2020’s A Deadly Education saw acclaimed novelist Naomi Novak serve up the Scholomance. Like the perfect cross between Hogwarts and The Hunger Games, it’s a fully-automated school for magic teens. So there’s no teachers – good news – but the lack of adult supervision means it’s overrun with monsters, or mals, looking to eat them, ensuring school really is a matter of life and death for these kids. Less good news.
In The Last Graduate, the second part of this YA trilogy, El Higgins and her friends are now seniors and so they have the terrifying prospect of graduation ahead of them. No, it’s not impending adulthood that’s terrifying – it’s the horde of schoolkid-snacking mals gathered in the graduation hall, which turn the rite of passage into a Battle Royale-like fight for survival.
This sequel picks up immediately where the first novel left off, so unlike Deadly Education, which took place over the last few weeks of her junior year, The Last Graduation encompasses El’s entire final year at the Scholomance. That naturally lends the book a very different pace, with swathes of time relayed through lengthy passages of narration. At just over 100 pages longer than its predecessor, Novak probably could have dared to stretch it out a tad longer without it dragging, thereby allowing events and character arcs some additional detail and depth.
But the good news is that a third book is on the way, with Novak clearly having one eye on setting up the concluding chapter with this one. While our characters remain locked inside their prison-like school, the author threads through some enlightening context about the politics of the outside world, where an international wizard war is brewing, which leaves the reader hungry to follow El out the graduation doors and discover what happens next after what can only be described as a killer final chapter.
The Last Graduate is a strong follow-up to its thoroughly enjoyable forebear. While Novak perhaps tries to pack too much into what’s still a relatively tight read, there’s no denying the charm of its heroine – a reluctant dark sorceress-in-training with an I-hate-everything attitude – its highly readable nature and deft world-building that sets the stage for book 3. School is out, but there are still more lessons left to learn.
THE LAST GRADUATE is released on September 28th
