The same way everyone looked at me and my power and saw a monster, because I wouldn’t play along with what they wanted. “They pretended they saw a noble hero, because he’d tried so hard to fit himself into that picture, and they loved the picture: that made his power something for them, something that would help them. Anger and resentment are well-earned, in this world that we discover hinges on pain belonging to someone else but those reaping the rewards, and even moments of friendship are often bittersweet, and there’s not a distraction of a budding love story full of sweet interactions. And it makes this book dark and angry, and uncomfortable. Le Guin addressed this in her fable The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, and Naomi Novik does it here as well. But it seems the people are willing to recognize that for some things a huge price needs to be paid - as long as someone else pays that price and they get to look the other way, justifying to themselves that someone needs to pay it after all. And the first thing I've got to do now, having miraculously got out of the Scholomance, is turn straight around and find a way back in.Īsk yourself: is it worth to sacrifice one person for the benefit of many? If you say yes, chances are you’re not the one being sacrificed. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war on the horizon.

Ha, only joking! Actually it's gone all wrong. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: we saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves of the world.

So much for my great-grandmother's prophecy of doom and destruction.

I'm out, we're all out-and I didn't even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. But it's all we dream about, the hideously slim chance we'll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls.Īnd now the impossible dream has come true. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out. Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for in the triumphant conclusion to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate.

The golden enclaves paperback