The Golden Enclaves

By the time of the final installment in Novik’s trilogy (after A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate), protagonist El has accomplished what every student of the Scholomance school of magic hopes for: she survived graduation. Not only that, but she was able to keep most of the student body alive, destroy many of the monsters that hunt them, and basically close down the school forever. Back in the real world, however, El must face both her dark destiny of destroying the enclaves and the loss of Orion. With a quest to retrieve her love from the Scholomance, a brewing enclave war, and a destructive destiny to head off, El discovers that the enclaves may be the foundation of their magical world, but the truth of how they are built reveals that the worst monsters of the world may be themselves. Good thing El already knows that—and she is willing to fight. Novik continues to expand the foundational magical system and world in surprising ways, providing fast, exciting action and heart-wrenching emotional arcs for El.