The Last Graduate
The Last Graduate (The Scholomance #2)
By: Naomi Novik
[Nominated for ‘Best Fantasy’ category of the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge]
“Senior year, you spend half your time staying alive, half your time on your lessons, and half your time working out a graduation strategy to get you through the hall. If you can’t make that equation add up properly, you die.”
Disclaimer: If you haven’t read the first book in this series, this review will be very confusing to you.
The first book ends with El getting a warning from her mom to stay away from hero-boy Orion. This book does not explain the reason for that at all which is somewhat misleading. Usually a cliffhanger of a book is relevant to the next book.
But El has basically decided to ignore her mom’s heeding because at this point it doesn’t make sense and how exactly is she supposed to do that anyway.
I’m assuming that will come into play in book 3.
After A Deadly Education, the school’s monster-killing machine has been fixed and El is now a senior who must prepare for her turn to ‘graduate’— which theoretically entails surviving a hall full of mals.
Luckily for her, she now has friends who are committed to helping her. She even gets access to a mana-sharer which is invaluable in terms of protecting herself from all the mals.
But these friendships haven’t completely changed El’s Captain Marvel/April Ludgate personality. She is still self-sabotaging and “takes refuge in rudeness.” And she is still as dangerous as ever:
“If I ever took the risk of casting a spell without knowing for sure what it was meant to do, it would definitely turn out to be meant to do a lot of murder.”
The school apparently knows this about her and her senior year starts off with the school seemingly against her.
“It was one thing for the school to be out to get me, which I think all of us secretly feel is the case from the moment we arrive, and another for the school to be out to get ONLY me, to the exclusion of literally everyone else, including even Orion, even though the school’s hunger was really his fault in the first place.”
Why is the school only after her? Is she trending toward becoming a maleficier and the school is trying to thwart her? Is it somehow trying to help her? Is there something else at work?
The second half of the school year is spent on an elaborate plan to not only survive graduation but save every other wizard kid from having to experience the horror of the Scholomance.
Despite her isolation in previous years and poor treatment from others, El still has an altruistic spirit at heart (thanks to her mother) and decides that she thinks she can save everyone. Maybe with a little help.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do. I only knew what I wasn’t going to do. I wasn’t going through. I wasn’t going through until everyone was out.”
And then, of course, if they DO get out… what then?
What I liked and Didn’t Like:
This book didn’t seem as exciting as the first one— maybe because the magic and ‘world' weren’t new anymore. Some of the mystery was gone. It seemed a little more repetitive or routine of a story. And a lot of enclave politics.
I also didn’t like how the cliffhanger ending of the first book was irrelevant to this book’s story. You can’t put in a cliffhanger and then say… guess you’ll have to wait for a whole other book to get any more information regarding that.
I didn’t like how everyone said everything “through their teeth.” Were they just grimacing allll the time?
I do like where I think the third book is heading. I don’t want to give away too much, but I’m looking forward to seeing how El interacts with the outside world and if their plan actually works. I think I’ll like the next book better than this one.
I also liked the suspense of the end of this book. It was well-written and intense. And we get a cliffhanger again, but I know it will come to fruition right away in the next book so it’s okay.
I view this book as more of a transitional book. It gets us from the shock of book one to the wonder of book three. There’s not significant plot movement. It seems more of a character development book and a preparation for whatever big reveal the final book has to offer.
The Last Graduate isn’t going to be your favorite book of the series, but it’s not a bore to read either. You still get to experience some of the magic and get to speculate what El is truly capable of, but I wouldn’t call it AMAZING!
I’m liking the series in general and am glad to be reading them. But I have a lot of expectations for book three so I hope it lives up to it. And I’m also glad it already released so I don’t have to wait forever to continue the story.
[Content Advisory: a handful of f- and s-words; one brief, not super detailed sex scene towards the end]
You may purchase a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
Share this book review to your social media!