I thought the Golden Enclaves did a great job of putting the whole series together and it made me like all books more overall. I think it was too much explaining things and El's monologues were a bit much but overall I liked what this book did. And I am amazed that Novik managed a sort of a happy ending there.
I just got Bear into Temeraire series (he is on book 2) so I am considering giving him this series at some point since it did hold up well. I still like Temeraire better overall though.
Yeah, I was impressed she was able to pull off a reasonably plausible happy ending for El and Orion.
I also like Temeraire better -- both the premise (which I still think is one of the most fun things in recent fantasy!) and some individual books (I think Victory of Eagles is a really, really good book) and characters. I do think that you can unfortunately tell that Novik kind of lost interest in the series because it was so long, and so you get some real lows (a big chunk of Blood of Tyrants). And because it is so long, I've kind of stopped recommending Temeraire to people unless they have a specific interest in dragons or Regency fantasy, even though I still like it a lot. (I actually think Novik's standalones, Spinning Silver and Uprooted, are her best in terms of, like, objective ambition and payoff, though both are definitely still flawed and occasionally frustrating, but it's also nice to have something longer to sink into, of course
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I had mixed feelings about the first book of the Scholomance but ended up liking the series as a whole more than I expected. (I was coming at it from already being a Naomi Novik fan, from Temeraire, Uprooted, and Spinning Silver, so my expectations were calibrated pretty high. I will say Scholomance is still my least favorite of these four things, but I do like the other three a lot, so that's a high bar, and Scholomance is a worthwhile series in its own right.
Ah interesting, i loved Temeraire but wasn't that fussed on Uprooted. They're the only two I've read of hers, from memory, though Spinning Silver has also been on my TBR ever since it came out. I have a friend who was raving about Scholomance to me recently, I think they were his first NN books.
I'm trying to think whether Scholomance is more like Temeraire or more like Uprooted and it's kind of not like either, I think? So that's not very helpful!
But I do think it's of about the right length, because I felt like Novik lost interest in Temeraire as the series went on (Victory of Eagles is the pinnacle of that series for me, and then it kind of slopes down, although I continued to enjoy aspects of the later books) and I do feel like the standalones skip over some things that really should've been in the books! So maybe a trilogy is a better length for Novik than either of those extremes, heh.
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I thought the Golden Enclaves did a great job of putting the whole series together and it made me like all books more overall. I think it was too much explaining things and El's monologues were a bit much but overall I liked what this book did. And I am amazed that Novik managed a sort of a happy ending there.
I just got Bear into Temeraire series (he is on book 2) so I am considering giving him this series at some point since it did hold up well. I still like Temeraire better overall though.
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I also like Temeraire better -- both the premise (which I still think is one of the most fun things in recent fantasy!) and some individual books (I think Victory of Eagles is a really, really good book) and characters. I do think that you can unfortunately tell that Novik kind of lost interest in the series because it was so long, and so you get some real lows (a big chunk of Blood of Tyrants). And because it is so long, I've kind of stopped recommending Temeraire to people unless they have a specific interest in dragons or Regency fantasy, even though I still like it a lot. (I actually think Novik's standalones, Spinning Silver and Uprooted, are her best in terms of, like, objective ambition and payoff, though both are definitely still flawed and occasionally frustrating, but it's also nice to have something longer to sink into, of course ( ... )
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I've heard really good things about the Schoomance series. I'll have to try to get onto it soon.
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Ah interesting, i loved Temeraire but wasn't that fussed on Uprooted. They're the only two I've read of hers, from memory, though Spinning Silver has also been on my TBR ever since it came out. I have a friend who was raving about Scholomance to me recently, I think they were his first NN books.
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But I do think it's of about the right length, because I felt like Novik lost interest in Temeraire as the series went on (Victory of Eagles is the pinnacle of that series for me, and then it kind of slopes down, although I continued to enjoy aspects of the later books) and I do feel like the standalones skip over some things that really should've been in the books! So maybe a trilogy is a better length for Novik than either of those extremes, heh.
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