Urban Fantasy YA Audiobook Review: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

 

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance #3)

bought on Audible

Synopsis

Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for in the triumphant conclusion to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate.

The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it's all we dream about, the hideously slim chance we'll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls.

And now the impossible dream has come true. I'm out, we're all out--and I didn't even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. So much for my great-grandmother's prophecy of doom and destruction. I didn't kill enclavers, I saved them. Me, and Orion, and our allies. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: we saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves of the world.

Ha, only joking! Actually it's gone all wrong. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war on the horizon. And the first thing I've got to do now, having miraculously got out of the Scholomance, is turn straight around and find a way back in.

* * *

8/10

I enjoyed this series very much, but I would say that book 1 and 2 impressed me more than book 3. The solution to their problem in the end felt like a bit of a cope out.

 Still, I have loved El, the prickly main heroine from the get go. Naomi Novik excels at writing outwardly dislikeable heroines, grumpy, cynical and sassy, but secretly kind and self-sacrificing.

The best part of the whole trilogy is its world-building. It's excellent and so engrossing, that you can't help but fall into the world of The Scholomance, the Enclaves, the never-ending squabble for power and survival in between. 

Juliet Marillier and Katherine Arden might be more poetic in their writing but Novik takes the reader to darker places and underscores how heavy and twisted the price of magic can be. She is also excellent at blending the modern world into it.

The Golden Enclaves is not without problems, but the series overall is a solid 4 star read or listen. I listen to it on audio and the narrator was fabulous. 

Much recommended, folks.