Naomi Novik: The Scholomance series + Q&A
Author photo by Beth Gwinn
Naomi Novik creates a school bursting with magic like you’ve never seen before, and a heroine for the ages…
From the author of Uprooted and Spinning Silver comes the Scholomance trilogy, the story of an unwilling dark sorceress who is destined to rewrite the rules of magic. “It’s a magic school trilogy set in the Scholomance,” Novik told author Christopher Paolini, “which is an old folk legend that’s mentioned in Dracula—of a dark school where the students study dark arts and the last one out pays with their life. That’s the folk legend that sort of inspired it.”
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Scroll down for info about the books in the series, and to find questions and answers from author interviews with Novik.
Naomi Novik is also the acclaimed author of the Temeraire series, and the award-winning novels Uprooted and Spinning Silver. She is a founder of the Organization for Transformative Works and the Archive of Our Own.
The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik
A Deadly Education (The Scholomance #1)
An unwilling dark sorceress is destined to rewrite the rules of magic...
I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.
Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans.
I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts, I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, make myself the dark queen of the world.
At least, that’s what the world expects. Most of the other students in here would be delighted if Orion killed me like one more evil thing that’s crawled out of the drains. Sometimes I think they want me to turn into the evil witch they assume I am. The school certainly does.
But the Scholomance isn’t getting what it wants from me. And neither is Orion Lake. I may not be anyone’s idea of the shining hero, but I’m going to make it out of this place alive, and I’m not going to slaughter thousands to do it, either.
Although I’m giving serious consideration to just one.
“A brutal coming-of-power story steeped in the aesthetics of dark academia. A Deadly Education will cement Naomi Novik’s place as one of the greatest and most versatile fantasy writers of our time.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Novik puts a refreshingly dark, adult spin on the magical boarding school. Readers will delight in the push-and-pull of El and Orion’s relationship, the fantastically detailed world, the clever magic system, and the matter-of-fact diversity of the student body.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The Last Graduate (The Scholomance #2)
The specter of graduation looms large…
In Wisdom, Shelter. That’s the official motto of the Scholomance. I suppose you could even argue that it’s true—only the wisdom is hard to come by, so the shelter’s rather scant.
Our beloved school does its best to devour all its students—but now that I’ve reached my senior year and have actually won myself a handful of allies, it’s suddenly developed a very particular craving for me. And even if I somehow make it through the endless waves of maleficaria that it keeps throwing at me in between grueling homework assignments, I haven’t any idea how my allies and I are going to make it through the graduation hall alive.
Unless, of course, I finally accept my foretold destiny of dark sorcery and destruction. That would certainly let me sail straight out of here. The course of wisdom, surely.
But I’m not giving in—not to the mals, not to fate, and especially not to the Scholomance. I’m going to get myself and my friends out of this hideous place for good—even if it’s the last thing I do.
With keen insight and mordant humor, Novik reminds us that sometimes it is not enough to rewrite the rules—sometimes, you need to toss out the entire rulebook.
“The climactic graduation-day battle will bring cheers, tears, and gasps as the second of the Scholomance trilogy closes with a breathtaking cliff-hanger.”—Booklist (starred review)
The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance #3)
Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for…
The one thing you never talk about while you’re in the Scholomance is what you’ll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it’s all we dream about: the hideously slim chance we’ll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls.
And now the impossible dream has come true. I’m out, we’re all out—and I didn’t even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. So much for my great-grandmother’s prophecy of doom and destruction. I didn’t kill enclavers, I saved them. Me and Orion and our allies. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: We saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves everywhere.
Ha, only joking! Actually, it’s gone all wrong. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war. And the first thing I’ve got to do now, having miraculously gotten out of the Scholomance, is turn straight around and find a way back in.
Naomi Novik Q&A
Q: What can readers coming in fresh to your work as well as those who are longtime fans expect for this new series?
“I think that one consistent element is that my work is always in conversation. In this case, there’s an old folk legend of the Scholomance, a hidden school of dark magic where wizards spent years studying in the dark, without teachers, and when they left, the last graduate’s soul was taken in payment for their education. I read about this legend back when I was about 10 years old, and it’s stuck in my head ever since, and in this book I’ve worked it together with the magical boarding school trope that we all know and love from Harry Potter and A Wizard of Earthsea and the Worst Witch books and so many others.
“There’s also a first-person female narrator. El comes into the story already knowing a lot about magic and the magical world. Also, she’s fundamentally a modern girl who has grown up in our recognizable world despite having magic herself, as opposed to being in a more historical era. But she’s also going through the coming-of-age process and grappling with her own power and working out who she is and who she wants to become. She’s also trying to find community and connection.”—Naomi Novik: The darkest of academias (BookPage)
Q: What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
“I generally hope my readers take away the world of the work. The feeling that they can imagine a different character in that world, that they can imagine visiting that world, that they can imagine the characters living on off the page.
“I want my work to come alive inside the reader in a way where they are imaginatively collaborating with me. I want that more than a specific message. I want that feeling—the truth of a world and the characters to live in them.”—Ten Terrifying Questions with Naomi Novik! (Booktopia)
Q: The Scholomance school is like an entire character in itself. What inspired you to build this place? What was your writing approach to introducing The Scholomance and its intricacies to readers?
“I introduce the reader to it as I myself am introduced to it. I am a “discovery” writer--I learn about the story I’m telling as I go, and that’s part of my own motivation to keep going. The school in particular was an evolving character like any other character that I had to learn more about as I went.
“What reason would bring people to send their children to this terrible place? The answer had to be that it was better than the outside. Why is it better than the outside? On the outside, there are more monsters. If the goal is to protect the lives of your children, the Scholomance has to be a fortified location. How then, do you build such a location to ensure that it provides the best protection possible?”—Author Spotlight: Naomi Novik (Fully Booked)