golden enclaves

That's Book Three: done and dusted. The Golden Enclaves is the third book in the Scholomance Trilogy by Naomi Novik, which I banged out is pretty quick order, for me. That normally means that the books are engaging enough that I'm going out of my way to find reading time, rather than just reading a little at breakfast, and when I go to bed. That methods usually ends up turning your average novel into a two to three week ordeal.

Novik did everything right here: compelling characters and storyline, some drama, some hooks, some fun, some romance, some action, some surprise, some death, a smackerel of foreshadowing, see what I did there? and as I said in my review of the first book, an original and engaging view of how magic works in this version of our world. And that magic and how it works is not just interesting, but it plays heavily into the story, and how the witches and wizards that use it need to manage its needs and implications. Reminds me a little of Isaac Asimov's three rules for robots. Once he came up with the rules, he wrote a series of short stories (I, Robot) to test them and see how they might function is 'real life' settings. Novik does the same thing, she pokes a prods at magic through her characters to see what it will do, testing the rules and implications.

If you enjoyed the Harry Potter series, enjoyed The Magicians books even more, but weren't as much of a fan of Narnia Series, then this is probably for you. The Bone Season has some similarities as well, in the interesting view of magic in our world, but the Scholomance is much better written.

Novik crushed it. Read this book.