BNGO review 23: Holiday
Graduation is an event to celebrate. A holiday is the commemoration of a celebratory event that often includes celebrations. Thus, The Last Graduate and The Golden Enclaves qualify as holiday-themed stories.
Confession: I haven’t totally finished The Last Graduate, but I had a chance to get The Golden Enclaves from the library; what my library does with new releases is they are available for shorter check out periods with no renewal option, and that deadline was approaching. Technically this is a review for The Golden Enclaves, a celebration (sort of) of the kind of but not really successful graduation from the Scholomace. I have to say I was surprised at how little seemed to happen while at the same time stuff was also sort of occurring. I noticed the same weird effect in The Last Graduate as well; there’s surprisingly little action in a story about attempting to escape a death-trap of a school and trying to solve the evil social stuff that caused said death trap, and who might have been behind the specifically current bad-ness.
Fully two thirds of The Last Graduate is basically El and a friend or two (‘friend’ being a sort of relative term with El) trying to first solve the cliff hanger from the novel before, and then thanks to the results of said cliff hanger basically pointing the group towards the unfortunate details of some key necessities of the world of magic in this series, and the ensuing attempt to face the final ultimate evil. That face off doesn’t start until 2/3 of the way through, and that’s where the actual action happens. Most of the previous 200+pages is El and Liesel trying to make plans or looking for information which leads to more looking for information etc. There is travel, a rescue attempt, time back home in Wales, so it’s not like there is no movement in the story, but it still feels like nothing really happens until the final social evil which also requires facing a specific evil (person).
There’s a lot of character growth for El, not in the sense of she evolves as a person, but there’s a lot more information about her and her place in the world. The world itself gets some building as well with the hidden shadows behind the governing structures being made known, and the world and how magic works is pretty interesting; problem is, without actual plot (or the perception of said plot), the whole thing ends up seeming almost boring.
I’m still trying to figure out how the story can wrap up with so little seeming to happen. It’s weird.