Naomi Novik Spins the Thinking Reader’s Fantasy
Like many bookish Millennials, I inhaled Harry Potter when the series came out and relished it for many years thereafter. I dressed up with friends to see the movies, stood in line at midnight to buy hardcovers from Scholastic Headquarters in SoHo, and took an online quiz to find out, from the Sorting Hat, which House I’d be part of. But, also like many bookish Millennials, I had to let go when J.K. Rowling started down a road of unapologetic, even occasionally cruel, transphobia.
And yet we are all living in a literary world that has been remade by the Harry Potter phenomenon: fantasy stories are everywhere. It’s a trend that makes sense, given that masked monsters stalk the streets of our cities and old-fashioned men in search of ever more power run our governments. Very little about the real world feels predictable or safe. Fantasy provides more than escape: it can serve as a refuge for our over-tired, overtaxed minds while also giving us courage. Because at the same time as it provides that escape, it reminds us that we need to ask ourselves who and what we’ll stand up for—and who, if it comes to that, will stand up for us? J.K. Rowling, unfortunately, won’t.
In her place, I offer you Naomi Novik. This author deals out dragons. She creates castles. And though she can craft a sentence, she’s also talented at scenes: She understands stakes, drama and pacing, so her books will keep you reading instead of doomscrolling. Plus, if you’re looking for someone to crush on, or just someone to make Shabbes with, she’s got plenty of options. (Per Paste magazine, she ’ s half Lithuanian Jewish, half Polish Catholic, and married to Charles Ardai, a Jewish son of Holocaust survivors).
I stumbled upon Novik’s beloved standalone novel Spinning Silver when scrolling through options on the NYPL e-book app, Libby. I did some cursory research, and at first I wasn’t impressed. She appeared to be yet another contemporary fantasy author writing yet more books about magic schools and winged beasts, no doubt compelled to feed the insatiable appetite of an audience raised on Rowling.
I’d had mixed experiences with the Magic School subgenre. My instinct at seeing another version of the same general idea was to shrug and scroll. But something tugged on my attention. Maybe it was the fact that Spinning Silver was an explicitly Ashkenazi Jewish take on the classic fairy tale Rumplestiltskin, and I certainly hadn’t read that before. The concept reminded me a bit of Katharine Arden’s fantastic “Winternight” trilogy set in a fictionalized, more-magic-friendly version of medieval Russia.
I clicked Borrow, little realizing that I had found something even more valuable than a distraction from social media for a few evenings. I’d found a new author to add to my list of all-time favorites.
Novik’s genius is her ability to stitch familiar pieces together to create an original, unique and memorable whole—and to communicate a rousing message about the ability of underestimated people to work together to challenge their destinies.
This first became clear to me reading Spinning Silver, and Novik’s other standalone novel, Uprooted. Spinning Silver is my favorite of the two. As Choire Sicha summarized for the NYT Book Review back in 2018, “This book is about the determination and quiet competence of women doing remarkable things without knowing first that they can do them.”
In Novik’s books, young women often come into their own, and discover the extent of that determination and quiet competence, only when circumstances force their hands. Indeed, in the stories these characters have been told, they’re the extras. They need all their energy just to get by in worlds that are, at best, indifferent, and at worst, actively callous, towards people like them: peasants who are relevant only if called upon to serve as a sacrifice required to placate some larger force. The more powerful beings in Novik’s books tend not to recognize her young women as fully human, in other words, until the women themselves insist upon it. Until they make themselves undeniable.
In Spinning Silver, that young woman is the creative and resourceful Miryem (Novik’s most explicitly and movingly Jewish character), whose working-class family suffers because her kind-hearted father, a money-lender, is ill-suited to his profession. In Uprooted, it’s the self-doubting, clumsy Agnieszka, whose village is threatened by both human and supernatural elements.
Both protagonists gather the courage to take a stand, and at that point they learn what they’re capable of. As it turns out, that includes banding together with, trusting, and inspiring others.
“The world I wanted wasn’t the world I lived in,” Miryem realizes, “and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.”
Ultimately Miryem and Agnieszka accept that they must play their part as leaders, whatever it costs them. Like Queen Esther in the Megillah, they understand that their safety can no longer be of paramount concern when something so much larger is at stake. Both have a moment where they acknowledge they must act and accept, “If I die, I die.”
Novik’s other series draw less explicitly from Jewish tradition, but retain themes that feel both Jewish and feminist. Galadriel “El” Higgins of the Scholomance Trilogy is a prickly loner who feels out of place at boarding school and mistrusts everyone except her beloved, Zen-like mother back in Wales. Her plan is to live to adulthood, period.
That is no mean feat in this universe, where magic children attract strong, even deadly predators, and there are no benign grown ups around to keep kids safe. Only a fraction of the freshmen manage to make it to, let alone beyond, senior year. The ones who do are usually the richest and most well-connected, because they are able to accumulate the most protections. Lacking either wealth or prestige, El assumes she ’ll have to come through on sheer stubbornness.
“I could never afford to look past survival, especially not for anything as insanely expensive as happiness,” as El puts it in The Last Graduate.
Over the course of the three novels in the series, though, El learns to think bigger. By the end of each book, her goal has shifted and her scope has broadened. It’s no longer enough for only her to live, and it’s no longer enough for her to only live, either. She’s resolved to bring her fellow students with her to safety, and then keep them safe on the other side. Ultimately she summons enough chutzpah to take on the entire system.
With that stubbornness, as well as many other resources she didn’t realize she had, she forces her society to reckon with, and even respect, those it took for granted.
It’s not just Novik’s ordinary young women who rise to the occasion, pursue justice, and try to repair the world.
In her nine delightful historical-fiction books that start with His Majesty’s Dragon, it’s young men, too, most notably the honorable Captain William Laurence.
A British naval officer during the Napoleonic wars, Laurence had anticipated one kind of life for himself, the sort his landowning, titled family would approve of. After the untimely hatching of an egg captured by his crew, though, he finds himself saddled with the responsibility of a lifetime: raising, teaching, and eventually fighting alongside a dragon named Temeraire.
Laurence accepts this charge and persists even once he realizes he must sacrifice wealth, stability, and status, not to mention the approval of his father and the hand of the girl he hoped to marry. This feels extremely English of him. But the process slowly radicalizes Laurence, as does his close relationship with other aviators and the different breeds of dragons, an evolution that feels extremely Jewish. Increasingly Laurence sees through Temeraire’s eyes the injustices of a world built by and designed for humans. Once he recognizes the unfairness inherent in that system, he’s compelled to do his part to try to make it better.
These Temeraire novels are a rollicking good time. But their politics add a layer of seriousness and thoughtfulness to the proceedings, a kind of moral weight that feels particularly apt for 2026. They wrestle with the question of how societies treat outsiders, humans and beasts alike, and the agency that determined misfits can gain when they work together.
Over and over in her fiction, Novik examines the ways disadvantaged people push back against fate and make themselves visible to societies that would rather they fade into the background. She manages this while bringing a distinct energy and humor each time.
And her stories emphasize the importance of community, understanding that we’re all in this together. “Truth didn’t mean anything without someone to share it with,” Novik writes in Uprooted. “You could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn’t come and listen.”
Ester Bloom is an award-winning writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenplays, advice columns, recaps, reviews, business news and more. She lives in NYC.