The Summer War by Naomi Novik: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Summer War by Naomi Novik

The Summer War is a fairytale set in fantasy kingdom that shares a border with the fairy summer court. For a century, a war has raged every summer between the two countries over a fairy princess who was mistreated by a human king. But now the war is over, thanks to Celia’s father, the duke.

Celia is twelve and her beloved eldest brother Argent has just denounced his father and left home for good to be a knight in the summer court, because he wants to be free to love who he wants. Furious, Celia wishes he never finds love except in his blade, only for her powers as a sorceress to manifest at that point, making it a true curse instead.

With a sorcerer to barter with for his family’s position, Celia’s father arranges a marriage for her with the crown prince—or she suggests it, as she’s very clever for a twelve-year-old. But when the time for the wedding comes a couple of years later, she ends up married to the prince of the summer court instead. He wants revenge for the sister he lost a century ago, a mere blink in his long life. Celia has to suffer the exact fate his sister did. But she jumped off a tower and Celia has no intention of killing herself.

Luckily for her, Argent shows up to fight for her freedom. But she soon realises it’s the curse pushing him. She’s the only person who loves him and he wants to die for it to end the curse in his terms. But the prince can’t reverse his oath either, without suffering fatal consequences. So, one of the three has to die for the situation to be solved, and Celia can’t let that happen.

This was a good fairytale. It was fairly short and could be read in a couple of hours, but a lot happened. Celia befriended her neglected middle brother after Argent left and the two plotted to go to the summer court to end Argent’s curse. They even ran their father’s estate while the duke mourned the loss of his eldest son. The way out of the curse seemed impossible, but the entire family came together to solve it, and Celia was the cleverest of all in the end. The good people won and the bad people got their just deserts, although their fate wasn’t as bad as is usual in fairytales. No gruesome deaths for them.

The narrative flowed constantly, even though it was filled with a lot of information and secondary fairytales, and it was easy to read. It’s not a very memorable story, but it was a pleasant read for an evening, like a fairytale should be.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

 

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

 

The Golden Enclaves ends The Scholomance trilogy, and what a wild ride it has been. El, the sourly mage-to-be, has spent four years trying not to become an evil maleficer in the school for mages that has tried its best to kill her. She’s desperately trying to avoid fulfilling the prophecy of her as a destroyer of enclaves, the safe havens of mages. She’s now out of the school, which she has destroyed, and she’s saved everyone. All except Orion Lake, the boy she’s reluctantly come to love.

The book begins right from the cliff-hanger ending of the previous one. Orion has pushed El out of the school and stayed behind to fight a maw-mouth, the worst monster there is, a hungering blob that devours the living, never stopping. She tries to save him, but he won’t let her.

Grieving and traumatised, she’s moping in her mother’s yurt in the healing commune, when her friends from London enclave ask her help in killing a maw-mouth, a near-impossible feat which she’s done before. Someone’s attacking the enclaves by emptying them from their protective magic, which either plunges them into the void, killing everyone inside, or weakens the wards, opening them for monster attacks.

With nothing better to do, she sets out to help, with her friends facilitating her, as her ability to survive the outside world is sketchy at best, thanks to her isolated childhood in the commune. And then she learns the secret behind the enclaves, the evil magic they’re based on. She has to decide, if she wants to save the enclaves, or become the destroyer of the prophecy after all. It’s not an easy decision and nothing in the book is black and white, good or evil. Everything she does has consequences, and some of them are catastrophic.

This was an excellent book and a wonderful conclusion to the trilogy. The book moves smoothly from one disaster to another, forcing El to reveal exactly how powerful she is. All her closest friends are with her, ready to help, which she’s sort of coming to terms with. She isn’t without enemies who have waited for her to graduate for a long time, but she also learns that she has allies and a family that loves her.

And she doesn’t give up on Orion, if her plan basically is to kill the maw-mouth that got him. But he has a surprise for her—and the reader. Orion has been a tragic figure from the start, an exploited hero who wants nothing more than to help others by killing monsters. I badly wanted a good ending for him, even if it would mean putting him out of his misery. It’s not an easy decision for El, but in the end, she knows what she must do—which was nothing I could’ve predicted.

An ending to a great trilogy is seldom perfect, but I am perfectly satisfied with this one. It’s not a fairy-tale or happily-ever-after ending, but it’s good enough for everyone, and it suits the world and the characters. And El may even have found a way to become content after all.

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Can I start with just AAAAGGGHH! I was not prepared for the ending, despite the book pointing at it with a large arrow from the first page. Now I have the agonising wait untill September to find out how it’ll turn out. Based on the description of that book, all is not lost. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

The Last Graduate is the second book in the Scholomance trilogy of a school for mages. The school is infested with all sorts of monsters who kill and eat the students, and the main purpose of the education is to learn to spot and defend oneself against them—a fact that I missed reading the first book, if it was spelled out that clearly there. The students are trapped inside it for four years, and those who are alive and able to exit the portal out at the end, after battling through hordes of monsters, graduate.

The main character is El, Galadriel, who has potential to become the greatest evil mage ever. She tries to resist her destiny with everything she has, despite the semi-sentient school pushing her towards it with everything it makes her learn. She’s never truly tempted, but occasionally the spells get out of her hands.

It’s the last year and the school has upped its efforts. At first she believes it’s out to get her, but little by little it dawns on her that it’s preparing her for a different mission: saving her entire graduation class. And that morphs into a bigger challenge: saving everyone. She’s unique in her magic and strength, and possibly the only one who can do it.

She isn’t alone in her mission, much to her surprise, having spent most of her time in the school without friends. She doesn’t always know what to do with them, not accustomed to having friends, but she gets it mostly right in the end. The biggest puzzle for her is Orion Lake, her sort of boyfriend. He’s a wonderful character in his single-minded mission to kill all the monsters, with room for only one other thing, El.

Most of the book is about preparing for the graduation day. It gets slightly repetitive, maybe, but with all the action, it never becomes dull. Obviously the exit from the school doesn’t go entirely as planned, and definitely not for El. The abrupt ending is a perfect cliff-hanger, and I can’t wait to read the last book.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Hands down, A Deadly Education, The Scholomance 1, is the best book I’ve read this year, and I’ve read quite a few. I like Novik’s Temeraire series set in an alt-history Regency universe with dragons, so I was eager to read this one when I received a review copy from NetGalley. Her new series couldn’t be farther from the sophisticated historical fantasy—and it’s all the better for it.

The book is being advertised as Harry Potter meets The Fight Club, and it’s sort of accurate and not accurate at all. It’s young adult (urban) fantasy set in a school for sorcerers. But unlike in Harry Potter, it’s not a safe haven from the scary real world. The students are inducted at fourteen and they graduate four years later—if they’re still alive. Because the school is actively trying to kill them. There are no adults to help them, no sage elders. There are no teachers. There are only the students and hungry monsters. And the fight is constant. There are no safe places and they can’t get out except at graduation, and for that they have to exit through a huge hall teeming with the killer monsters. Not everyone survives.

Galadriel is on her second to last year, and she’s doing fairly well. She would do better if she gave into her affinity to dark magic, but she knows that if she does, she’ll become an unstoppable monster. So she hides her true nature and sticks to the good magic. But other students shun her, for no reason that she can understand. In a school that tries to constantly kill one, she need friends and allies. She can’t even take a shower without someone watching her back. She has no one.

Then Orion Lake, the hero of her year, takes interest in her, saving her from a monster after another. That’s what he does. He’s brilliant at keeping people alive. Galadriel resents him for it—the book starts with her contemplating his murder—but he seems to be impervious to her anger. And to her amazement, he starts hanging out with her. And with him, come other people. Not being alone is a new experience for her. What follows is basically a growth story about an angry loner, a fairly typical one at that, with popular kids versus the shunned ones and finding one’s true friends. There’s a little bit of romance there as well, but in a school where anyone can die at any moment, one doesn’t want to get too attached. Especially since it turns out that by saving all those students, Orion has only managed to make the monsters even hungrier—and they’re out to get the entire school.

What makes this book so brilliant is the world Novik has created. It’s rich and terrifying, and the narrative doesn’t spend a moment longer than necessary at explaining things. We learn as we go with Galadriel, her stream of consciousness describing both the school and the outside world in an exhausting but unputdownable manner. The chapters and paragraphs are long, but the reader plunges right in there with her and is in for a ride. The ending is satisfying, with a hook that guarantees I’m going to want to read the next book. Instantly, if that were possible.