Genre Fiction
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The Last Graduate: A Novel (The Scholomance)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The specter of graduation looms large as Naomi Novik's groundbreaking, New York Times bestselling trilogy continues in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education.
HUGO AWARD FINALIST • LOCUS AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Polygon, Thrillist, She Reads • "The climactic graduation-day battle will bring cheers, tears, and gasps as the second of the Scholomance trilogy closes with a breathtaking cliff-hanger."-Booklist (starred review)
In Wisdom, Shelter. That's the official motto of the Scholomance. I suppose you could even argue that it's true-only the wisdom is hard to come by, so the shelter's rather scant.
Our beloved school does its best to devour all its students-but now that I've reached my senior year and have actually won myself a handful of allies, it's suddenly developed a very particular craving for me. And even if I somehow make it through the endless waves of maleficaria that it keeps throwing at me in between grueling homework assignments, I haven't any idea how my allies and I are going to make it through the graduation hall alive.
Unless, of course, I finally accept my foretold destiny of dark sorcery and destruction. That would certainly let me sail straight out of here. The course of wisdom, surely.
But I'm not giving in-not to the mals, not to fate, and especially not to the Scholomance. I'm going to get myself and my friends out of this hideous place for good-even if it's the last thing I do.
With keen insight and mordant humor, Novik reminds us that sometimes it is not enough to rewrite the rules-sometimes, you need to toss out the entire rulebook.
The magic of the Scholomance trilogy will continue in The Golden Enclaves
HUGO AWARD FINALIST • LOCUS AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Polygon, Thrillist, She Reads • "The climactic graduation-day battle will bring cheers, tears, and gasps as the second of the Scholomance trilogy closes with a breathtaking cliff-hanger."-Booklist (starred review)
In Wisdom, Shelter. That's the official motto of the Scholomance. I suppose you could even argue that it's true-only the wisdom is hard to come by, so the shelter's rather scant.
Our beloved school does its best to devour all its students-but now that I've reached my senior year and have actually won myself a handful of allies, it's suddenly developed a very particular craving for me. And even if I somehow make it through the endless waves of maleficaria that it keeps throwing at me in between grueling homework assignments, I haven't any idea how my allies and I are going to make it through the graduation hall alive.
Unless, of course, I finally accept my foretold destiny of dark sorcery and destruction. That would certainly let me sail straight out of here. The course of wisdom, surely.
But I'm not giving in-not to the mals, not to fate, and especially not to the Scholomance. I'm going to get myself and my friends out of this hideous place for good-even if it's the last thing I do.
With keen insight and mordant humor, Novik reminds us that sometimes it is not enough to rewrite the rules-sometimes, you need to toss out the entire rulebook.
The magic of the Scholomance trilogy will continue in The Golden Enclaves
Editorial Reviews
Praise for The Last Graduate
"[The Last Graduate] rips along like a force of nature. In the abstract, this is a story about relying on others-but in the concrete, it is about how to survive when the odds are against you. As she did with [A Deadly Education], Novik changes the game again with the very last line."-Locus
"Truly one of the best fantasy series out there right now, and it's not close."-Culturess
"[The Last Graduate] is as compulsive a read as [A Deadly Education]. As a warning, it ends on another killer cliffhanger."-BuzzFeed
"Naomi Novik's Scholomance series, about kids at a preposterously deadly magical school, stands out in a ridiculously crowded field. Its sheer viciousness, its grim humor, and its complicated interpersonal politics are an immediate draw."-Polygon
"Sardonic students, gruesome monsters, growing friendships, and a touch of romance create a highly readable story. Some questions remain to be answered in the trilogy's last volume. The end of this installment ensures that book three can't come fast enough."-Library Journal (starred review)
Praise for A Deadly Education
"Eyeball-meltingly brilliant-Novik is, quite simply, a genius."-Kiersten White, New York Times bestselling author of And I Darken
"Naomi Novik has written the wizard-school book that we all deserve! Constant peril, a fresh magic system, and a deeper discussion of how educational inequality currently functions than I ever expected to see in fantasy."-Hank Green, author of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
"Novik skillfully combines sharp humor with layers of imagination to build a fantasy that delig...
"[The Last Graduate] rips along like a force of nature. In the abstract, this is a story about relying on others-but in the concrete, it is about how to survive when the odds are against you. As she did with [A Deadly Education], Novik changes the game again with the very last line."-Locus
"Truly one of the best fantasy series out there right now, and it's not close."-Culturess
"[The Last Graduate] is as compulsive a read as [A Deadly Education]. As a warning, it ends on another killer cliffhanger."-BuzzFeed
"Naomi Novik's Scholomance series, about kids at a preposterously deadly magical school, stands out in a ridiculously crowded field. Its sheer viciousness, its grim humor, and its complicated interpersonal politics are an immediate draw."-Polygon
"Sardonic students, gruesome monsters, growing friendships, and a touch of romance create a highly readable story. Some questions remain to be answered in the trilogy's last volume. The end of this installment ensures that book three can't come fast enough."-Library Journal (starred review)
Praise for A Deadly Education
"Eyeball-meltingly brilliant-Novik is, quite simply, a genius."-Kiersten White, New York Times bestselling author of And I Darken
"Naomi Novik has written the wizard-school book that we all deserve! Constant peril, a fresh magic system, and a deeper discussion of how educational inequality currently functions than I ever expected to see in fantasy."-Hank Green, author of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
"Novik skillfully combines sharp humor with layers of imagination to build a fantasy that delig...
Readers Top Reviews
Peter Rihansjhigb
Greatly enjoyed these books. El’s acerbic commentary and observations had me laughing out loud at times. The concept was engaging and I devoured each of the books in one sitting. The odd spelling or usage glitch did not detract from my enjoyment. Sadly it seems this is the end of the story though there are some intriguing loose ends … destroying the Scholomance surely does not remove all the mals in the world and someone (El?) is going to need to find a way to save Orion. Possibly room for a follow up?
WatergypsyPeter R
I’m absolutely loving this series, the worldbuilding is still excellent and some of the snark from El made me laugh out loud as I was reading. The plot kept me guessing, and the ending means that I’ll be pre-ordering the third book as soon as it’s available! I was thrown by Amazon listing this as book 2 of 2 in the series but it’s listed as a trilogy on Naomi Novik’s website with the final book due in 2022.
JuSchlWatergypsyP
Once again a book I picked up and didn't put down until I finished it. Not exactly on the worldbuilding level of the first book, but seriously... that end. The whole story solution is elegant, gripping, and emotional. Read the first book. Read the second book. Read them again. Will there be a third? I don't know. The end of the second book is vicious and perfect. But I'd love a third one, because I do enjoy this dark, brutal world a lot.
MSnlondonhousewif
The first half of the book I was extremely disappointed. A lot of the things that I loved in the first book felt annoying or redundant. There were a lot setting dumps and self-pitying monologues that were not necessary. The pace was slow. But the book really picked up after the 50% mark. The romance felt more real, the characters were given more depth, and the plot was actually interesting. I would have never predicted the story would go in the direction that it took. El is no longer the underdog, or the loner, or the loser. I’m not sure how I like that. Aadhya and Liu are amazing characters. The relationship between the three is great. I think all the female characters are perfection. They have so much depth. I do think I would appreciate it more if there was more dialogue in general. Less introspective rants, and more character interaction. The ending was a killer cliffhanger. Killer. Overall: disappointing but I still need to see how it ends. And I absolutely love El.
Robin SnyderMSnlo
For some reason I really thought The Scholomance was going to be a dualogy, well one thing that this book made clear was that it is not. There is definitely another book after this one and will that ending I can’t wait to find out what it is. ***“I could never afford to look past survival, especially not for anything as insanely expensive as happiness, and I don’t believe in it anyway.”*** El once had a prophecy about her that she would be the most powerful dark sorceress and crush enclaves. Well, screw that she doesn’t want to be a dark sorceress and steal the mana out of other living beings. She really is just a girl that wants to graduate and get out of the Scholomance in one piece and if she can bring her small group of friends with her all the better. It is Orion and El’s last year of school all they need to do is get through this and fight the Mals in the graduation hall and then they can be free of the training ground that is the Scholomance. But a funny thing is happening. There aren’t a lot of Mals to kill since they helped last year’s seniors get out and all of them seem hell bent on annoying El and the group of freshmen she has been stuck with. She is really trying not to learn their names since 2/3 of Freshmen die but it isn’t going well and she feels a bit obligated to protect this group of Freshmen she is stuck with. Other things are going differently for El this year too. For one thing she has made some friends, talks to some of the other seniors and is maybe kinda sorta dating Orion. ***“They’re freaked out about Orion.” “After you’ve only been dating two months?” “We’re not dating!” Aadhya made a dramatic show of rolling her eyes heavenwards. “After you’ve been doing whatever you’re doing that is not dating but looks like dating to everyone else, for only two months.” “Thanks ever so,” I said dryly. “As far as I can tell, they’re shocked that he’s talking to another human being at all.” “To be fair, you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’d come up with the idea of being wildly rude and hostile to the guy who saved your life twenty times,” Aadhya said. I glared at her. “Thirteen times! And I’ve saved his life at least twice.” “Catch up already, girl,” she said unrepentantly.”*** It is hard to only care about yourself getting out when you have started making friends and caring about some other people. What is going to happen to the kids who come in the grade after you, what is going to happen to your little group of Freshmen when you aren’t there to protect them? Man, it sucks caring about everyone. New plan. Save everyone. I enjoyed so much about this book. El has really grown as a person and while she has a lot of baggage from growing up with that prophecy over her head, she is learning that not everyone will abandon you in the end. Heck some people might ev...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Vipersac
Keep far away from Orion Lake.
Most of the religious or spiritual people I know-and to be fair, they're mostly the sort of people who land in a vaguely pagan commune in Wales, or else they're terrified wizard kids crammed into a school that's trying to kill them-regularly beseech a benevolent and loving all-wise deity to provide them with useful advice through the medium of miraculous signs and portents. Speaking as my mother's daughter, I can say with authority that they wouldn't like it if they got it. You don't want mysterious unexplained advice from someone you know has your best interests at heart and whose judgment is unerringly right and just and true. Either they'll tell you to do what you want to do anyway, in which case you didn't need their advice, or they'll tell you to do the opposite, in which case you'll have to choose between sullenly following their advice, like a little kid who has been forced to brush her teeth and go to bed at a reasonable hour, or ignoring it and grimly carrying on, all the while knowing that your course of action is guaranteed to lead you straight to pain and dismay.
If you're wondering which of those two options I picked, then you must not know me, as pain and dismay were obviously my destination. I didn't even need to think about it. Mum's note was infinitely well-meant, but it wasn't long: My darling girl, I love you, have courage, and keep far away from Orion Lake. I read the whole thing in a single glance and tore it up into pieces instantly, standing right there among the little freshmen milling about. I ate the scrap with Orion's name on it myself and handed the rest out at once.
"What's this?" Aadhya said. She was still giving me narrow-eyed indignation.
"It lifts the spirits," I said. "My mum put it in the paper."
"Yes, your mum, Gwen Higgins," Aadhya said, even more coolly. "Who you've mentioned so often to us all."
"Oh, just eat it," I said, as irritably as I could manage after having just downed my own piece. The irritation wasn't as hard to muster up as it might've been. I can't think of anything I've missed in here, including the sun, the wind, or a night's sleep in safety, nearly as much as I've missed Mum, so that's what the spell gave me: the feeling of being curled up on her bed with my head in her lap and her hand stroking gently over my hair, the smell of the herbs she works with, the faint croaking of frogs outside the open door and the wet earth of a Welsh spring. It would've lifted my spirits enormously if only I hadn't been worrying deeply at the same time what she was trying to tell me about Orion.
The fun possibilities were endless. The best one was that he was doomed to die young and horribly, which given his penchant for heroics was reasonably predictable anyway. Unfortunately, falling in something or other with a doomed hero isn't the sort of thing Mum would warn me off. She's very much of the gather ye rosebuds while ye may school of thought.
Mum would only warn me off something bad, not something painful. So obviously Orion was the most brilliant maleficer ever, concealing his vile plans by saving the lives of everyone over and over just so he could, I don't know, kill them himself later on? Or maybe Mum was worried that he was so annoying that he'd drive me to become the most brilliant maleficer ever, which was probably more plausible, since that's supposedly my own doom anyway.
Of course, the most likely option was that Mum didn't know herself. She'd just had a bad feeling about Orion, for no reason she could've told me even if she'd written me a ten-page letter on both sides. A feeling so bad that she'd hitchhiked all the way to Cardiff to find the nearest incoming freshman, and she'd asked his parents to send me her one-gram note. I reached out and poked Aaron in his tiny skinny shoulder. "Hey, what did Mum give your parents for bringing the message?"
He turned round and said uncertainly, "I don't think she did? She said she didn't have anything to pay with, but she asked to talk to them in private, and then she gave it to me and my mam squeezed a bit of my toothpaste out to make room."
That might sound like nothing, but nobody wastes any of their inadequate four-year weight allowance on ordinary toothpaste; I brush with baking soda out of the alchemy lab supply cabinets myself. If Aaron had brought any at all, it was enchanted in some way: useful when you aren't going to see a dentist for the next four years. He could have traded that one squeeze of it to someone with bad toothache for a week of extra dinners, easily. And his parents ...
Vipersac
Keep far away from Orion Lake.
Most of the religious or spiritual people I know-and to be fair, they're mostly the sort of people who land in a vaguely pagan commune in Wales, or else they're terrified wizard kids crammed into a school that's trying to kill them-regularly beseech a benevolent and loving all-wise deity to provide them with useful advice through the medium of miraculous signs and portents. Speaking as my mother's daughter, I can say with authority that they wouldn't like it if they got it. You don't want mysterious unexplained advice from someone you know has your best interests at heart and whose judgment is unerringly right and just and true. Either they'll tell you to do what you want to do anyway, in which case you didn't need their advice, or they'll tell you to do the opposite, in which case you'll have to choose between sullenly following their advice, like a little kid who has been forced to brush her teeth and go to bed at a reasonable hour, or ignoring it and grimly carrying on, all the while knowing that your course of action is guaranteed to lead you straight to pain and dismay.
If you're wondering which of those two options I picked, then you must not know me, as pain and dismay were obviously my destination. I didn't even need to think about it. Mum's note was infinitely well-meant, but it wasn't long: My darling girl, I love you, have courage, and keep far away from Orion Lake. I read the whole thing in a single glance and tore it up into pieces instantly, standing right there among the little freshmen milling about. I ate the scrap with Orion's name on it myself and handed the rest out at once.
"What's this?" Aadhya said. She was still giving me narrow-eyed indignation.
"It lifts the spirits," I said. "My mum put it in the paper."
"Yes, your mum, Gwen Higgins," Aadhya said, even more coolly. "Who you've mentioned so often to us all."
"Oh, just eat it," I said, as irritably as I could manage after having just downed my own piece. The irritation wasn't as hard to muster up as it might've been. I can't think of anything I've missed in here, including the sun, the wind, or a night's sleep in safety, nearly as much as I've missed Mum, so that's what the spell gave me: the feeling of being curled up on her bed with my head in her lap and her hand stroking gently over my hair, the smell of the herbs she works with, the faint croaking of frogs outside the open door and the wet earth of a Welsh spring. It would've lifted my spirits enormously if only I hadn't been worrying deeply at the same time what she was trying to tell me about Orion.
The fun possibilities were endless. The best one was that he was doomed to die young and horribly, which given his penchant for heroics was reasonably predictable anyway. Unfortunately, falling in something or other with a doomed hero isn't the sort of thing Mum would warn me off. She's very much of the gather ye rosebuds while ye may school of thought.
Mum would only warn me off something bad, not something painful. So obviously Orion was the most brilliant maleficer ever, concealing his vile plans by saving the lives of everyone over and over just so he could, I don't know, kill them himself later on? Or maybe Mum was worried that he was so annoying that he'd drive me to become the most brilliant maleficer ever, which was probably more plausible, since that's supposedly my own doom anyway.
Of course, the most likely option was that Mum didn't know herself. She'd just had a bad feeling about Orion, for no reason she could've told me even if she'd written me a ten-page letter on both sides. A feeling so bad that she'd hitchhiked all the way to Cardiff to find the nearest incoming freshman, and she'd asked his parents to send me her one-gram note. I reached out and poked Aaron in his tiny skinny shoulder. "Hey, what did Mum give your parents for bringing the message?"
He turned round and said uncertainly, "I don't think she did? She said she didn't have anything to pay with, but she asked to talk to them in private, and then she gave it to me and my mam squeezed a bit of my toothpaste out to make room."
That might sound like nothing, but nobody wastes any of their inadequate four-year weight allowance on ordinary toothpaste; I brush with baking soda out of the alchemy lab supply cabinets myself. If Aaron had brought any at all, it was enchanted in some way: useful when you aren't going to see a dentist for the next four years. He could have traded that one squeeze of it to someone with bad toothache for a week of extra dinners, easily. And his parents ...
