Scholomance Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| A Deadly Education | 2020 | Buy |
| The Last Graduate | 2021 | Buy |
| The Golden Enclaves | 2022 | Buy |
Temeraire Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| His Majesty’s Dragon | 2006 | Buy |
| Throne of Jade | 2006 | Buy |
| Black Powder War | 2006 | Buy |
| Empire of Ivory | 2007 | Buy |
| Victory of Eagles | 2008 | Buy |
| Tongues of Serpents | 2010 | Buy |
| Crucible of Gold | 2012 | Buy |
| Blood of Tyrants | 2013 | Buy |
| League of Dragons | 2016 | Buy |
Naomi Novik was a game designer working on Star Wars Galaxies before she started writing fiction. His Majesty’s Dragon (2006), the first Temeraire novel, asks what the Napoleonic Wars would have looked like if both sides had an air force of intelligent dragons. The series ran to nine books and was optioned by Peter Jackson for film adaptation.
Uprooted (2015) drew on Polish fairy tales and won the Nebula Award. Spinning Silver (2018) reimagined the Rumpelstiltskin story through a Jewish moneylender’s daughter in a fantasy version of Lithuania. Both standalones showed Novik’s range beyond the military historical framework of Temeraire.
The Scholomance trilogy, beginning with A Deadly Education (2020), is set in a magic school designed to protect young wizards from monsters. The school has no teachers and a substantial mortality rate. El Higgins, the narrator, has an affinity for apocalyptic-scale destruction and is trying not to become the dark lord everyone expects her to be. The trilogy runs on El’s sharp voice and Novik’s detailed construction of the school’s internal logic.
Novik is also a co-founder of the Archive of Our Own, the nonprofit fan fiction platform that won a Hugo Award in 2019. She studied English literature at Columbia.