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The Last Graduate

(The Scholomance #2)

Naomi Novik (Goodreads Author)

4.32 · Rating details · 45,947 ratings · 6,783 reviews

The specter of graduation looms large as Naomi Novik’s trilogy continues in the sequel to A Deadly Education.

In Wisdom, Shelter. That’s the official motto of the Scholomance. I suppose you could even argue that it’s true—only the wisdom is hard to come by, so the shelter’s rather scant.

Our beloved school does its best to devour all its students—but now that I’ve reached ...more

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Kindle Edition, 389 pages

Published September 28th 2021 by Del Rey

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Start your review of The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2)

Oct 02, 2020 Shima rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: upcoming

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 t ...more

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Oct 26, 2021 ELLIAS (elliasreads) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: i-own, 2021-books

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!!!!!

Anyway ...more

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Jul 13, 2021 Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, cliffhanger-boo-hiss, horror, kinda-steamy, ya-fantasy, fantasy

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 cap ...more

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Jun 08, 2021 Nilufer Ozmekik rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Sep 17, 2020 Maryam Rz. marked it as to-read

Shelves: humor, horror, fantasy, young-adult

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

⇓ Companions ⇓

Book series playlist: Spotify URL

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

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Oct 03, 2021 Nataliya rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2021-reads

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 th 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... ...more

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Apr 29, 2021 Namera [The Literary Invertebrate] rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: style-1st-person, genre-action, style-fast-paced, heroine-aged-teens, heroine-abrasive, trope-bad-girl-good-boy, hero-besotted, heroine-black-haired, hero-oblivious, relationship-strong-romance

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 ...more

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Oct 08, 2020 Nastassja rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: anticipated-releases, mind-blowing-cliffhanger, 1st-pov, excellent-writing, emotional, pedestal-of-heroes, i-will-go-down-with-this-ship, laughed-my-pants-off, swoon-worthy-hero, young-adult

My initial thoughts right after finishing The Last Graduate:

**This review contains mild spoilers!**

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 (view spoiler).

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 (view spoiler). 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...

...more

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Sep 21, 2021 Becca & The Books rated it liked it · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Sep 03, 2021 Ashleigh (a frolic through fiction) marked it as did-not-finish · review of another edition

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.

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Dec 04, 2021 Phuong ✯ (semi-hiatus) rated it it was ok

Shelves: young-adult, welcome-to-felt-nothing-ville, 2-stars-wanna-scratch-my-eyes-out, watch-paint-dry-is-more-interesting, books-read-in-2021, fantasy-is-better-than-ecstasy

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 La ...more

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Oct 01, 2021 myo (myonna reads) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star-reads, 2021-favorites, dark-academia

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.

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Oct 19, 2021 carol. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

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Oct 03, 2021 Holly rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021-read, audiobook, young-adult

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.

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Nov 08, 2020 Sofia marked it as series-to-finish · review of another edition

Alas, I am far too familiar with the agonizing pain of waiting for a sequel that has yet to be released

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Sep 30, 2021 Nicole rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021, fantasy, best-of-2021, ya, urban-fantasy

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 (view spoiler)

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.

...more

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Apr 29, 2021 Emmy Neal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

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Sep 16, 2021 Jenny Lawson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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... ...more

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Dec 05, 2020 ☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

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 (view spoiler) Fortitude!
Q:
As a general rule, regardless of the specific situation in ...more

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Sep 24, 2020 Helena Paris marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, dark-academia, arcs, asap

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

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Sep 29, 2021 Fiona rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: love-the-setting, witches, absolute-favourites, fantasy

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 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. ...more

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Aug 10, 2021 h o l l i s rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mature-ya, finished-in-august-2021, romance, ya, arc, 2021-reads, not-all-the-feels-but-some, a-smattering-of-lols, ebook, fantasy

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 ...more

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Jun 24, 2021 Amy Imogene Reads rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: great-worldbuilding, fantasy, read-in-2021

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 the 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... a concept. Because of that, here's a vague synopsis of the firs ...more

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Nov 23, 2021 Bradley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021-shelf, horror, fantasy, ya

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 ...more

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Jan 06, 2021 NAT.orious reads ☾ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 remem ...more

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Apr 30, 2021 Fiona rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

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Oct 30, 2020 Kenzie The Dragon Queen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, urban-fantasy, poc-characters, favorite-couples-otp, fantasy, fiction, romance, young-adult, action, horror

January 8th 2022

I held out and waited to read this for as long as I could because I knew I’d want the next book right away, and boy was I right. That cliffhanger was BRUTAL! If this series doesn’t have a happy ending I’ll just be sending my therapy bill straight to Naomi Novik herself, thank you very much.

Going into this book I did wonder if it would suffer from second book syndrome, but it definitely didn’t. Which I’m sure is a result of Naomi Novik actually taking the time to not only plan out ...more

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Dec 15, 2021 Lisann rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: academia, fantasy, witches

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

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Nov 28, 2021 Avani ✨ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This one was so much better than the first book!!!

The ending killed me and now I want the third book ASAP

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Oct 02, 2021 Maria (mariaoverbooked) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Goodreads Librari...: Update number of pages The Last Graduate	2	12	Jun 17, 2022 12:58PM
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Fantasy > Magic

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About Naomi Novik

Naomi Novik

25,968 followers

An avid reader of fantasy literature since age six, when she first made her way through The Lord of the Rings, Naomi Novik is also a history buff with a particular interest in the Napoleonic era and a fondness for the work of Patrick O’Brian and Jane Austen. She studied English literature at Brown University, and did graduate work in computer science at Columbia University before leaving to partic ...more

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The Scholomance (3 books)

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Quotes from The Last Graduate

“You're the only right thing I've ever wanted.” — 21 likes

“Mum spent a lot of time in my formative years gently reminding me that people don’t think about us nearly as much as we think they do, because they’re all busy worrying what people are thinking about them.” — 16 likes

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