Picking up immediately after the end of A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate is a gripping read that starts with El holding the cryptic note from her Mum and ends on a terrific cliffhanger. At one of Novik’s events for the book release she did apologize for both books one and two ending on a cliffhanger. When she set out to write A Deadly Education she envisioned it ending where The Last Graduate does. Novik is a writes as she goes author, not a big outliner/planner. While working on book one, in an extremely rare occurrence for her, she dreamed an entire scene, which was of El receiving the note. In the morning her reaction was, ‘Of course that’s what’s going to happen and oh shoot, my duology just turned into a trilogy because this is how A Deadly Education ends’. Novik then called her editor and explained, to which the editor agreed that was how book one should end. So she actually intended for only one cliffhanger! She also explained that part of the spark for this series was a single line in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in which Van Helsing references studying at the Scholomance. That led her to folktales/myths of the Scholomance, a magical school where your education might cost you your soul. Novik is a delight, and if presented with the opportunity I highly recommend attending one of her events.
In her final year at the Scholomance, it seems as though the school has it out for El. Her magically created schedule has placed her once a week with a classroom full of freshman. The school has a deeper purpose than just annoying El, it pushes and tests her to think bigger and dare greater. In The Last Graduate, the Scholomance becomes a proper character and Novik reveals more about its inner workings, answering questions about how things operate, like where does the food come from and how do people deal with menstruation. The overall world setting gets deeper as Enclave politics become extremely important in this book.
Orion Lake also gets rounded out, revealing more of himself to El and his driving motivation. I love the relationship between these two, El is incredibly prickly and Orion a bit bumbling . They are in such a difficult up situation, prepping to hopefully survive the graduation hall and escape the Scholomance while fumbling at, or in El’s case resisting, teenage love.
If you enjoyed A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate needs to be high up on your TBR. El’s graduation plan is so audacious, I cannot wait to see the ramifications in the final book of this trilogy.
