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A review by ladypalutena
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
dark
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Oh boy, where do I begin with this one?
When I read A Deadly Education, I had nothing to compare El to. Now that I'm several years older, and many anime series deeper, I can confidently say that she reminds me of Saitama, the hero from One Punch Man. His entire schtick is that he trained himself so hard that he can defeat any enemy in one punch, and as such, life is boring for him now. He even joins a super hero squad, and ends up in like, D-Class, because he doesn't see the point in showing them how he's actually above and beyond S-Class or S-Tier or whatever.
That's El.
No matter what the Scholomance throws at her, she's able to throw it right back. And the vast majority of the book deals with her running the obstacle course that the school sets up for seniors during their second semester of senior year. A whole lot of the book, actually, which is where it really starts to drag for me.
Obviously, I haven't read the third book yet, so I don't know if my prediction of "this was originally supposed to be a duology but expanded into a trilogy, so there's got to be a lot of bloat in there" will ring true, but I can confidently say, at least in my opinion, that there were many pages that could have been cut from this book. Mainly, the unending chapters of the obstacle course. This is a 386 page book. Over one hundred of those pages are dedicated to lengthy descriptions of the obstacle courses,and how El just destroys everything in her path in each one, along with Orion, and how they end up escorting 400+ kids at a time through the courses, when it used to be just a handful of kids would take a turn at one time. The middle dragged on for so long that it took me almost a week to get through this book.
There is one big difference between Saitama and El, however: Saitama is likeable. While El got better at the end of the first book, she's still angry and hurting in this book, which causes her to be rude to everyone.It's in the last hundred pages, when she goes down to the graduation hall and finds the hall completely empty, with not even a maw-mouth to be found, that she begins to realize why the school has been throwing everything it has at her: it wants her to be the one to "save" the school. The Scholomance can no longer complete its primary directive, and as such, it's been grasping for ways to do so for centuries, at the expense of thousands of kids every year.
The first book ended on a cliffhanger, and this second book ends on an even more massive cliffhanger, and even then, I'm not certain what else you can drag out of the third book to warrant spending several hundred more pages on this story.I assume in the third book, El is going to have to answer for the whole "Destroying the School" business, and then she'll try and build her enclaves with the spell that she uncovered in the first book, and then she'll convince someone somehow to go back to what used to be the Scholomance in hopes of rescuing whatever might be left of Orion. I'm sure we're going to be in for some major twists and turns.
When I read A Deadly Education, I had nothing to compare El to. Now that I'm several years older, and many anime series deeper, I can confidently say that she reminds me of Saitama, the hero from One Punch Man. His entire schtick is that he trained himself so hard that he can defeat any enemy in one punch, and as such, life is boring for him now. He even joins a super hero squad, and ends up in like, D-Class, because he doesn't see the point in showing them how he's actually above and beyond S-Class or S-Tier or whatever.
That's El.
No matter what the Scholomance throws at her, she's able to throw it right back. And the vast majority of the book deals with her running the obstacle course that the school sets up for seniors during their second semester of senior year. A whole lot of the book, actually, which is where it really starts to drag for me.
Obviously, I haven't read the third book yet, so I don't know if my prediction of "this was originally supposed to be a duology but expanded into a trilogy, so there's got to be a lot of bloat in there" will ring true, but I can confidently say, at least in my opinion, that there were many pages that could have been cut from this book. Mainly, the unending chapters of the obstacle course. This is a 386 page book. Over one hundred of those pages are dedicated to lengthy descriptions of the obstacle courses,
There is one big difference between Saitama and El, however: Saitama is likeable. While El got better at the end of the first book, she's still angry and hurting in this book, which causes her to be rude to everyone.
The first book ended on a cliffhanger, and this second book ends on an even more massive cliffhanger, and even then, I'm not certain what else you can drag out of the third book to warrant spending several hundred more pages on this story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, and Blood