James Nicoll Reviews

Naomi Novik’s 2020 A Deadly Education is the first volume in her Scholomance series. 

Antisocial Galadriel ​“El” Higgins has survived her time in the combination school/death trap of Scholomance; this despite her manifest lack of social connections or powerful allies. A meet-cute in the form of an unrequested rescue by the Scholomance’s self-appointed hero Orion Lake upends her sullen life.

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Naomi Novik’s 2018 Spinning Silver is a standalone fantasy novel. 

Miryem Mandelstam comes from a family of Jewish moneylenders in the pocket kingdom of Lithvas. It’s just too bad that her father has no aptitude for the job; he gives loans to anti-Semitic neighbours who have no intention of ever repaying. Miryem’s family lives in abject poverty. 

Young Miryem eventually takes her father’s accounts in hand. The people of her nameless village could laugh off her father’s timid requests for payment, but they cannot say no to the determined young woman. Her family fortunes improve dramatically. 

This is risky: rich Jews are Jews worth robbing. As it turns out, Miryem attracts the attention of a predator even more dangerous than her neighbours: the king of the Staryks. 

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Naomi Novik’s 2015 novel Uprooted earned her a second Hugo nomination and her first Nebula Award. It has also been nominated for the Mythopoeic Award and the British Fantasy Award. Obviously this is my chance to be the lone voice of reason and taste, disappointed in a popular choice. 

The only problem with that strategy is that I enjoyed Uprooted.

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