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sophia_sol) wrote2022-10-20 02:46 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2022-10-20 02:46 pm
The Golden Enclaves, by Naomi Novik
Remember how I was unmoved by the first two books in the Scholmance series? Well joke's on me, this is the third and final book and I was moved! I nearly gave up on it multiple times ("why am I reading this book when I didn't like the last two in the series?" I thought to myself, as I rolled my eyes over the opening section that was basically nothing but extended nothing-happens-but-mourning-Orion scenes) and only persevered because a friend of mine really wanted to talk about it with me, and I'm glad I did!
The first two books in the series were, ultimately, a) school stories, and b) monster-fighting stories, and I was bored. This one is about what you do with yourself when you survive past a point you never thought you'd survive, how you figure out who you are and what you want to do with yourself, and making it happen. I was into it!
Also now that we're out of the school, we got to explore some of the worldbuilding in more detail, and some of it was genuinely interesting. And I got more into the female friendships that were portrayed. And the main character, El, turns out to be bisexual and had a very interesting thing going on with another girl who she had complicated feelings about, which I loved. And we got to see more of El's complicated family dynamics!
HOWEVER. I loved all this.......which means that I'm even more frustrated about the things that I feel the book fell down on. I was invested! You had me, Novik! And I was let down!
Okay first of all......that was just directly Omelas. This is a The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas fanfiction. It was a little too on the nose, imo! The idea of the single eternally suffering child whose suffering allows for the happiness of everyone else works in the Le Guin story because it's like, a metaphor or whatever. But taken perfectly literally and turned into worldbuilding makes it feel kind of over the top! That was not interesting worldbuilding, that was "let's make an anvil-sized statement instead of doing something nuanced."
Speaking of lack of nuance, I was really disappointed to discover that maleficers are in fact just straightforwardly evil after all. I think Novik was trying for more nuance on this one? But it really fell flat, imo. And I like a little more complexity in my antagonists!
Orion continues to be extremely boring, because he doesn't feel like he's a person. He has no character traits. He's a construct put in the narrative to make the plot work. Which is particularly funny given what the book is trying to say about how his mother made him a thing, a tool, and El sees him for who he truly is and frees him of that constraint. The book could even have leaned into that, and been like, yeah Orion doesn't feel like a person, because he's never had the chance to be one, and now that he's no longer a maw-mouth it's actually really uncomfortable for him to have to learn what being a person means! That could have been interesting! But no, he continues to be personality-less, he's apparently happy like that, and it's apparently just fine. (And he has no trauma? He's trauma-free after the childhood he had and the school experiences he had, really?? More evidence that he's not a person, lol.)
Also Novik is doing her thing again where she romances a young woman with a powerful inhuman monster of a man. She's really into that, isn't she. It's different vibes every time, and sometimes it even works for me (Miryem/Staryk lord!!!) but like....*eyes the trend.*
Anyway all of the above is more or less livable, even though it annoys me, but what annoys me the MOST is the ending. You have to pay attention to your themes when you decide how to end a story! It's real important, actually! And I feel like this one has an ending that does not support the themes the series was trying to go for.
The story as a whole in this book did not have a great arc, it was just kind of going from thing to thing that El had to do, which means that the character arc/emotional arc for El was even more important because it was the only real structure that this book had going for it. As far as I can tell, the arc is one of El realizing that actually she's not doomed to be evil, her choices matter despite her nature, and she CAN actually do good things and deserve the love and care and support of the people around her. Which is great! But then....if that's the case, it feels so wrong that she's not allowed to live out her dream of building golden enclaves. That job, the one that feels so right and wonderful and exciting to her, is pushed off onto the people around her, and she's stuck going around striking fear into enclaves by killing maw-mouths and destroying the enclaves' stability. She's forced to live into the role that she JUST learned she doesn't have to fear becoming anymore! She has to live out the horrible prophecy about her after all, at least in the eyes of the rest of the magical world!
The ending kind of made me think of the ending of the classic DWJ novel Homeward Bounders, in that it is about one young person having to do the hard thing and give up their dream in order to allow everyone else to live and thrive, but the thing is, the ending WORKED thematically in Homeward Bounders. It has to be the right ending to the story you're telling, for it to be a meaningful and heart-tugging ending, and in the case of The Golden Enclaves, it's not right!
And like, the theme of fighting against fate/inevitability to be able to make better choices is one that has been in the Scholomance series all along, so it's especially disappointing to have the ending push back against it at the end of the whole series. It's so unsatisfying.
Anyway I spew all these words of complaint because I really did care, because there was enough that was GOOD about this book for me to want to see it be BETTER. Sigh.
In conclusion: Alfie/Liesel/El/Orion poly, in the shape of a square that's missing one of its sides.
The first two books in the series were, ultimately, a) school stories, and b) monster-fighting stories, and I was bored. This one is about what you do with yourself when you survive past a point you never thought you'd survive, how you figure out who you are and what you want to do with yourself, and making it happen. I was into it!
Also now that we're out of the school, we got to explore some of the worldbuilding in more detail, and some of it was genuinely interesting. And I got more into the female friendships that were portrayed. And the main character, El, turns out to be bisexual and had a very interesting thing going on with another girl who she had complicated feelings about, which I loved. And we got to see more of El's complicated family dynamics!
HOWEVER. I loved all this.......which means that I'm even more frustrated about the things that I feel the book fell down on. I was invested! You had me, Novik! And I was let down!
Okay first of all......that was just directly Omelas. This is a The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas fanfiction. It was a little too on the nose, imo! The idea of the single eternally suffering child whose suffering allows for the happiness of everyone else works in the Le Guin story because it's like, a metaphor or whatever. But taken perfectly literally and turned into worldbuilding makes it feel kind of over the top! That was not interesting worldbuilding, that was "let's make an anvil-sized statement instead of doing something nuanced."
Speaking of lack of nuance, I was really disappointed to discover that maleficers are in fact just straightforwardly evil after all. I think Novik was trying for more nuance on this one? But it really fell flat, imo. And I like a little more complexity in my antagonists!
Orion continues to be extremely boring, because he doesn't feel like he's a person. He has no character traits. He's a construct put in the narrative to make the plot work. Which is particularly funny given what the book is trying to say about how his mother made him a thing, a tool, and El sees him for who he truly is and frees him of that constraint. The book could even have leaned into that, and been like, yeah Orion doesn't feel like a person, because he's never had the chance to be one, and now that he's no longer a maw-mouth it's actually really uncomfortable for him to have to learn what being a person means! That could have been interesting! But no, he continues to be personality-less, he's apparently happy like that, and it's apparently just fine. (And he has no trauma? He's trauma-free after the childhood he had and the school experiences he had, really?? More evidence that he's not a person, lol.)
Also Novik is doing her thing again where she romances a young woman with a powerful inhuman monster of a man. She's really into that, isn't she. It's different vibes every time, and sometimes it even works for me (Miryem/Staryk lord!!!) but like....*eyes the trend.*
Anyway all of the above is more or less livable, even though it annoys me, but what annoys me the MOST is the ending. You have to pay attention to your themes when you decide how to end a story! It's real important, actually! And I feel like this one has an ending that does not support the themes the series was trying to go for.
The story as a whole in this book did not have a great arc, it was just kind of going from thing to thing that El had to do, which means that the character arc/emotional arc for El was even more important because it was the only real structure that this book had going for it. As far as I can tell, the arc is one of El realizing that actually she's not doomed to be evil, her choices matter despite her nature, and she CAN actually do good things and deserve the love and care and support of the people around her. Which is great! But then....if that's the case, it feels so wrong that she's not allowed to live out her dream of building golden enclaves. That job, the one that feels so right and wonderful and exciting to her, is pushed off onto the people around her, and she's stuck going around striking fear into enclaves by killing maw-mouths and destroying the enclaves' stability. She's forced to live into the role that she JUST learned she doesn't have to fear becoming anymore! She has to live out the horrible prophecy about her after all, at least in the eyes of the rest of the magical world!
The ending kind of made me think of the ending of the classic DWJ novel Homeward Bounders, in that it is about one young person having to do the hard thing and give up their dream in order to allow everyone else to live and thrive, but the thing is, the ending WORKED thematically in Homeward Bounders. It has to be the right ending to the story you're telling, for it to be a meaningful and heart-tugging ending, and in the case of The Golden Enclaves, it's not right!
And like, the theme of fighting against fate/inevitability to be able to make better choices is one that has been in the Scholomance series all along, so it's especially disappointing to have the ending push back against it at the end of the whole series. It's so unsatisfying.
Anyway I spew all these words of complaint because I really did care, because there was enough that was GOOD about this book for me to want to see it be BETTER. Sigh.
In conclusion: Alfie/Liesel/El/Orion poly, in the shape of a square that's missing one of its sides.