#Golden Enclave spoilers

[dawn-the-rithmatist]

Rereading the scholomance (yes again, shush) and I’m a bit obsessed with the differences between Ophelia Lake and Gwen Higgins. Strict malia vs strict mana. Lives in a luxury enclave apartment vs lives in a yurt in the middle of nowhere. The way that they raised their kids.

Mostly though it’s their worldview that hits me, because they’re DEAD OPPOSITES. We spend three books being told that Gwen gives as freely as a person can, even when logic says she could stand to take more in return, and when she’s in need she just kind of blindly trusts in the goodness of humanity and the universe at large. Even when summoning the sutras, it’s the same pattern! She didn’t name a price, trusting that the world would be kind enough when asking her to pay!

On the other hand, Ophelia is a full maleficer. She takes even when she absolutely doesn’t need to- she has New York’s mana supply at her fingertips and STILL drains the people in her lab every day. And when confronted with the horror of mals being made when people use malia, she defends it by saying that everyone uses malia anyway- she builds her life on the assumption that the world will be selfish in the end, the exact opposite of the way Gwen banks on it being kind.

I just think it’s so fascinating the way that these two women are foils, even as El is trying to set up her and Orion as the ones truly balancing each other out. Every time she says that she’s balancing out her mom’s goodness, I need to shake her because 1) honey you are every bit as good as your mom, you’re just angrier, and 2) OPHELIA is balancing out your mom, you just don’t get to know it until after you survive graduation!!!

[cucurbitapuella]

I think I loved El Higgins so much bc she really digs deep into a core character trait I find so powerful and fascinating and that's selfishness as fuel for selflessness. The ones who look around and tell the world, don't you dare touch that one, They're Mine, and pour all of that and all of themselves into protecting what's Theirs, and also btw fuck off that one is Also Theirs, in fact, Everyone Is.

(See also: Tiffany Aching, Beka Cooper).

The Last Graduate is most obviously about this (El has her alliance who are Hers and then despite her best efforts she has her pack of freshmen who are, ugh, Hers, and eventually must grudgingly open up to realizing that now absolutely everyone is Hers and she's getting all of them out there, fuck you very much), but then. Then! The Golden Enclaves shows the struggle of that kind of selfishness, of saying these ones are mine and fuck the cost, I will pay it (off of the backs of those ones). Because the modern enclaves ARE paying it, because their children are Theirs and what wouldn't you do? (A lot, actually, it turns out, if you had to do it with your own hands, eyes open and ears unblocked)

The way that most of the contributors to an Enclave need the wool pulled over their eyes (literally!!) so they cannot even register that the gift horse HAS teeth, because then they might see what horrible gore is stuck in them. They just want to save their children, and the cost is so high - but it's so removed, so, is it really even real? And El's the cosmic foil to that, the one who looks at it and goes "no, that's real. You have to pay it yourselves you can't defer the cost." Even before she works out that the price is higher than the first sacrifice (which is. Horrifying enough on its own), she's desperately trying to get to one of Hers and she can't pay the cost to save Liu on her own, she needs them all to buy in, and she taps into everyone's collective selfishnes and gives them an out and they have to work for it but they take it and they do the work! They pay up front! They try to make some fucked up reparations!

And that selfishness, of El's audacity to even dare question the system, but also most people's basic selfishness (wanting to keep yourself and your children safe and to do it without all the blood on your hands) - that's what's going to see them all through, together.

[maelancoli]

i'm kind of late to this but i just finished reading the scholomance trilogy by naomi novik and i feel like it is such an underrated urban fantasy?? taking the chosen one trope and turning it on its head with a fmc who has been prophesied to bring death and destruction, who is imbued with terrible power, but cannot even properly use said power to solve any of her obstacles because it would obliterate them and her soul. it takes a tired trope and the idea of an 'overpowered mary sue' and throws it back in your face by showing how all the power and destiny in the world is useless against a system filled with corruption that has burdened you with an easy way out (evil/destructive magic) that you can't take so now you have to work twice as hard as everyone else just to do simple, constructive spells instead of flicking your wrist and being done with it.

[aridotdash]

Orion at the end of The Golden Enclaves, still able to absorb mals and their mana:

[chill-reading-books]

HOLY CRAP El just killed a maw-mouth with a BRAND-NEW KILLING SPELL that SHE INVENTED IN AN INSTANT ACCIDENTALLY which uses like NO MANNA WHAT.

And the price she asked from the London enclave... Beautiful. So her. I look forward to seeing this Yancy character again lol.

Listen I just LOVE seeing El befuddle the oligarchs of these places, it's FABULOUS XD

[geraniums-red]

Naomi Novik - The Golden Enclaves

Book 3 of the Scholomance series

Previously reviewed here.

I agree with everything I wrote the first time I read this, so I'm not going to write it out again. I do have some further (significantly spoiler-y) questions, though.

How does Orion get mana from killing mals, and not malia? Do mals not count in the same way as all other living things? Is he actually running pure malia without realising it? Have we ever seen him actually generate mana? Are the rules just different because he's not strictly human?

How bad is Ophelia really? She's a fascinating example of someone who thinks in numbers and works via 'the ends justify the means', but it still seems like she's doing her best to minimise the harm done. She is a malificer to an extent that she can't use mana, which is presumably originally from malia generated from killing wizards who were going to be killed anyway for going malificer, so they'd still be dead either way. Her maintenance via draining her lab staff and repaying them with mana is a pretty ethical way to do it (although it would be coercion if their jobs depended on agreeing to it). Her use of her own baby to generate the mawmouth-human hybrid can also be seen as an act of sacrifice, and is certainly a lot more ethical than using someone else's child. She knows about the 'unique costs' of enclaves, and is using her power to push people to share more in order to avoid new enclaves having to be built or existing ones expanded. I do not entirely trust her - there's a good chance she would have or has had people murdered who got in her way - but I have a lot more empathy for her than I would have expected.

Once the enclavers figure out that mawmouths being killed is leading to enclave collapse, will they keep building new enclaves but keep hold of the mawmouths associated with creating the enclave? If they could be kept contained (admittedly difficult with an ooze) they would protect the enclave by eating other mals, and their diet could be supplemented with enclave mana and anyone foolish enough to attack the enclave. I don't expect that this would be a strategy that would work long term, as the mawmouth would eventually grow to the point where it broke out and went on a rampage, but I imagine it would seem like a good idea up until that point...

[chekovpavelandreievich]

okay because apparently I cannot stop thinking about the golden enclaves

I am thinking about the enclaves - and the maw-mouths at their center - as a reliquary. a box of bones on which hungry hopes are pinned. enclaves as a cathedral, a box for the box of bones. hiding the bones behind stone walls, locking them away from their context, opening an undying life but not one that can be truly lived

ultimately I love thinking about the enclaves as a metaphor for faith as much as it is for capitalism

[softness-and-shattering]

Golden Enclaves/scholomance spoilers

Speaking of Ibrahim and Yaakov. When El asks how Yaakovs doing and its obviously extremely painful to Ibrahim because they cant safely live together. The Dubai enclave opening up to anyone with the mana to help immediately. Waiting waiting waiting and then Yaakov is there, and he brought his slow-moving older relatives and theyre last in and El starts faffing around with chalk to give them time and then theyre there and theyre hugging and they made it and they can live here together now and be safe and be in love and Ibrahim hadnt even known if he'd got the text yet I absolutely bawled my eyes out.

And when Yaakov ran out the scholomance wearing his worn tallit 😭😭😭

There are so few good Jewish characters in general, and he's queer and he gets his happy ending with his "supposed to be his enemy" lover the both of them and they mean so so so much to me!!

[celebibi]

sorta spoiler for scholomance but i finished the scholomance trilogy(?) today and ughhhh it nearly filled the void harry potter had given me. i loved it. where is scholomance tumblr i need it immediately i'm so conflicted by el x orion & el x liesel cuz orion is cute but i wasn't attached to him as much as the first two books. liesel and el surprised me, confused me (cuz el was literally like dreaming abt orion within hours), and made me so happy because yay casual bi/pan characters!

anyways i rly liked it

[seagullcharmer]

and i said to him softly, gently, with all my heart,

"you're already dead."

[rotationalsymmetry]

The golden enclaves:

I'm collecting influences, references. Orpheus and Eurydice. Tam Lin. And I did mention Omelas before, but damn, the Beijing chapter, that's a lot more direct.

And we aren't messing around with "maybe it's worth it" and we aren't messing around with "but maybe some people walk away, see what they can find somewhere else." We're getting the kid out of the closet.

We are having kids getting other kids out of the closet.

[jemb]

The bi poly representation in the golden enclaves has me so pleased. The criticism of it feeling like checking a box makes no sense to me. It just seems like people don’t get what casual sex is or how polyamory can work. It felt so natural and consistent for both El and Liesel to be polyamorous. I appreciated that there was no convoluted love triangle bc frankly there were always bigger fish to fry. It also didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. There’s a whole passage in the second book about El being attracted to Liesel and not being a naturally jealous person. (At least that’s how interpreted it). The whole thing seems to be very very queer and I loved seeing myself in those characters. Thank you Naomi!

[shokuheshi]

The Golden Enclaves gave me INTENSE Orion Lake feelings!!! have some angsty doodles i did a few months ago  when i reread the book i’ll probably draw something more substantial

[pencil-for-a-dog]

So, the golden enclaves.... They were... Qn experience

[shirecryptid]

"You're already dead," I said. "But stay anyway. Stay with us, and shelter all the wise-gifted children of the world," and made all three of the spells into one: the terrible murderous truth I had to tell the maw-mouth, and the sutras' longing plea for golden shelter, and the beautiful lie that the Scholomance had been built upon, and into that working I poured all the mana that Shanfeng had given me, the mana that had been saved up to build a school to save the lives of children. The work that Orion had tried to make his own. I repeated the incantation in Sanskrit from the sutras, the incantation that really just meant "stay," and then Liu joined in, saying it in Chinese, the version she'd used in Beijing, and Aadhya said it with me the next time in English, "Stay and be shelter," and even as we were speaking I felt more jolting sparks going through me: Miranda and Antonio and Eman and Caterina had joined our human chain too, behind Khamis, and then there was a thump through us all like a lightning strike: Li Shanfeng had joined the line behind them. I gasped with the surge and said it again, stay, even though I couldn't hear myself speaking anymore; more hands and voices were coming, everyone on Shanghai's side streaming to join in, power crackling through the line into me, and then Liesel's voice was calling out over the noise, "Not in a single line! Get closer and spread out!" and she pushed in next to me, putting a hand directly on my back, another supporting branch. Alfie was right next to her, reaching to touch me as well with Sarah gripping his free hand. In another moment, his father was there too in a line behind him. Wizards from both sides were crowding in now, all of us saying it together: "Stay," getting louder and louder even as the Scholomance and Orion both shook from their foundations. He was getting heavier and heavier in my grasp, as if I was trying to hold him up, along with the entire school and all those other enclaves loaded up on his shoulders, against the dragging undertow of all the sloshing power of stolen mana draining away from under them. But everyone behind me was trying to help, trying to hold them - and then Ophelia and Balthasar were there, too. But they didn't join the chain: instead they came all the way up and put their own hands directly on Orion, next to mine. And then Aadhya, my darling Aad who'd taken that first mad flyer on me, gritted her teeth and put her hand on Orion too, and other people started to grab on to them, spreading out the weight, pouring in more mana. We were all holding on to him and just saying it over and over, stay, in all the languages of the world, and beneath our feet a golden light was rising up out of the widening cracks in the carved inscriptions, filling them in, starting to make them whole, and there was light all around us, warm, full of hope, as Orion lurched forward under my hands, like someone who'd just been pulled back onto solid footing. He gasped and reached out to me, reached his hands out to cup my face, and he said in a ragged, broken voice, choosing, "I'll stay. El, I'll stay," and kissed me, through our tears.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

[chill-reading-books]

Y'ALL EL HAS FOUND OUT ABOUT THE SECRET OF ENCLAVE BUILDING

THEY MAKE A MAWMOUTH

Now she's about to try to save Beijing enclave now that she's saved Lou

She's in the room where the "long life" spell has shattered

I think to myself, I bet that means she killed that mawmouth

She starts thinking, oh, this must be how the maleficer has been attacking enclaves. They must have figured out how enclaves are built and are attacking the weak point, this plate.

But.

IT'S THE DEATH OF THE MAWMOUTHS THAT DID IT

I SWEAR

EL IS TAKING DOWN THE ENCLAVES BY KILLING MAWMOUTHS

THE TIMING AND AMOUNTS MAKE SENSE

And the magic of it makes sense too: the mawmouths pay the manna debt forever after by their eternal suffering or something, yeah? But once they die... The enclave goes into forfeiture.

El was foretold to destroy the enclaves of the world, bringing death and destruction.

Now she CAN and it'll be GOOD and FINE and AWESOME!!

She kills mawmouths.

The enclaves are destabilized.

She makes Golden Stone enclaves instead to replace the ones made from malia.

IT'S PERFECT

Also, considering the way this tends to go, she'll probably come to the same conclusion about the real cause of the enclaves falling in the next few paragraphs. But I had to pause my audiobook and share this immediately :OOO :DD