[She] didn’t even believe the stupid unbelievable lie that the school had swallowed, the mad ambition written too effectively into its steel and brass… to protect all the wise-gifted children of the world. She wasn’t going to try to do that. She perfectly understood that some children had to die. [loc. 2696]
The words ‘triumphant conclusion to the trilogy’ are worn out by overuse, but here they are accurate: El, fresh out of the Scholomance, discovers the unspeakable foundations that underpin the magical world, and ... refuses. She confronts evils (not all of which are what they appear to be) and discovers that it's not enough to compromise, to look away, to be ignorant of the injustices on which your world relies. Instead, something has to change, and someone has to make that change happen.
Which is not to say it’s simple, straightforward, or predictable. And certainly El's often-abrasive personality is not abruptly transformed into sweetness and light. (Phew!)
This review will inevitably contain some spoilers for the previous instalments, A Deadly Education> and especially The Last Graduate. Stop here if you wish to avoid them.
Hurled out of the doors of the Scholomance by Orion Lake, the powerful young man who claimed to love her, El is the eponymous Last Graduate, magically flung back to the commune in Wales and the yurt where her mother lives. It takes her a while to come to terms with her grief and rage, but the London enclave is under attack, and El is (according to a trio of her erstwhile classmates, who show up in muddy Wales in improbable finery) the only person with strong enough power to help them. Dragged off to London by the fearsomely efficient Liesel, El defeats a monstrous mal (it's scared of her) and learns more about how enclaves are created. This knowledge will prove useful, and it also means that the 'golden sutra' spellbook she brought back from the Scholomance, a book which holds the key to creating small, self-sufficient ‘golden enclaves’, is more vitally important than ever.
From London to New York, Beijing to Dubai, Maharashtra to Portugal, El's journey encompasses her great-grandmother's apocalyptic prophecies, the secret of Orion's unique gifts (or were those gifts a curse?), and the nature of a tertiary-order entity. There is love as well as revulsion and fear, and there are maw-mouths aplenty, and -- astonishingly, hearteningly, jubilantly -- a happy ending.
I was reminded of 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas', and of N K Jemisin's response 'The Ones Who Stay and Fight'. Yes, at the heart of this novel is the trolley problem: but there is also the truism about power and responsibility, and the age-old problem with the double-edged vagueness of prophecy. Novik handles these profound themes confidently and clearly, and doesn't neglect character arcs or worldbuilding. I was slightly disppointed not to see more of Gwen, and Precious seemed all but forgotten at times: but El's journeys (moral, emotional, geographical), and her understanding of the magical world's rotten foundations, were utterly compelling and more cheering than I'd anticipated.
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