A review by mairead_parade
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really enjoyed this series and thought this was a clever and satisfying final book, with some serious emotional gut punches. Novik forces her characters to grow up and reckons with the true costs and inequalities of the society she's imagined in a much more real way than a lot of other teen magic fantasy, which I appreciated. This series also escalates the “big bad” from book to book in an interesting and surprising way that changed my perspective on the previous installments.
My main quibbles are that the ending is a little too tidy, especially in contrast to a lot of the more brutal choices Novik makes in the rest of the series. El and Orion also spent very little on-page time together, which made sense in terms of the plot, but I lost some of the investment in their relationship that I had at the end of book two.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings