The Last Graduate (Novik)
Oct. 5th, 2021 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn5/5. So I know the Scholomance books about grimdark-monsters-will-eat-you-magical-boarding-school aren't everyone's cup of tea, and if you didn't like A Deadly Education I dare say you won't like this one either, but wow it is like The Last Graduate was made to laser-focus target my id, in fact way more deeply than Education, which was already pretty good at targeting my id.
Oh, well, to start with, there are certainly a number of things about Graduate that are basically also what I liked about Education, especially at the beginning:
-Grimdark. I actually do enjoy grimdark as a thing, okay, but what I don't enjoy about it is the nihilism, and both A Deadly Education and Graduate reject that utterly -- but more later on that. (Until then, I will say that while Education was reasonably centered in grimdark, Graduate is all about bringing light into the grimdark, which YEAH.)
-Boarding-school -- as others have remarked, to be honest the Scholomance books have quite a bit less boarding-school vibe than one might expect from a one-line description, because the grimdark sort of takes over, but it turns out that a lot of what I like about boarding-school books is:
-Competency kink. It's baked into the premise of these books -- you have to be super competent or else mals are going to eat you. But I really enjoy reading about characters who are really really good at making their magical lutes or casting spells of destruction or whatever, and the details of their doing it.
-Fandomesque Harry Potter critique. Actually that was much more muted in this book than the last one (and there was very little YA-critique in the way I felt like Education was really having a go at YA tropes/cliches, especially grimdark YA) because Novik had her fun in the last book and was interested in bigger things, but still, there's a way in which this particular book is very much an answer to the Harry Potter House System and how the division between them became more and more problematic as the books went on.
-A focus on El learning how to deal with having friends and deepening her friendships and alliances, and I am always there for that kind of thing
So that's how the book starts. And I was unsure how Novik was going to sustain this for an entire book. Like, I'm not opposed to reading about grimdark competency-kink friendship-building Harry-Potter-critiquing for an entire book, but that seemed like -- I don't know -- not quite ambitious enough for what the first book promised?
...And then we got the rest of the book. I guess the least spoilerific way I can talk about it is -- we already knew the theme of Novik's recent books is working with rather than against, and this one doesn't break that streak. And raised to the emotional pitch of eucatastrophe; I had extremely wet eyes through that entire last chapter.
-That reveal about what has actually been going on this whole time. OMG.
-How the entire point is that it's not enough to save your own little alliance, or even everyone who is nice to you; what's right is to save everyone. I CAN'T EVEN
I guess I do wonder exactly how realistic it is that all the kids except that one straggler from California (lol) actually went along with the plan, a plan that had way more danger in it for them than it had to, when the seniors, at least, had spent years getting into exactly the opposite mindset. But I suppose I can just see it; the combo of having months to get into the mindset, the school helping them do so, not really knowing what the school will do if they renege tbh, the enclave philosophy as El points out, the grip of peer pressure going in the right direction for once. But the part of me that isn't thinking about it rationally doesn't care, that part where they have to face that it's not the pragmatic thing and they do it anyway is JUST ALL THAT
-That last climactic scene was even more climactic because we knew how much had to be overcome in the way of internal mindset to make any of that happen -- every time the narration would say that a kid did this or that, it would be like, ...and this wouldn't have happened without everything that came before <3333
-I did think sometimes that it was a bit -- odd, structurally speaking, that El was so powerful, but I think part of the point is maybe what power is good for. (I can also tell this was written in a post-Ender's-Game world; it doesn't engage with Ender outright but there's something about the differences between the superpowerful(El) and the supergenius(Ender) POV character that I think is informed by it, even if not consciously or directly.)
-each one of them was a story whose unhappy ending hadn't been written yet, and in its place I'd inscribed one line with my own hand: And then they graduated from the Scholomance.
...I just lose it every time I read that. Just. Being able to save everyone, succeeding beyond hope and beyond despair, I have ALL THE FEELINGS EVER
A couple of other assorted things, including slight nitpicks:
-ase pointed out that the numbers really don't work out in Deadly Education -- I feel rather silly for not noticing it myself: if substantially more than half your kids are being killed off, then unless everyone was having a bunch of kids (and this doesn't seem to be a thing everyone is doing) you wouldn't have any wizards left by this time. Unfortunately there are additional concrete numbers in this book and they keep not making any sense. Oh well.
-First Novik published book (that I know of) where there are actual canon relationships that aren't M/F, whee! (ETA: But because Novik book, relatively minor characters, one of whom was so minor that it actually took me a minute to remember that character's gender.) Though I felt like the stirring speech that went with the second one was a little... too much, a little too "look at me with my awesome vegetables" that I feel like generally speaking Novik is too good a writer to do, instead integrating much more seamlessly: e.g. how she makes the Scholomance as a global entity (unlike the Harry Potter world, I must say), complete with inequities, is integrated into the worldbuilding and in my opinion done really well.
-Also, it does end on a cliffhanger. I knew this going in, and I was worried about what the cliffhanger would be, and in particular I worried it meant the book arc would get aborted. I shouldn't have; the arc works. I mean, it is a giant cliffhanger, but it doesn't mess with the meaning of the book, go Novik.
-Also also, I am sooooo annoyed that I read this days after Yuletide nomination closed. I would SO have nominated Worldbuilding for it. I really REALLY want to know more about the Scholomance now, and also more about what is going on with all those enclave kids. I guess there's always next year. (ETA 10-9: YESSSSSSS)
This may be the best second book of a trilogy I've ever read (except, of course, Purgatorio ;) ). I mean, IDK, it's possible I'm totally forgetting something :) But at least it's the first time in a long time that I didn't think the second book in a trilogy was the weakest link; I think this one is better than Education, not because Education was flawed, but because Graduate built on Education to become something greater than one book could be alone. We'll see in a year, I guess, whether the second book is the strongest because the third book is the weakest link, or whether she'll be able to pull off something to top this. (Honestly the third book seems like it would be incredibly difficult to write, given how she's constrained herself in this book... but then again I wouldn't have thought she could make this one work, and she totally did.)
(ETA: SPOILERS fair game in comments!)
Oh, well, to start with, there are certainly a number of things about Graduate that are basically also what I liked about Education, especially at the beginning:
-Grimdark. I actually do enjoy grimdark as a thing, okay, but what I don't enjoy about it is the nihilism, and both A Deadly Education and Graduate reject that utterly -- but more later on that. (Until then, I will say that while Education was reasonably centered in grimdark, Graduate is all about bringing light into the grimdark, which YEAH.)
-Boarding-school -- as others have remarked, to be honest the Scholomance books have quite a bit less boarding-school vibe than one might expect from a one-line description, because the grimdark sort of takes over, but it turns out that a lot of what I like about boarding-school books is:
-Competency kink. It's baked into the premise of these books -- you have to be super competent or else mals are going to eat you. But I really enjoy reading about characters who are really really good at making their magical lutes or casting spells of destruction or whatever, and the details of their doing it.
-Fandomesque Harry Potter critique. Actually that was much more muted in this book than the last one (and there was very little YA-critique in the way I felt like Education was really having a go at YA tropes/cliches, especially grimdark YA) because Novik had her fun in the last book and was interested in bigger things, but still, there's a way in which this particular book is very much an answer to the Harry Potter House System and how the division between them became more and more problematic as the books went on.
-A focus on El learning how to deal with having friends and deepening her friendships and alliances, and I am always there for that kind of thing
So that's how the book starts. And I was unsure how Novik was going to sustain this for an entire book. Like, I'm not opposed to reading about grimdark competency-kink friendship-building Harry-Potter-critiquing for an entire book, but that seemed like -- I don't know -- not quite ambitious enough for what the first book promised?
...And then we got the rest of the book. I guess the least spoilerific way I can talk about it is -- we already knew the theme of Novik's recent books is working with rather than against, and this one doesn't break that streak. And raised to the emotional pitch of eucatastrophe; I had extremely wet eyes through that entire last chapter.
-That reveal about what has actually been going on this whole time. OMG.
-How the entire point is that it's not enough to save your own little alliance, or even everyone who is nice to you; what's right is to save everyone. I CAN'T EVEN
I guess I do wonder exactly how realistic it is that all the kids except that one straggler from California (lol) actually went along with the plan, a plan that had way more danger in it for them than it had to, when the seniors, at least, had spent years getting into exactly the opposite mindset. But I suppose I can just see it; the combo of having months to get into the mindset, the school helping them do so, not really knowing what the school will do if they renege tbh, the enclave philosophy as El points out, the grip of peer pressure going in the right direction for once. But the part of me that isn't thinking about it rationally doesn't care, that part where they have to face that it's not the pragmatic thing and they do it anyway is JUST ALL THAT
-That last climactic scene was even more climactic because we knew how much had to be overcome in the way of internal mindset to make any of that happen -- every time the narration would say that a kid did this or that, it would be like, ...and this wouldn't have happened without everything that came before <3333
-I did think sometimes that it was a bit -- odd, structurally speaking, that El was so powerful, but I think part of the point is maybe what power is good for. (I can also tell this was written in a post-Ender's-Game world; it doesn't engage with Ender outright but there's something about the differences between the superpowerful(El) and the supergenius(Ender) POV character that I think is informed by it, even if not consciously or directly.)
-each one of them was a story whose unhappy ending hadn't been written yet, and in its place I'd inscribed one line with my own hand: And then they graduated from the Scholomance.
...I just lose it every time I read that. Just. Being able to save everyone, succeeding beyond hope and beyond despair, I have ALL THE FEELINGS EVER
A couple of other assorted things, including slight nitpicks:
-
ase pointed out that the numbers really don't work out in Deadly Education -- I feel rather silly for not noticing it myself: if substantially more than half your kids are being killed off, then unless everyone was having a bunch of kids (and this doesn't seem to be a thing everyone is doing) you wouldn't have any wizards left by this time. Unfortunately there are additional concrete numbers in this book and they keep not making any sense. Oh well.-First Novik published book (that I know of) where there are actual canon relationships that aren't M/F, whee! (ETA: But because Novik book, relatively minor characters, one of whom was so minor that it actually took me a minute to remember that character's gender.) Though I felt like the stirring speech that went with the second one was a little... too much, a little too "look at me with my awesome vegetables" that I feel like generally speaking Novik is too good a writer to do, instead integrating much more seamlessly: e.g. how she makes the Scholomance as a global entity (unlike the Harry Potter world, I must say), complete with inequities, is integrated into the worldbuilding and in my opinion done really well.
-Also, it does end on a cliffhanger. I knew this going in, and I was worried about what the cliffhanger would be, and in particular I worried it meant the book arc would get aborted. I shouldn't have; the arc works. I mean, it is a giant cliffhanger, but it doesn't mess with the meaning of the book, go Novik.
-Also also, I am sooooo annoyed that I read this days after Yuletide nomination closed. I would SO have nominated Worldbuilding for it. I really REALLY want to know more about the Scholomance now, and also more about what is going on with all those enclave kids. I guess there's always next year. (ETA 10-9: YESSSSSSS)
This may be the best second book of a trilogy I've ever read (except, of course, Purgatorio ;) ). I mean, IDK, it's possible I'm totally forgetting something :) But at least it's the first time in a long time that I didn't think the second book in a trilogy was the weakest link; I think this one is better than Education, not because Education was flawed, but because Graduate built on Education to become something greater than one book could be alone. We'll see in a year, I guess, whether the second book is the strongest because the third book is the weakest link, or whether she'll be able to pull off something to top this. (Honestly the third book seems like it would be incredibly difficult to write, given how she's constrained herself in this book... but then again I wouldn't have thought she could make this one work, and she totally did.)
(ETA: SPOILERS fair game in comments!)
