This was an incredible ending to an incredible series. I have thoroughly enjoyed El and Orion's journey. The stakes and plot were massively upped in this book and there were some super satisfying plot twists and world building that put everything into beautiful perspective.

El's character arc and development from the whole trilogy really came together in beautiful ways. I teared up several times at the end. What an incredible story, incredible conclusion, and beautiful characters.

My only regret is the sexual content. There were a couple of brief, easily skippable scenes, less than a page each, but they also were completely unnecessary. I was annoyed they existed, but I was glad they were not graphic in any way. Everything else about these books was so beautiful, and I learned powerful lessons about good vs. evil, sacrifice and hard work vs. shortcuts, and so much else. I'm mostly annoyed that those beautiful messages were dampened with that.

There is also excessive swearing, but for some reason it was used in a way that didn't bother me as much as it usually would.

What can I say?
I’ll have to wrap most of my review in spoilers. Without spoiling anything, this book comes with some surprises that I liked, the world building is still amazing. El’s narration can be really funny:

Overall, I had a 2 year break in between book 2 and 3, that probably didn’t help. 

Good points:

The prophecy and how that turned out in the end, with the visit in Mumbai.
The whole enclave-building principle is genius
I like the “you’re already dead” principle

Less satisfying points 

The way things ended with Orion doesn’t really satisfy me.
The way things end in the well. 

I've raced through this series, rather like a mawmouth. I've seen in other reviews that there are issues with the writing style- lots of telling rather than showing- and I agreed. The chosen one trope is very much present so if that's not your thing, beware. But I just really enjoyed them. I got swept up in the world and El's journey. The first half was definitely more page turning. Things slowed a little in the middle but I wanted to see what happened to the characters and have the mystery of the enclave attacks solved and it all came together very satisfyingly. 

LOVE this trilogy!!! This is the second time I've read through this series, first time was early 2023. I blew through these because I love the world and the story. El has so much going on, and the number of shifts and turns in this is amazing and captivating. There are definitely some slower moments within her internal dialogue incorporating more world building/history that I felt were unnecessary, but overall I really loved this series. Something is great about a bitter main character that begrudgingly does the right thing even though it is insanely hard. She never takes the easy way out, that's for sure.

Everything about Orion and what he is, the way her mum tried to heal him, and the resolution between El and Deepthi Sharma was really well written. The emotional conclusion of that felt really satisfying, and her granddad threatening to leave the house/estate was a great show of his real love for Arjun, El, and her mom.

I absolutely hate disliking books. It honestly causes me physical pain because I love stories and I want to love each story I come to. But every so often I pick up a book that is just too painful, frustrating, or disappointing to like — and I’m so very sad that this has been the case with The Golden Enclaves. Especially because I absolutely adored the first two books and had every expectation that I would love this one. 
Unfortunately, there are a many number of things, characters, story elements, and plot choices that I found underwhelming but what really disappointed me the most was that all of the character development we saw in El over the course of the first two books was completely undone in the first half of this one, and then not adequately built back up again by the end. This left me feeling like I didn’t know her, which is not how you want to feel at the conclusion of a series. So many of the things I had come to love about her (such as her resilience, her discipline, her strong foundation of morals, and her journey of personal growth that allowed her to let people in) either faded into the background or completely flipped. She lost her voice, her passion, her ferocity, her community, her drive. And that just wasn’t realistic, interesting, or relatable for me. Not only that, but it made me really really sad. 
The wrap up regarding the creation of enclaves and how that is tied to malia was interesting — but the conflict with Ophelia, the revelation of the prophecy, and the resolution weren’t enough to make up for the other ways I was really disappointed. 
Finally, I love Orion. And I truly believe he deserved better. Not just from the other characters, but from the author. 
Honestly, really heartbroken with this one, guys.

I was correct in my assessment of the first book: by blowing it up from a duology to a trilogy, I feel like there's a lot that could have been trimmed down. I don't think she could have ever put it back to a duology (unless you did two 500 page books), but the story here didn't end up being as satisfying as I wanted. 

This is mainly for the following reason:

After two books dealing with mals, and two books of El describing what it's like to take down a maw-mouth, it turns out that in order to create an Enclave, you have to sacrifice someone and turn them into a maw-mouth. So when you destroy a maw-mouth, you're destroying an Enclave somewhere else in the world.

 

The last hundred or so pages of this book, much like the last hundred or so pages of The Last Graduate, shoves everything in it. It's like the previous three hundred pages barely mattered: the entirety of the conflict happens in the final few pages.

Like, I was expecting some sort of final battle between her and Maw-Mouth Orion, but what ends up happening is she simply holds his hands and tells him that he's already dead, then it takes literally hundreds of people to stop everything from collapsing in on himself and then somehow Orion still survives?

I did really enjoy this series. I enjoyed the magic system, I enjoyed Novik's writing, and I enjoyed the characters that weren't El (which makes me wish for some sort of spin-off for Aadhya or Liu). 

Speaking of other characters, while El is busy mourning Orion's death (or at the very least, still planning on going back to the Scholomance to kill Patience and put Orion out of his misery),

she ends up banging Liesel?

This relationship seems to come out of nowhere to me - it's not even remotely hinted at in the last book, and then suddenly they're alone together and El thinks the only thing she can do to feel anything is to jump in bed together? It left a bad taste in my mouth. I guess technically, yes, she thinks Orion is dead so she's not cheating on him, but really? The kid hasn't even been dead for two weeks yet? 

All together, I enjoyed the series, and I'd definitely read it again, and try to read it while knowing what I know now about the Enclaves and how everything ends up. It's just not the story I was expecting.