What to Read After Uprooted — 6 Books with the Same Folklore Magic
Naomi Novik's Uprooted is folklore fantasy at its finest: a fierce, unexpected heroine, a corrupted forest that is genuinely terrifying, and a slow-burn romance built on a power imbalance the novel then carefully dismantles. If you finished it wanting more of that atmosphere — the Eastern European fairy-tale texture, the magic that feels intuitive rather than systematic, the woman who refuses to be what the world expects — these six books are your next reads. Novik's own work comes first, followed by the authors who operate closest to her particular magic.
- 1
Spinning Silver
by Naomi Novik
Novik's follow-up to Uprooted may be even better: a moneylender's daughter bargains with a cold, terrible Fae king in a Russian winter and discovers her own power in the negotiation. The same folklore atmosphere and feminist revision of fairy tale tropes — but the heroine's weapon is financial acumen rather than magic, and it is just as thrilling.
FolkloreBargainSlow BurnFeminist Fairy Tale🌶 Cozy - 2
The Bear and the Nightingale
by Katherine Arden
A wild girl in medieval Russia refuses to fear the frost demon at the edge of her village — while her family and the Christian church try to tame her. Arden's Winternight Trilogy is the most direct companion to Uprooted in contemporary fantasy: same Russian folklore, same fierce heroine who the world tries to diminish, same lyrical prose that makes winter feel magical rather than merely cold.
Russian FolkloreFierce HeroineMythologyHistorical🌶 Cozy - 3
A Deadly Education
by Naomi Novik
A student at a magical school with an extraordinary talent for destructive magic refuses to use it — and must survive by wit alone. Novik's Scholomance series has her trademark character-first storytelling and wry voice, with a heroine whose relationship to her own power mirrors Agnieszka's in Uprooted.
Magic AcademyDark HumorSurvivalReluctant Power🌶 Cozy - 4
Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
A man lives in a house with infinite halls, a tidal ocean in its corridors, and almost no memory of how he came to be there. Clarke's puzzle-box novel shares Uprooted's literary quality and its sense of a world where magic has old, deep rules that must be understood before they can be survived — quiet, strange, and unforgettable.
Puzzle MysteryMagical WorldMemoryLiterary FantasyClean - 5
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
Two magicians attempt to restore practical magic to Regency England — one a cautious scholar, the other a reckless genius — and both are drawn into the court of the Faerie king. Clarke's debut is the most ambitious literary fantasy of the last twenty years, and Uprooted readers who want the same investment in magic-as-system and prose-as-pleasure will find it here in abundance.
Historical FantasyMagic SystemFaerieLiterary FictionClean - 6
Circe
by Madeline Miller
The witch of Aeaea finds her power among gods who underestimate her — a mythological feminist narrative written with Miller's characteristically gorgeous prose. For Uprooted readers who responded most to Agnieszka's arc of self-discovery and the relationship between a powerful older man and a young woman finding her strength, Circe is the essential companion.
Greek MythologyFeminist RetellingMagicComing of Age🌶 Cozy