silver

I know this kind of cognitive dissonance is realistic - and that El ultimately by book 3 decides that her refusal to take steps down this path is going to save her - but it did not make it at all less frustrating to read, since the novels are fairly introspective and therefore spend a lot of time with El thinking about how everything is The Worst and she's angry almost 100% of the time.

I totally understand this, lol, but this make me like her even more. At times her POV is A Lot but lately I've been on a kick of canons about teenagers and, idk, there's something really charming to me about teenagers being their overdramatic selves. (In fiction. Teenagers IRL are too close for comfort, lol.)

I think all three books have a similar central problem solved by the idea of being a third way, and getting everyone to help collectively.

This is one of the things I liked the most about this series! The ultimately hopeful idea that things might look terrible but maybe there is a better way, and El and her friends being able to convince people to give it a shot. The end of the second book especially got me really emotional. This truly insane plan to save *everyone*, finally coming together, and going 99% perfectly. I definitely had a few moments when El first decided that she was going to save everyone like "girl... really??" but clearly I hadn't gotten the idea of this series yet, and I was so glad to be proven wrong.

All of our moms had decades on us to grow up, polish up, learn to human, etc, whereas they changed our diapers and attempted to deal with our tantrums as we were doing all that, and when you're a kid your mom is impossibly more adult and put together than you. This is magnified like a hundredfold with Gwen, who is not only a world-class healer but is also extremely well-adjusted with infinite patience and understanding for a very, very angry little child. And with almost boundless generosity for strangers looking for healing, too. AND, which to me proves saintliness most of all, the patience to live with people who want to live in a commune, lol.

LOL you're so right. She's so inhumanly patient and selfless but I love the depth that she still gets, how difficult it would've been to be a teen mom and then get turned away by her in-laws and left completely alone. Her and El's love for each other and El realizing how much it must have hurt her when she El accused her of hating her for not wanting to take her to an enclave was very good--realizing your parents were right about some things and maybe you were a little asshole and feeling bad about it!

Ophelia, a little less so - she's El all grown up, having gone down the path of maleficer and been very successful. She could definitely have been an interesting counterpoint to El, but there wasn't room for that; she could have been a 3 trilogy villain, but she only appears in the third act, basically. I'm not sure what's going to keep the scholomance operating indefinitely - Orion isn't immortal, is he? (Is he?) Or for that matter, the enclaves.

See this almost makes me wonder if Novik was setting up some sequel bait. There is a really interesting story that you can see on the horizon after the conclusion. (And I wonder if Orion really *is* immortal and will have to grapple with that.)