Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I've finally read this last book in the trilogy. I think I am a little in shock. Not because of how terrible it was. But because I am just overwhelmed with all the emotions.
If you haven't read A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate, I recommend reading them before you read this post, because I wouldn't want to spoil them with my review. I'm going to reference them below.
This read was one that I was longing to read and yet dreading at the same time. Because I was hooked at the end of the first chapter of the first book. I put off reading book 3 because I love the story so much and didn't want it to end. I love our grouchy, snarky heroine, El (Galadriel). I love her friends and her beau, Orion, a boy who can't help but save people (it's like it's a compulsion). And I was scared of what might happen, given what happened at the end of book 2.
In the first book, we learn about the maleficaria (mal), creatures created when someone uses their abilities to steal mana, to do something wrong. Mal are attracted to and like to eat magical creatures. Children are especially vulnerable to them. In an attempt to save lives, the magical world created the Scholomance, a sentient boarding school. There are no adults, only students. The Scholomance provides the materials and curricula. We quickly find out that the mal will somehow get into the school and eat the students (or eat other). The magical world keeps sending their children to the Scholomance because the survival rate for the children at the school is leaps and bounds better than for students outside the school (a 25% survival rate versus 5% survival rate).
We learn that the only way out of the Scholomance is to graduate and in order to graduate, the seniors have make it across the graduation hall and out the Scholomance's doors. Unfortunately, the machinery that cleans out the graduation hall has broken, so hundreds of mal hang out there, waiting for a meal. Including the worst maleficaria of all: the maw-mouth, named for its unending hunger and ability to consume.
Maw-mouths are horrific, gelatinous blobs that devour anyone they come in contact with. You can see bits and pieces of people in the clear soup of their/its body, eyes that move and mouths that cry out in torment. (I'm not exaggerating; it's that awful.) Once it grabs you, you won't get away. The greatest wizards alive can't kill them and they devour you forever, devouring the mana created by your suffering and using it to keep you alive and forever being consumed. Two of the biggest maw-mouths, Patience and Fortitude, have taken up residence in the graduation hall, munching on the feast of mal gathered there, so they’re doubly a threat.
At the end of the second book, the graduating class has worked together to get everyone out of the school (not just their class but the whole school). They came up with a plan to lure the mal into the school (with a honeypot song) and once all the kids are out, El would break the Scholomance free from its tether to the real world and let it drift off into the void. Part of the plan hinges on Orion. He's been killing mal since he was 3 and he's really good at it so he's going to hold the line against the mal until El's spell is done. But things don’t go according to plan. Patience has consumed Fortitude (making her *much* larger) and is coming for them. El yells for Orion to stop holding back the mal, that it’s time to leave, but the call of killing a maw-mouth is too strong. He tells her he loves her and then shoves her through the door. The end.
The ending of the second book wrecked me. He saved her (like he always has to) because he loves her. And the Scholomance and everything inside was gone. I mean, it still makes me cry when I think about it (and I've finished the next book!). El spends most of book 3 trying to work through her grief. At the start of the book, she tries to save him with a spell that would pull him out of the school, but he pushes her away. She feels him do it and feels the moment that Patience absorbs him. It wreaks her (and me). Not only did she not save him (and she was going to save everyone, dammit!) but he's now doomed to torment for eternity (just like her dad).
The first 2 books have been about surviving school. Now that they're out, I wasn't quite sure what the story would be about. Luckily for us, Novik is a fantastic storyteller and gives us life after the finale. (Unlike other series -- I'm looking at you, Divergent, and you, The Fifth Wave -- Novik doesn't lose momentum in the 3rd act. She just expands the world and raises the stakes.) Once El's friends track her down (she's withdrawn from the world, mourning losing Orion), she finds out that there is a mysterious malificer who is destroying enclaves. The malificer has destroyed 2 of the strongest enclaves in the world (something that should be impossible because of their combined magic). Because no one knows who's doing it, it’s pushing simmering tensions between enclaves towards war.
Enclaves are magical sanctuaries that have wards to prevent mal from entering. Everyone magical wants to be part of one, because it means safety and escaping death. There aren't enough enclaves in the world, so spots are coveted. Destroying a strong one is a BIG deal.
Malificers are people who steals other being's mana (magic), at the expense of their anima (soul). This slowly warps and corrupts. Eventually, when their anima is completely corrupted, they shed their normal-looking skin and become the stereotypical evil crone-type black magic user.
About a third of the way through the book, we find out what the title is talking about. In book 2, the Scholomance gave El some special scrolls. Because of the way the void, magic and the Scholomance are -- where belief equals reality -- the scrolls are sentient and El spends much of book 2 'romancing' them. They inspired her with the plan they used to get everyone out. El re-reads the scrolls/sutras more thoroughly and discovers that, unlike how establishing an enclave is normally done -- though a secret ritual wrought by a group of mages -- the author was able to do it alone. The golden sutras contain the instructions as well as explaining how the rest of the magical world makes them. And, like much of how the magical world works, it's bad. By the end of the book, we know who's causing the destruction of the enclaves and we don't feel bad that enclaves are dropping off into the void. They deservedly do. You'll have to read the book to find out why I'm confident that you'll be part of that 'we', but at one point in the story, I really had to wonder why God loves humanity. The depth of evil that we'll do to each other...
As much as losing Orion is hard, the book ends on a positive note. It ends on a really good note, actually. But getting there, the last 10-15% of the book had me weeping. I literally could not put the book down (this is not a euphemism -- I literally should have been doing something else). Thinking of it now makes me tear up, even though I know it's going to have a good ending.
This was a fabulous series. We have a grouchy heroine -- and you know how I love those grouchy characters -- whose great-grandmother prophesied that she was going to destroy the enclaves and cause death and the destruction of the magical world. Spells for death, destruction, maiming and pain come easily to her; it's the nice ones she struggles to memorize. El is a character who has a horrible temper and knows it, who could easy hurt people who 'cross' her and yet she doesn’t. As much as El would like to liquify someone's organs, gnaw their face off, or something else rude, she doesn't. Her mother is a powerful healer and from childhood has taught El to do the right/kind thing. (El's a great character that proves that it's the nurture side that counts.) But even though her nature predisposes her to do nasty things, she doesn't want to become the person that brings death and destruction. So instead, she saves people.
Novik's imagination is wonderful and the world she's created is amazingly complex. In this book we learn what evil is done to create a maw-mouth, why Orion did what he did at the end of book 2 and how El will handle the aftermath. Novik's story did not disappoint. This is a series I will definitely read again (and again). I have no hesitation in giving book 3 and the whole series a 5 out of 5 stars.
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