#1 A Deadly Education – 3 stars
#2 The Last Graduate – 2.25 stars (the extra 0.25 is for that cliffhanger)
#3 The Golden Enclaves – tbr
┕━━━━━━━━━━━━━┙

Nastassja

My initial thoughts right after finishing The Last Graduate:

**This review contains mild spoilers!**

In this installment of The Scholomance we are thrown back right into the chaos of El, Orion, and other kids facing their senior year. A lot has changed since the previous year. New alliances are built, old ones are destroyed, and the school's mechanism is silently turning, counting the last days.

To say this book was a rollercoaster is to say nothing! As usual when you dive into this series, you are thrown right into a massive info dump. El is a great and snarky narrator but sometimes it is sooo very hard to grasp all the things she's talking about. I think it's the biggest minus of this series: we are given too much information and don't have enough brain capacity to process it. I suppose we could compare the info dump to an attack of a horde of mals.

El and Orion are two cherries on top of the ~~cake~~ story. I adored their interactions in the previous book but here it progressed 1000000000000 times and I tell 'ya people, this is how a slow-burn romance should be done!

“You're the only right thing I've ever wanted.”

What I really love about Scholamance is the character development! And not just of the main characters but all of them, even the ones we just met one time. All because we see them through El's eyes, and El has grown as a character a lot. From an absolutely selfish person, she turned into a hero. There was one scene with El and Aadhya - a sisterly bonding. I wept when I read it; it was sincere and heartfelt.

The Last Graduate teaches us about compassion, friendship, and loyalty. The Scholomance is turned out to have a kind of a mechanical heart, which was so sweet to observe, especially when it was giving El hints of what it truly wanted. My heart melted at that .

Now, can we please talk about that ending?! Seriously, you can't finish every installment of this series like that! It's torture not knowing what happened! Agh! I finished the book late at night and couldn't sleep afterward because I kept scrolling the last scene in my head . I have a very strong feeling we are getting closer to the meaning of the shocker message that ending the first book. We are definitely going to see El's darker side in the next book.
But honestly, I literally can't wait. I haven't been that excited about a book, let me think.... ah, yeah, since the ending of A Deadly Education!

So, Naomi Novik, you better not make me wait for long...

Becca & The Books

Well, I can pretty confidently say that if you loved Deadly Education, you're probably going to enjoy The Last Graduate just as much!

We once again join El as she battles against the monsters of the Scholomance while trying to construct a plan to Graduate the school alive, with the help of Orion and the rest of her allies.
Once again, I related to El deeply throughout this book and I truly adore her as a character. I love that the heroine of this series is a defensive, angry teenage girl battling against an affinity to dark magic and the things in her past that have caused her to close herself off. I once again, also adored Orion - especially as he is the antithesis of El with his big sunshine himbo energy.

Sadly though, this book once again hit at a middle of the road 3 stars for me, because while I love the characters, setting and plot of this series, even tearing up slightly towards the end, I can't get past how much I dislike the writing style of these books.
While a conversational writing style is not my favourite, it's something I can generally get on board with. However the combination of that and the endless cutaway exposition really ruins this series for me.

So essentially, 5 stars for character, setting and plot - 1 star for writing

But I am pretty confident that no matter your opinions on book 1 in this series, you'll pretty much feel the same about book 2 so if you loved Deadly Education, you're in for a treat!

Ashleigh (a frolic through fiction)

DNFed. Sadly the writing style still grates on me - it’s as if to make our main character seem standoffish she has to talk in double the amount of words than is needed. It’s tiring to get through a page at times and sadly I don’t care enough for the characters, plot, or setting to continue. I might return to it eventually but right now I’m just not vibing.

myo (myonna reads)

feeling: dead inside

i just love El so much and her character development in this book was great. She’s so funny but she also really cares for the people in her life even though she pretends not to, even Orion. she’s so strong because even though she has the prophecy she doesn’t let that stop her. I loved the side characters and everyone coming together. AND THAT CLIFFHANGER?? cant wait to see my besties again next year.

carol.

Inhaled, but I think review will have to wait for a re-read, sometime before book three comes out.

Holly

That ending was so devious! Some authors I am willing to read YA for and Naomi Novik is definitely one of them. I very much enjoyed this magic school that literally is attempting to kill the students (or protect them?), so I’m interested to see what happens next. Especially with that very YA cliffhanger ending.

Danielle

I really am surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed this series. 🤗 Very dark wizard world with crazy creatures and scary obstacles to overcome. 🤓 If you’re into Harry Potter, this would be a good one to pick up.

Emmy Neal

There are so many exceptional characters here but I hope we all know Precious is the real MVP.

Nicole

Addicting and vicious, The Last Graduate proved to be much more than just another magical school story. It can be a hit or miss because of the writing style, which is different from the usual YA. I would say this book is in between YA and NA territories. I also enjoyed every minute reading it.

The Last Graduate picks up from the same second Deadly Education had ended. The story continues with no time passing in between, after all, school starts right after induction. There are no breaks in the Schoolomance. The stakes in this book are much higher and what starts as alliance planning for graduation, evolves to be well, suffice to say on a much grander scale than that. I've been having a problem lately. I'm not in a slump but also books that make me avoid doing anything else, even scrolling through that cancerous Instagram explore, are rare. I didn't want anyone to talk to me while I was reading this book nor any distractions whatsoever, it was that gripping.

Let's start by addressing the pink elephant in the room. We all know the backlash Novik got from the Last Graduate. Many tried defending her and saying there was no racism or unfair remarks but I digress.. There were lots of stereotypes and unacceptable comments. Novik acknowledged her error and I believe in second chances. While it wasn't enough for me to change my rating of the first book, I also wanted to give this book a second chance. Naomi Novik made most of it.

Instead of focusing on the differences between cultures and traditions, she tackled a very important and prevalent subject in all societies: privilege. If you've read the first book, you already know that enclave kids always have considerably higher chances of surviving and graduating first and later on in life. They have their future guaranteed after school just because they were born into the right family. They are better prepared as freshmen and always get better supplies from the seniors. They stick together. Were they from the New York enclave, Shanghai, London, or any other enclave across the world, they all help each other within their respective enclaves. Most students would do anything to secure a seat after graduating in an enclave especially the top ones. But the losers, the nobodies, have to secure alliances and work harder in everything, was it at studying or simply gathering mana. This book focused a lot more on this theme and I believe Novik did a good job exploring the relationships between enclave kids and everyone else, how they are so used to get it's difficult for them to give but also, that doesn't mean they all are bad. Not at all.

I don't pretend to understand how every spell worked because I was too busy turning the page to know what happens next. The book was a page-turner and could be easily read in one or two sittings. Sure, we didn't have a lot happening all the time but the way Naomi wrote this book makes it fast-paced. They were few dull moments and instead, I wanted to know what plan they'll come with and how that will turn out.

I also liked El in this book, her character witnessed a considerable development since book 1. She had built a thick shell around being a loner all those years but now finally, she's trying to let people in. Or at least accept their friendships. As for the romance, I honestly didn't see it coming in book 1. I had no idea Orion was the love interest until late into the book. I loved their relationship in the Last Graduate and how it progressed. They make a good couple and Orion (I just wish he had a different name) is such a sweet and selfless person. We discover more about him as a person in this book because Novik is evil, let me leave it at that. Do we have sexual content? This isn't a spoiler for the book but only for this point

I'll end by saying that this trilogy is proving to be highly entertaining. This book was definitely the best YA release I've read in a while and that was published after 2018. Magic schools aren't the most innovative plotlines but I love them anyway. In this case, Novik took it and made it her own. It's pretty different from your average book in this genre and totally worth a read.

Jenny Lawson

Have you read the first in this series...Deadly Education? If not, you should because it is FANTASTIC. This is the second book in the series and it's maybe not quite as good as the first (which is pretty standard for a middle book in a series) but definitely worthwhile. Now to wait impatiently for the next...

☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣

The book of pure thaumaturgic bliss, mana and everafters!

What character dev!!!!! I feel like I've never seen more dev to happen (OK, I probably have but that's how I felt after reading it!)
Even places grow brains, balls and all kinds of conscience here! Which is just to show how awesomely developed everyone and everything get!!!!!

This is gonna be forevermore known as the book where Patience Fortitude!
Q:
As a general rule, regardless of the specific situation in which you find yourself, at every step you must take care to preserve or widen the number of your options. (c)
This, I want to engrave me somewhere!

What a grad scene! (Galadri)el and Orion?????!!!!! Now, that's the kind of graduation to behold!

The lovely lovelies:
Q:
When I cast spells, there are usually copious side manifestations, generally designed to convey to anyone watching that they should probably be fleeing in terror or alternatively dropping to their knees and doing homage. (c)
Q:
The thing is, I’m not actually unique in the history of wizard society; not even Orion is, really. We’re both once-in-a-generation talents, but those happen, as you might have guessed, once in a generation. It is a bit of a coincidence that we’re in school at the same time, and that we’re both fairly extreme examples. (c)

The quotes of generation that should generate a cult following:
Q:
I could almost have felt sorry for Jermaine, who’d worn the expression of a person trying to have an important conversation with a brick wall. (c)
Q:
But my own main concern is how to avoid accidentally sucking the life force out of everyone around me if I ever get taken by surprise and instinctively fire off something really gargantuan. For instance, I’ve got this great spell for razing an entire city to the ground, which will certainly come in handy if I ever turn into one of those people who write furious letters to the editor about the architecture of Cardiff, and I suppose it would do to wipe out any mals on the same floor as me. Along with all the other people on the same floor as me, but they’d probably be dead by then, since I’d have drained their mana to cast the spell. (c)
Q:
Most of the religious or spiritual people I know—and to be fair, they’re mostly the sort of people who land in a vaguely pagan commune in Wales, or else they’re terrified wizard kids crammed into a school that’s trying to kill them—regularly beseech a benevolent and loving all-wise deity to provide them with useful advice through the medium of miraculous signs and portents. Speaking as my mother’s daughter, I can say with authority that they wouldn’t like it if they got it. You don’t want mysterious unexplained advice from someone you know has your best interests at heart and whose judgment is unerringly right and just and true. Either they’ll tell you to do what you want to do anyway, in which case you didn’t need their advice, or they’ll tell you to do the opposite, in which case you’ll have to choose between sullenly following their advice, like a little kid who has been forced to brush her teeth and go to bed at a reasonable hour, or ignoring it and grimly carrying on, all the while knowing that your course of action is guaranteed to lead you straight to pain and dismay. (c)
Q:
“After you’ve been doing whatever you’re doing that is not dating but totally looks like dating to everyone else, for only two months.” (c)
Q:
“To be fair, you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’d come up with the idea of being wildly rude and hostile to the guy who saved your life twenty times,” (c)
Q:
Oh, who am I lying to? My supply of grace wouldn’t overflow an acorn cap. (c)
Q:
When I cast spells, there are usually copious side manifestations, generally designed to convey to anyone watching that they should probably be fleeing in terror or alternatively dropping to their knees and doing homage. (c) Nice to know there's a wonderfully OCD-ish streak to Galadriel's affinity!
Q:
I’m reasonably sure that’s because there’s some violation of balance being redressed on our backs. Dad nobly walks into a maw-mouth for an eternity of pain to save me and Mum; she gives out too much healing for free; I end up with an affinity for violence and mass destruction. The year before that, twelve maleficers murdered the entire senior class, so a hero who would save hundreds of kids in school got conceived. The moral physics of the principle of balance: equal and opposite reactions totting up on both sides. (c)
Q:
They were all delightedly hoping to give me exactly the post-Scholomance life I’d dreamed of for years. The bastards. (c)
Q:
Chloe had once told me with a perfectly straight face that Orion didn’t want anything except to kill mals, which was absolute bollocks, but it was the kind of absolute bollocks that I’m certain everyone around him his entire life had so strongly encouraged that it had got lodged in his own head. (c)
Q:
“Half the time he can’t recognize me unless I’m with you. He pretends to when I say hi to him in shop, but every time his brain goes into this panicky loop like who is she oh no I’m supposed to know her oh no I’m failing at human. And it’s not just me, he does it to everyone. He could probably tell you every last mal he’s killed in the entire time he’s been at school, but us human beings all get filed under the generic category of future potential rescue. I don’t know why he can see you, I think it’s because you’re some crazy super-maleficer in waiting. (c) Aspy much?
Q:
“No, you aardvark, (c)
Q:
My inner being is exceptionally cranky and I often don’t want her company myself... (c)
Q:
Either she was ambitious or she loved languages madly or maybe she was just a tremendous masochist, I had no idea. (c)
Q:
Artifice is fundamentally about giving the universe a long and complicated story complete with attractive props in order to coax it to accommodate your wishes. I’m really more about shouting the universe into compliance with mine. (c)
Q:
I did try saying things like, “I won’t bite,” only I said it while seething, so the message that actually got conveyed was that biting would be mild by comparison with whatever I would do instead. And of course they believed me. (c)
Q:
I wasn’t clear on whether it counted as him using the freshmen as bait if they were the ones staking themselves out. (c)
Q:
No one would ever in ten thousand years have imagined that if someone tried to kill me in the gym, I’d respond by rebuilding the gym fantasia and creating a fresh torment for everyone in the school, including myself. I certainly wouldn’t have imagined it. (c)
Q:
If I do make it out of here, I should look up the Dominus of Shanghai. He’s the only other living person who’s ever done it. We could compare notes. Or we could look each other in the face and just start screaming together, which feels more appropriate to me. (c)
Q:
I don’t think my appearance was reassuring. I emerged trailing clouds of dark-green smoke flickering phosphorescent with crackles of lightning, the dwindling remnants of the hurricane I’d whipped up to dissolve the shambling army of frozen-mud-things. There was also the large ring of glowing orange-purple balefire spheres orbiting round my waist. The workings all fizzled out as I came through the doors, but they hung in the air just long enough to make a fashion statement of the behold your dark goddess variety, and anyway I’d been standing there just short of the threshold for five minutes, siccing spheres and thunderbolts on strategic targets to clear a way to the doors. (c)
Q:
basically all twenty-seven girls of our group trudged off to the showers together. It was almost time for Orion to harvest the amphisbaena for Liesel; the juveniles had stopped coming through with the water a week ago or so and now were just hissing and banging impotently at us from inside the showerheads like the steam pipes had gone mad. There was one moment when the wall cracked around one of the showerheads and the amphisbaena inside started to thrash around wildly to try and finish breaking out, but it was just an amphisbaena, so the girl using the shower didn’t even stop rinsing her hair, she just grabbed a long enchanted stiletto-knife out of her bathroom bag and stabbed it into the opening. The showerhead stopped moving around. It would be unpleasant if the dead amphisbaena started rotting in there, but probably the others would eat it before that happened. (c) Nice. I'm sorta proud of these kids growing up.
Q:

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Dd Dec 5, 2020. Yes! I want this one right now. (A bit sad I read the 1st one without waiting for the whole series being out there ready for me :) )
I expect it to be 5-star worthy. The rating is subject to changing on the basis of m getting my hands on the actual book whenever it gets published.
Dd 15 June 2021: Hmmmm..... I want it yesterday.... Where is my time machine?

Amy Imogene Reads

4.5 I’m-dying-from-that-cliffhanger stars

There's no other way to put this review, so I'm starting off right with a one-two punch: The Last Graduate was 50% a slow-burn sophomore setup, and 50% an active, amazing plot with the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers.

Writing: ★★★★
Character relationships: ★★★★★
Pacing: ★★
World building #2: ★★★★

Where to start?? I guess I'm going to attempt to be completely spoiler free this time around... Because of that, here's a vague synopsis of the first book, A Deadly Education:

El, a powerful "evil" wizard who is prophesized to bring the doom of the wizarding world, attends the deadliest school you could ever conceptualize: The Scholomance. It's a never-ending haunted house—with deadly stakes—and El's lack of connections and rage-filled chip on her shoulder left her in a pickle. That and the fact that the Scholomance, which is sentient and supposed to provide each student with schoolwork tailored to their unique abilities, keeps trying to give El supervolcano spells of mass destruction whenever she asks for help cleaning her dirty dorm room.

We should probably mention that El was raised by the kindest hippie witch trope in the world, so El's trying her best to NOT be the next Evil One to End All Things.

But anyway... Some things happen. As El is the Evil One, she also interacts with her class's version of the Chosen One with...interesting results that I (totally and utterly) went completely fangirl over. She makes some alliances, some things happen... the vague synopsis peters out here.

In this book, The Last Graduate, El and her classmates are now seniors. With the graduation ceremony historically being a bloodbath of epic proportions—they have to fight their way out of a monster pit at the base of the school, full-on gladiator/Hunger Games style—they've got a lot of training and preparation to do.

But things this year are different. And their plans are about to be radically changed... and not from the source that they're expecting.

That's all. I'm not going to ruin it!

I will fully admit to being very bored for the first half of this novel. In fact, this book had me questioning my love of the first one! Because it was so much slower, not overly much happened right away, and Noviks' already extremely meandering and overly descriptive writing took center stage and tried to bore me from my beloved characters.

But I loved El, and I loved her situation and her friends, so I kept going. And that paid off BIG TIME. The last half of the novel recovered from its slump and ended in a truly dramatic and over-the-top way that made me just lose my mind. I'm upset we've got to wait until September 2022 for our next one!

(But will gladly wait, with popcorn, for the finale. It's going to be epic.)

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✨ Helena ✨

I received this complimentary ARC from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Maria V. Snyder

Wow - the plot of this second book in the series, didn't go where I'd expected! A nice surprise. And that ending!! Good thing the third book is out so I can get my hands on it!

Lisann

Why did no one tell me I was going to read a diary of a teenage witch? Because the content of this book was at least 70% inner monologue, a lot of info dumping and just a hint of plot

Fiona

Reread, as we're almost at book three's release date - how have we all survived that cliffhanger? Not long to go now!

THAT ENDING THOUGH.

There isn't anything much more dangerous in the world than a fully grown wizard. That's why the mals have to hunt us when we're young. We're the real apex predators, not the maw-mouths that after all just sit by the doors mumbling to themselves and occasionally groping around for some supper. Once through the gates, we'll be carving our dreams into the world like gleeful vandals scratching graffiti on the pyramids, and we won't look behind us. But only once we're out.

Sophomore slump? Not a chance, though it's probably no surprise that Naomi Novik doesn't have that issue. Instead, The Last Graduate built on all the bits I loved about the first book, improving on something I already thought was absolutely top-notch.

If you couldn't tell from the extract above, there's a bit of a tonal shift in this book - El's come a long way since the start of book one, and without immediate survival problems and all the stress they bring, she's actually got room to think in bigger picture terms. Turns out she's just as good at that as she probably would be at going full destruction mode; because by the end of this second instalment it's clear she's thinking big.

I love El, and even more by the time I was finished with this book - it's hard enough to be a good person without constant pressure from the universe to go all dark queen, fight off monsters at every turn, and deal with the fact that people just intuitively don't seem to like you. But sometimes it can be harder to be good when you do start getting everything you've ever wanted, when you actually do have options. El's not annoyingly perfect (no chance), she feels very real, and very consistently willing to choose a rougher path to do the right thing.

This is such a great series that it's even getting a pass for one of the most outrageous cliffhangers I've ever read. A pass doesn't mean I'm not going to complain, of course. But there are books that put in cliffhangers to get you to read the next, and that's a cheap trick I cannot stand. This one, though, feels like Naomi Novik knows we're already hanging out for the next book and just wants to playfully torment the hell out of us. I may grumble for the next year, but I'm coming back regardless.

h o l l i s

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

That ending.. I just.. the only two options are stupefied silence or hysterical laughter and right now I'm alternating between the two.

Weirdly enough, with nine minutes left on the kindle countdown, I put the book down. I could almost sense something. But that bit of warning was not enough to prepare me for t h a t.

"[..] you're the only person I've ever met who'd come up with the idea of being wildly rude and hostile to the guy who saved your life twenty times."
"Thirteen times! And I've saved his life at least twice."
"Catch up already, girl."

Goodness, wow, so. Yeah, lots of my feelings about this book have been eclipsed by all the nonsense above but I will say this. I was delighted to return to this world for one main reason : I had forgotten how delightfully prickly El was. Being back in her space, watching her interact with people, it was often hilarious because she is constantly battling the general feeling of "not putting up with this shit" which, I mean, same. But she's also in a much better place than she was in the beginning of book one so she's also struggling to remember she has friends and how that's changed her life, yes, but also changed her odds of surviving the Scholomance. And those opposing forces are just as funny as she is.

I was unenthusiastic about the prospect of being found attractive because I seem like a terrifying creation of dark sorcery instead of despite it.

Also there was maybe a very short, tiny, little scene that ambushed some tears out of me. Unexpected.

My one.. not complaint, really, but observation, is that there is a lot going on in this world, in the day to day, and Novik strings together some long-ass sentences sometimes -- and as a result I completely lose the original thought or point and have to reread or, occasionally, just give up and keep going. It doesn't always feel like dense fantasy when there's action or bickering or brainstorming but there are huge swaths of this that is actually quite wordy or complicated. Sometimes I gobbled it up, other times, well, like I said, I just cruised on by. That said, maybe I sabotaged myself a bit because I didn't adjust my pace to actually take time to process it all, so, maybe it's my own fault. But unlike most magical schools or learning sequences, this author doesn't gloss over anything. We are with them as they learn, as they do homework, as they team up and help each other, because not doing the work is sometimes just as dangerous as the monsters crawling through the vents.

I had such a good time with this one. The banter, the action, the romance, the snark, the cut-throat ruthlessness, and, yeah, even that e n d i n g.. I can't wait for book three (and this isn't even out yet, arg!).

** I received an ARC from the publisher (thank you!) in exchange for an honest review. **

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This review can also be found at
A Take From Two Cities.

Bradley

I really can't overstate this: I love this book. I loved the one preceding it, too, but I REALLY loved this book.

Why?

Because it was fun all the way down to the deepest levels, with all the eldritch horrors clawing their way into the school, with only a reasonable expectation of 1 in 4 kids making it out alive.

Because it had all the magical charm of Hogwarts without any of the sappy sweet. It was a fight and die with every last bit of your strength, casting the most deadly, mana-consuming spells non-stop whether you're trying to sleep, go to the restroom, trying to eat monster-infested slop, or trying to read in a library that had books that could eat you -- or consume your soul.

So wait, these books are horror? Action? With so much blood and gore slopping down the gymnasium that you can reasonably expect to go on a date AFTER killing hell-worms, and have a picnic in the fleshy ruins?

Well, yes. But it's also TRAINING. Magic use calls the evil. Puberty is when the magic comes strong and when the highest death count happens among the youth. The school DOES make the survival rate BETTER. Nominally. In a walled-off dimension of its own, surrounded by shivering horrors in the void. :)

Suffice to say, this next book takes the next step and shows us what GRADUATION is all about, with some surprising twists, an absolutely jaw-dropping action sequence, and an end that made me scream and want to throw the book across the room.

Ahem. Am I slightly upset? Maybe. But that doesn't diminish my utter enjoyment.

Easily one of the best fantasies I've read this year.

Maria (mariaoverbooked)

I don't know how to feel? Believe me, no one is more disappointed than I am about this rating. Considering I gave the first one five stars this makes me so sad. I absolutely love this concept, this world, and these characters but this second book was a slog.

Part of the reason the first one worked is because we were all discovering The Scholomance together and learning our about characters AND they were working toward a mutual goal together. What made this second installment not work is that it was the exact same thing. It was hundreds more pages of them working towards getting through their graduation and fighting the Mals in the basement (which spoiler alert was basically what they did in the first book). I just felt like we were constantly just doing different tasks that were going to help in the last scene of the book and I was just bored. What works for a first book, doesn't work for a second. We needed expansion, a different conflict, and more plot movement and that's not what we got.

The last 50 pages of this book saved it. We finally saw some progress in El and Orian's relationship and the cliffhanger at the end does make me somewhat interested in the last book but I definitely feel like the plot wavered in this one.

Nothing makes me more sad than writing a bad review for an anticipated sequel.

NAT.orious reads ☾

This book is for you if… you have good taste in books.

⤐ Additionally.
Do you think you’re funny, Naomi? (Yes, your writing is hilarious.) Do you think I enjoy suffering through 400 glorious pages of amazingness for you to serve me with the cliffhanger of the year? (If you are the cause, yes, absolutely.) Just WHO do you think you are? (A great writer? – Also yes.)

You are hurting me, do you understand? I AM IN PAIN.

It’s been a while since I’ve read The Last Graduate but as you can see, I remember all the feelings I had after finishing this vividly. I am livid at Naomi for writing such a good book that ends in the biggest cliffhanger. I am so angry I want to destroy something.

Deep breaths, Nat, deep breaths. Ok. Phew.

Please, Naomi, pleeeaaase … hurry up publishing the next book, will you?

Honestly, I love this series. I usually don’t enjoy a writing style that contains a lot of text and little dialogue, by comparison. Naomi, however, gives this series the little something.

that it needs. She creates vivid characters that you can't help but love - especially our favourite grump El. El wields sarcasm better than Gandalf the White wields his cane, so forgive me if I'm ABSOLUTELY ECSTATIC ABOUT THIS SEQUEL.

⤐ What’s happening.

‘I’m not some sort of pallid romantic who insists on being loved for my shining inner being. My inner being is exceptionally cranky and I often don’t want her company myself.’

spoiler alert: Yes, El is exactly that great. I adore her.
_____________________
4 STARS. Would stay up beyond my typical hours to finish it. I found some minor details I didn't like, agree with or lacked in some kind but overall, this was enjoyable and extraordinary.

Fiona

Literally I won't say anything other than what the fuck

Title	:	The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2)
Author	:	Naomi Novik
Rating	:
ISBN	:	0593128869
ISBN-10	:	9780593128862
Language	:	English
Format Type	:	Hardcover
Number of Pages	:	388
Publication	:	First published September 28, 2021
Awards	:	Goodreads Choice Award Fantasy (2021), Lodestar Award (2022)

The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) by Naomi Novik

The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) Reviews

The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2) Reviews

Releated on The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2)