The Last Graduate: Lesson Two of the Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Del Ray, 2021

The second volume in the Scholomance Trilogy finds the narrator, Galadriel “El” in her senior year. The graduating class has escaped, and the new load of freshmen have been portaled in. In this school, where there are no instructors, assignments appear by magic, and one never knows what one will be doing. El goes to her “homeroom” and finds eight freshmen- her most loathed creatures. Over the course of the book, though, she finds herself teaching them how to survive the mal – the malignant magical creatures that live in the school, killing many students- and even starting to care about them.

There is a lot of character building in this book. El learns to trust (sort of), although every time she screws up she figures her new friends will no longer want to be around her. She makes some friends, and her relationship with Orion develops- reluctantly and with a lot of jive talk. People learn to trust her, the alleged evil sorceress who may turn on them at any moment.

There is also a lot of info dumps, even more than in the first volume, but they are worked in nicely so they don’t jar the reader out of the narrative. And a large amount of the story is devoted to the seniors practicing for their ‘graduation’, when they all run across the gym, with every mal in the school trying to kill them. In some years, as few as 20% of the class survives, so practice is taken very seriously. El realizes that the only way to be sure you’ll survive is to work with others- which is why alliances are so important. Of great importance is the realization that the Scholomance itself might be sentient, and is having a hand in El’s idea. And El’s post-school ambitions change, as she delves in her magic book about a different type of Enclave from the ones that exist.

This book is better than most middle books in trilogies, but it has a few places where it bogs down. The descriptions of the many runs through the magical obstacle course in the gym get a bit tedious. All in all, the book works just fine and I couldn’t put it down. Except… the ending. If you don’t like cliff hangers, have book three in your hands before you read two! Five stars.