The Last Graduate by Naomi NovikMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
A lot of people are super into this series so I decided to try it. I didn’t like book 1 that much, but for some reason I decided to read book 2 anyway and got pretty into it.
I think my initial issues, which improved as the series went on, were:
- annoying main character/narrator
- shallow characterization
but there was a lot of stuff I liked that became more prominent.
- Conflicts/motivations/treatment of morality: villains are those who do the wrong thing because it is easy and tempting in a relatable way, heroes are those who (not unconflictedly) decide to do what is hard but right.
- Rationalficness/characters being smart and agentic.
- The worldbuilding/general invitation to imagine what social norms would be like in a society with a really different set of constraints: I don’t know if I believe what she comes up with (are human societies ever that low-trust/uncooperative/transactional, even in super extenuating circumstances?), but it’s fun to think about anyway.
- The romance becomes less grating: not so into “loser emo girl + super hot himbo,” but more here for “two most talented students in the year, who share the responsibility of keeping everyone else safe, and are both kinda fucked up.”
- If you’ve always thought “okay Hogwarts is cool but don’t tell me there aren’t zillions of super talented Chinese kids trying to get in, and British parents trying to maintain the status quo where they are overrepresented for historical reasons, and don’t tell me this doesn’t degenerate into wizard battles, where are the wizard battles over this” then you are like me and this is the book for you.
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