Random Scholomance series thought

[conuly]

Back in book 2, El goes into a lengthy digression about the Pune Enclave, namely that there isn't one, because the wizards in Pune, having traded an amazing spellbook for the enclave-building spells immediately devolved into what El refers to as "internecine fighting", the consequence of which was that some of them went to join other enclaves and some of them didn't and some of them, rather extremely, renounced all magic, purged their mana, and went to live in the wilderness as ascetics.

But did they just start squabbling for no reason, or did some of them simply balk at the whole maw-mouth thing?

Balked, but did nothing to solve it, you'll notice. Going into the wilderness is all well and good, but how does that help? I kinda feel that way about El's mother, and have since the first book. Sure, it's great, she lives on a commune and doesn't ever cheat and is spirit-whole - but just because it's the best thing for her doesn't make it the best thing for her daughter. Protecting wizard kids from mals seems to come down to location - if you can't get into an enclave, your next best bet is either so deep into the boondocks that you have no neighbors for miles around, or a very crowded apartment building. Given the enormous target on El's back, this commune seems like the worst of both worlds, and at the very least, the kid might've benefited from living somewhere with other non-white people.

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Comments

[bibliofile]

That baby giraffe is adorbs. My choice for a name? Spot (of course)

[conuly]

That's everybody's choice, except the people who are going with variations on Spotless.

[readerjane]

Yeah, mom’s approach of “grit your teeth while you try to fight off every mal that shows up until you fall over from exhaustion and the bogey eats your baby” doesn’t seem like an effective plan.

[conuly]

Indeed, I think Gwen Higgins is the rare beneficiary of El's incredibly unreliable narration - El thinks the woman is a saint (especially for putting up with her all those years, very healthy attitude honey) and therefore she can do no wrong... but if you read between the lines, she's really just a human person.

[readerjane]

Huh, I hadn't thought of that, but I think you're right.

I'm going to be reading Golden Enclaves to my menfolk after we finish our current book series, and it will be interesting to go through that story again with this in mind.

[dark_phoenix54]

I had to wonder how being in the boonies actually protected El from being detected by the mals. I mean, if Gwen could make some.. magical little pocket outside space and time or something... why couldn't other people? Why did they all have to go to the Scholomance? I know I read fast and sometimes miss details, still.

[conuly]

Gwen couldn't do that, though. That's the whole point. El's pretty much the only person who can do that singlehandedly.

[oakfarm]

Since fish-farming kind of is my profession I can comment on fishmeal. The use of fishmeal in fish-farming has gone down a lot.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/09/Fish-in-Fish-out-Ratios.png