The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Novik, Naomi. The Golden Enclaves. Del Rey. 2023. Kindle.

The Golden Enclaves is the final novel in the Scholomance trilogy. During the first two novels, El attended the Scholomance school for wizards because it was the only safe place for teenagers to be. However, the school was only safe compared to the outside world, which was full of monsters who hungered for nothing more than teens. The school was initially designed as a safe place, but over the centuries the machinery had become rusted and old, and plenty of monsters crept into the walls to attack students. During the previous novel, El hatched a plan to turn the school into a giant trap for all the monsters in the world, and to get all the students out of the school. The plan worked, and she ended up saving the whole school and trapping 90% of the world’s monsters in the school before blasting it off into the void. But at the last moment, her boyfriend, Orion, decided to stay inside with the monsters. He pushed El out of the gate on her own. In this novel, El fell into her mother’s home in Wales and tried to get back to Orion, but all her magic was useless. She assumed that he had been eaten by a maw-mouth, and began the process of grieving for him.

When her mother discovered that El had a copy of the lost Golden Sutras, Gwen revealed that she and El’s father had wanted to find the sutras so badly when they were students so that they could design peaceful golden enclaves all around the world—a dream that El and Orion had also shared. Gwen said that she and Arjun had made an open-ended bargain with the universe in return for the sutras. El theorized that the universe must had killed her father and given El terrible powers of darkness as the payment for the sutras. She got angry at her mother and told her to leave her alone.

El’s friend from school, Liesel, came to Wales and asked El to help the London enclave, which had been attacked by a maw-mouth. El was the only person in the world who could kill maw-mouths on her own, so she decided to go and travelled to London, where she agreed to kill the monster in exchange for the enclave opening up its garden grounds to the public during business hours so that independent wizards can have some place nice and safe to visit. They agreed, and El killed the maw-mouth. The enclave tried to keep her there through magic, but she was able to escape with the help of her friends and an independent witch named Yancy who knew secret tunnels. El asked Yancy if there was a way to get back to the Scholomance, and Yancy suggested that El try the original entrance.

El flew to New York with Liesel to ask Orion’s parents for a power-sharer bracelet so that she could put Orion out of his misery. However, when she met his mother, Ophelia, she realized that the woman was a maleficer. Despite this, Ophelia acted very kind and gave El the power-sharer, and she accepted the bracelet to go and save Orion. She, Liesel, and Aadhya flew to Portugal and found the entrance to the Scholomance. They went into the school and discovered it was completely empty from monsters—except Orion. Somehow, he felt like a maw-mouth to El. She took him out of the school and brought him to her mother to be healed. Her mother reluctantly agreed, but she passed out during the healing, and it was not complete. After a few days of rest, Liu sent a frightening message so El, Orion, Liesel, and Aadhya flew to Beijing. They discovered that the enclave was attempting to rebuild itself after a maw-mouth attack by creating a new enclave in the only way they were ever created—by sacrificing a victim in a torture device to create a maw-mouth and an enclave at the same time. El saved Liu and built Beijing a golden enclave with the help of her golden sutras. After she finished, the council tried to kill her, but Orion killed them first.

El and her friends went back to the airport. Orion revealed that he had eaten all the monsters in the Scholomance, and he thought it had turned him into a sort of maw-mouth, so he wanted to go home and ask his mother to fix him. El, meanwhile, decided to go see her great grandmother in Mumbai, but an old school friend called and asked for her help in Dubai because another maw-mouth had attacked. El killed the maw-mouth and built them a new golden enclave, and then she flew to Mumbai. Once she arrived, she realized that killing maw-mouths destroyed enclaves, so she had been destroying the enclaves herself—not the maw-mouths.

El reunited with her great grandmother, who warned her that Ophelia was a dangerous and terrible maleficer. An international war broke out at the gate to the Scholomance, so El went to intervene. She spoke to the leader of the Shanghai enclave, Shanfeng, who explained that Ophelia had turned Orion into a half maw-mouth before he was even born so that she would eventually be able to use him as a weapon of war to control everyone around the world. Shanfeng told El that she had to kill Orion to save everyone and end the war, but instead she killed the maw-mouth inside of him so that he could live a normal life.

In the end, El and her mother travelled back to Dubai to visit her father’s family and build them a golden enclave. El and her friends planned to travel the world killing maw-mouths while her family taught others how to make golden enclaves. The Scholomance was reopened, and Orion started working there as a bodyguard. El and Orion kissed, and he promised he would come maw-mouth hunting with her in the summers.