The Golden Enclaves and Nona the Ninth

[cahn]

So I read The Golden Enclaves and Nona the Ninth in September and October, respectively, and I kept meaning to post how much I loved both of them and here we are in November, so... okay, I'm not going to make the long posts I was hoping to make about them, but at least I will post about them!

The Golden Enclaves I read in a couple of days after it came out (because I wanted to know whom I should nominate for Yuletide...). If you liked the other two Scholomance books you will probably like this one too! (And if you didn't, you... probably won't?) I absolutely adored it, I adore this whole series.

Spoilers!

-okay I thought the whole El/Liesel and El/Liesel/Alfie thing was totally delicious

-I was totally bowled over by El killing the maw-mouths meaning she was destroying the enclaves, and partially that was because ALL THE CLUES WERE THERE IN PLAIN SIGHT and I just didn't see it coming at all, and also partially because El got it a page before I did, and I sat there and was like "...how does she know Dubai's going to be hit? What do you mean she's going to wait a half hour -- Oh. Oh. OH. OH CRAP."

-the thing I was probably most moved by was Deepthi, and how she had actually meant nothing but good for El this whole time but had had to throw her out anyway, and also how she sent her favorite grandson to his death -- which El actually wonders about in Graduate -- and how El's grandfather says he has to leave because this is too much, even if he doesn't actually, and how Deepthi says he would have jumped WITH EL and even that would have been better than the future she saw could have happened

-the characters I was most fascinated by were Olivia Rhys-Lake and Li Shanfeng, because they were the ones who did the horrible realpolitik calculations. They were the ones who, with their eyes wide open, did terrible, awful things -- for what they thought was the greater good. For what even might have been the greater good, sometimes? It gets glossed over a bit, but it's clearly a thing that El was able not to have to make hard unethical decisions because Ophelia and Shanfeng (and Deepthi!) did. Li Shanfeng is especially fascinating to me because he tried so hard to do the right thing, but sometimes all his choices were bad, and he owned that. I loved him in his brief scene and would have loved a ton more!

-having said all that, I do think the pacing was a bit off -- there was a lot of "where in the world is El Sandiego," so to speak, as they kept jet-setting everywhere, and we could have had a LOT more of Gwen, and poor Chloe just got... dropped entirely?? But Novik's writing is so compelling that I didn't really care in the moment while reading it (except about poor Chloe, where I kept expecting her being out of communication with everyone to be a plot point, but no, she just got forgotten).

Nona the Ninth I am very pleased to say that I obtained from ase in an airport a couple thousands of miles from where either of us lives, because we had ascertained that we were going to be at that same airport at approximately the same time and that we should say hi for about ten minutes before we both had to be elsewhere, and also that I should read Nona :) It was a quite nice ten minutes!

I loved Nona, both the book and especially the character. I also did not reread GtN or HtN before reading it, so I was extraordinarily confused throughout the entire book, to the extent that I completely misunderstood a lot of what was going on, including who Nona was, until ase set me straight. (Thank you! :D ) I loved the found-family/friend-groups, I loved

spoilers for NtN

Cam and Pal (although I'm not sure what I think of Paul yet), I loved that John is so entirely terrible, and all the cow jokes were just wholly terrible and incredibly hilarious.

SPOILERS for Golden Enclaves in the comments! (None for Nona, yet.)

Comments

[conuly]

poor Chloe just got... dropped entirely?

There's a fanfic about that: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42103068

[cahn]

Ohhhh! I really wanted that closure on Chloe, and that fanfic is great. Thank you!!

[morbane]

It is so fascinating to see your reactions to both! Especially because we had exactly the same journey except... you and I both read this 2021 Yuletide fic for Scholomance, and I read it and thought "Hm, yeah, that's extremely plausible, I'm expecting this now," and I guess... you did not? :D

So basically I spent all of Golden Enclaves waiting for the other shoe to drop. I still enjoyed it a lot, and appreciated the commitment to certain themes, and enjoyed getting to meet adult characters. "Knowing" a major plot point didn't ruin it for me. But it magnified the problems with the pacing, to be sure. I also found the chase-around-the-world stuff underwhelming, and felt the scenes with the disaffected fringe-dweller London enclave people dragged as well. It was nice to see it finally come together, though. Though I skimmed rapidly through the battlefield part.

(And I also loved Nona deeply, although I did not re-read Gideon and Harrow first and slightly regretted it. I just wasn't yet up to re-reading Harrow again and hoped Nona would rekindle enthusiasm. I loved John being awful and wry and sad and irreverent and arrogant and funny. (Not the same trajectory but I'm reminded of Londo's set of juxtapositions - Funny and light; then funny and dark; then dark and tragic; then tragic and light.))

[cahn]

Lolololol well, I did remember that fic and think it was extremely plausible, I just... am really terribly bad at extrapolating, I guess? :D That is to say, I got from that fic that enclaves were built on maw-mouths, so when we found that out that part in tGE, it didn't surprise me at all, but somehow the natural corollary, that when a maw-mouth was killed that an enclave would be destroyed, eluded me entirely. I guess I sort of thought that those weren't the only maw-mouths, and that the "enclave" maw-mouths stayed underneath the enclaves or something... The fic author understood this quite well; on rereading I see they even namechecked Bangkok's destruction specifically at the end, but I still didn't get it (although I guess you did!)

I just wasn't yet up to re-reading Harrow again and hoped Nona would rekindle enthusiasm.

Ohhhhh, same. And it did! I now want to reread the whole series again before Alecto comes out (though I might skim a bunch). I hope it stays at four books, though...

(Not the same trajectory but I'm reminded of Londo's set of juxtapositions - Funny and light; then funny and dark; then dark and tragic; then tragic and light.)

Oh, interesting! I wouldn't have thought to compare the two, but I see what you mean. And as to their different trajectories, I think the difference that John doesn't ever seem like he would say I'm sorry to any of it, which is what sets Londo on his different path (and which I loved!)

[morbane]

You are most generous to my extremely sketchy parallel-drawing. Coming back to this later, honestly it doesn't hold up very well, but I enjoy both Londo and John's characters' capacity to hold vile and sympathetic things, and funny and profoundly serious things.

I feel like John canonically SAYS I'm sorry, and I see him as a character who occasionally makes steps towards deeply meaning it, but then anger and arrogance and all his protective mechanisms take over. Real sorry is too scary. Like death.

And I love him so much.

The biggest real twist for me in Golden Enclaves was

the whole deal with Orion...

I was ready for it to really be that El "saw" him and no one else did, but also very glad that there was more going on. And the more I've thought about it the more I like it. It is, uh, a great metaphor for abuse (as well as depiction of same) that Orion is the way he is because his mother put something specific in him that he could not control and is not at fault for - but he cannot escape it, either; it is part of who he is and it affects every aspect of his life going forward. The idea that he might not be able to resolve it. Wow.

[cahn]

Real sorry is too scary. Like death.

And I love him so much.

Yes! <3 (I think my feelings are less "love" than "deeply entranced by his awfulness," but... yes.)

And

OH YES ORION!

I was totally surprised and shocked by that as well, although my surprise at Orion was overshadowed by WOW OPHELIA YOU ARE SOMETHING ELSE.

While Orion as a character was not my favorite, I agree that I found what he represented really quite fascinating. Before the reveal I wondered if he might be a metaphor for being on the spectrum; the way that his dad reacted to El really struck a chord with me. But then after the reveal:

that Orion is the way he is because his mother put something specific in him that he could not control and is not at fault for - but he cannot escape it, either; it is part of who he is and it affects every aspect of his life going forward. The idea that he might not be able to resolve it. Wow.

ahhhhhhh I hadn't specifically thought about it as an abuse metaphor before, but YES, this is amazing.

[leaflemming]

I loved the first two Scholomance books wildly. This one, I loved... less than I wanted to. As a metaphor for privilege and capitalism, her world-building works spectacularly, until it doesn't. I found the ending a weird mix of hand-waving assertion and "yeah I guess?" Also the running round the world bits felt messy and poorly paced, I wanted El's mother to get roughly 1000% more dialogue and more interaction with other characters than she was allowed, Orion's mother I also wanted more of albeit for drastically different reasons, El's posse from the school felt very underserved here, and yeah, fair, I adored the bits with Liesel. In sum: I could not in a million years have squared all the circles she tasks herself with squaring in this book, so it feels cheap to sit here and complain that she only managed two perfect books, not three. But I do feel like this was the one where it all got away from her a bit.

[morbane]

Hello hi I am also team I WANTED MORE GWEN. You know, more slanted towards enthusiasm than flinging the book against the wall in pique, but I wanted more Gwen.

[cahn]

YEP that was one of my major takeaways for sure!

[cahn]

YES PLEASE MORE GWEN very much more cosigning this! (Speaking from the perspective of Not Particularly an Orion Fan But Do Acknowledge He Is The Love Interest, it was nice that she got to interact with him but... like... wouldn't she want to meet El's friends??) More alllllll the characters! I wanted more Liesel, and definitely more Alfie (to be fair Liesel, of all of them, was best served by this book, but what that basically meant was that she got a good hefty part of the first half or so and then mostly disappeared), I SUPER wanted more Olivia and more Shanfeng, for as you say very different reasons, more Liu and Aadhya!

And I can see how that's... a lot, and also there was Lots of Plot that needed to happen, so I guess I don't really blame her for not doing all that, and I still really quite enjoyed the book! And I can't see how she could have split it into two books in a reasonable way.

As a metaphor for privilege and capitalism, her world-building works spectacularly, until it doesn't.

I really liked this part, but I think the thing that I found unfortunate in the end is that to fix it one apparently needs a) someone who's extremely highly superpowered and b) literal karma, which kind of makes it... not very applicable to our world.

I found the ending a weird mix of hand-waving assertion and "yeah I guess?"

Yeah, did I mention that I thought Orion really ought to have died? Oh, I see I didn't. I can see why Novik didn't think she could, but... he really ought to have.

I'm in the weird position of feeling that the experience of reading the second book, and the stellar way it was constructed and structured and written, was by far the best, but going back to it, it actually seems a little less amazing to me, because of how much the world opened up past the Scholomance in the third book, which I think is inferior in construction and pacing and characterization. I don't know what to think about that! I've never had that happen with a series before. On the other hand, I am not sure I've ever read a trilogy where I liked the second book the most, so there's that too.

[leaflemming]

Yeah, did I mention that I thought Orion really ought to have died?

So much this. I just don't buy the idea that El can save him the way she saves him. And layered onto that, but quite separate -- if he DOES get saved on those terms, then he's immortal now, right? I mean he's now the magical foundation of the Scholomance and he's no more able to die than a mawmouth is. Or is THAT isn't true, then the Scholomance dies when he does. Which is roughly when, according to Ophelia's calculations, it will actually be needed again; and why, if mals have been winnowed down to the point where it will be 60 years before they fully recover, are we setting the Scholomance up for use again right now? And why, if it's still so much better than the outside world that this is worth doing, does Orion need to be there to keep kids safe? And why, if the answer to that question is that he actually just needs to be there for reasons of magically-linked-to-it-now, can he ever leave to spend time with El?

I have similar long lists of questions in other areas. I really feel like she just asserts the particular mix of "bittersweet yes" and "sorry no" she thinks readers will accept emotionally, at the end, rather than actually following her world-building where it would take her. Which seems like a major fail, in a story with so very, very much exposition. (One of the things I find remarkable about the earlier books is how El just keeps on pausing to explain things, and somehow it doesn't bug me -- it's usually THE thing I won't forgive a writer for. But with so much explaining, it's a pretty under-explained ending).

[cahn]

My friend who read it pointed out that now it sounds like he's the magical foundation for a lot of enclaves too?? So if he dies what happens?? But maybe if he's immortal that's not so bad?? Except one day El will die, and what then? Uh, just to say that my friend also had a long list of questions! (The ending made little enough sense to me -- I mean, she writes eucatastrophe so well, I love reading it, but afterwards I didn't at all understand how it had worked -- that I didn't bother to come up with questions about it.)

(One of the things I find remarkable about the earlier books is how El just keeps on pausing to explain things, and somehow it doesn't bug me -- it's usually THE thing I won't forgive a writer for. But with so much explaining, it's a pretty under-explained ending).

Yeah, both sides of that are true! I think it's a combo of El's voice being so compelling and the worldbuilding being interesting. But also yes about the ending -- which of course I think if she did try to explain more it would sort of fall apart, so...