The Last Graduate

Naomi Novik’s The Last Graduate (2021), a dark fantasy novel that upends common fantasy tropes, is the second volume of the Scholomance trilogy. Picking up where the events of A Deadly Education left off, The Last Graduate is an account of Galadriel “El” Higgins’s last year in the Scholomance, a dangerous school where young magicians fight to survive the onslaughts of magical creatures and the sentient school itself. 

Novik is a Nebula Award-winning fantasy writer known for her retellings of folklore and fairytales, as well as the Temeraire series, which falls into the category of historical fantasy. The Last Graduate is the 2022 recipient of the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.

This guide refers to the 2021 Del Rey Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of sexual content, child death, graphic violence, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

It is now Galadriel “El” Higgins’s senior year at the Scholomance, a deadly school for wizard children from around the world. The school is sentient and exists apart from the rest of the world, separated by a mysterious void. Throughout their time in the Scholomance, the students are entirely without adult supervision and must complete a course of study that the school itself dictates. They must also seek to build up their supply of mana—magical energy created through effort or creative activity. With a strong supply of mana, the students will be better able to fend off the attacks of the resident maleficarias (or mals—beasts that kill magicians and eat their mana). At the end of the students’ senior year, they must undergo a graduation ritual and survive the attacks of many mals to escape from the school and rejoin the wider world. While the more privileged students belong to different regional “enclaves,” others are entirely independent, and this division fuels many conflicts.

Now that it is El’s senior year, she has formed strong friendships and an alliance with fellow students Liu and Aadyha, and she also has a burgeoning friendship and potential romance with Orion Lake, a boy from the rich and powerful New York enclave. On the first day of school, El receives a letter from her mother, Gwen, who warns her to stay away from Orion. El ignores the letter. Upon receiving her senior class schedule, El notes that it features classes in such inconvenient places that she will have no time to build up the supply of mana that she needs to survive the gauntlet of the graduation hall at the end of the school year. Now, as El attends one of her first classes, she discovers that the roster includes many vulnerable first-years, a favorite meal for mals.

El suspects that the school is targeting her specifically, and the sudden attack on the first-years around her convinces her that she is right. She opts to save Sudarat, a girl from Bangkok enclave (one of the powerful groups that share mana and safe havens and protect members from incursions from mals in the external world). El also saves Liu’s cousin from a mal called a vipersac. Orion, whose sole passion is to hunt mals, bursts into the room afterward, and as usual, everyone assumes that Orion is the one who has saved everyone.

El notices Sudarat crying later that day. She learns through the grapevine that something or someone has destroyed Sudarat’s enclave. Everyone knows that such an attack may presage a larger conflict between the Eastern and Western enclaves, especially if the New York enclave is behind the attack. When El’s stock of mana is further depleted, she exploits New York enclave’s desire to recruit her and asks New York enclaver Chloe for a power-sharer—a device that will give her access to the large stores of mana hoarded by New York enclavers. Chloe agrees, in return for being admitted to El’s alliance with Liu and Aadhya.

Meanwhile, as Orion continues killing mals and saving students, he deprives larger mals of any smaller mals to devour, thereby disrupting the ecosystem of the Scholomance. The bigger mals, now starving, grow even more ferocious. As the population of mals dwindles, Orion cannot add as much mana to New York enclave’s hoard. As the term continues, El begins to perform increasingly potent and showy spells. Everyone eventually realizes that she is extraordinarily powerful and that she is a once-in-a-generation talent, just like Orion. New York enclave redoubles its efforts to recruit her, while other Asian enclaves grow more distrustful of her because they assume that she is secretly allied with New York. 

The Shanghai enclave students are the most suspicious of El. During a field day at the gym, Shanghai enclavers attack El and try to kill her. She foils their efforts with a big spell that transforms the Gothic, mal-ridden gym into a beautiful grove with cherry trees, fresh air, and autumn leaves. The contrast between the rest of the school and the false beauty of the gym traumatizes everyone, and the spell definitively confirms the true extent of El’s powers.

One day, El’s power as a sorceress is confirmed again when she performs a healing spell to help an enclaver named Cora. The spell requires the cooperation of everyone in the cafeteria; Cora is grateful because El has saved her from certain death. 

The second term arrives; this is the period of time in which seniors sort themselves into alliances and begin the work of strategizing and practicing for graduation. El conceives an outlandish idea. Given how powerful she is, she wants to help the entire student body to escape from the Scholomance on graduation day. Meanwhile, El’s relationship with Orion shifts from a crush to a full-blown romance. However, whenever they begin kissing each other, Orion pulls away inexplicably, devastating El.

El quietly begins taking action to protect everyone on her team, which grows as more people realize her strength. She then begins giving other teams information on the challenges in the practice gym, where everyone hones their skills in preparation for graduation day. Her altruistic actions are unheard of in the dog-eat-dog world of the Scholomance. When her own allies begin to question her motives, she is forced to reveal her plan to save everyone.

Despite the skepticism of other students and the outright suspicions of the Shanghai enclave, El continues to work on her escape plan and runs through the gym’s obstacle courses with increasingly larger numbers of people. Although El does not initially realize it, the school is now actively aligned with her plan to save everyone; it begins producing increasingly difficult obstacle courses that force the rest of the students to accept El’s help in surviving the challenges.

El’s romance with Orion continues to blossom, culminating in a picnic date in the gym, where they make love and talk. Orion reveals that he is lonely and is treated as an outsider. Despite his reputation as a hero, he feels abnormal and confesses that he only loves two things: killing mals and being with El. Uneasy at being the only person on whom Orion depends for happiness, El begins to wonder if this dynamic is the reason why her mother warned her away from Orion.

The date ends abruptly when Shanghai enclavers attack El. Members of the New York enclave show up to protect El, and to prevent the two enclaves from killing each other—an eventuality that would guarantee war outside of the Scholomance. El raises a dangerous spell that could kill them all. The opposing sides stand down, and from that moment on, everyone aids El’s plan to save the entire student body.

A hitch in the plan comes when the school reveals to El that the graduation hall is empty of any mals. The school forces El to realize that it wants to be what it was originally designed to be—a haven for all magical children. El reveals this truth about the hall, and the students come up with a plan to lure most of the mals in the world into the school, after which all of the students will escape through the temporarily opened gates. Then, they will  push the mal-infested school into the void that surrounds it. The plan depends on El and Orion being the last two people in the hall.

Graduation day arrives. El’s plan is implemented, and the collective effort of the student body results in success. When the passage out of the hall almost closes under the onslaught of the mals, enclavers step up to protect the passage, surprising El with their show of altruistic bravery. As she watches Orion kill mals with great precision and strength, she understands that his calling is to be a mal-killer. Still, she suspects that killing mals and loving her are not the only things that await him after graduation.

El and Orion are the last two people in the hall when an enormous maw-mouth (an enormous mal comprised of the bodies of its victims) suddenly arrives. The window for pushing the mal-packed school into the void begins to close. El tries to get Orion to escape with her before she sets the final spell to dislodge the school and send it into the void. Orion tells her that he loves her, pushes her through the gates, and stays behind to fight the maw-mouth. The narrative does not reveal whether Orion survives, thereby setting the stage for the resolution of the plot in The Golden Enclaves, the final volume in the trilogy.