#naomi novik

[emily-e-draws]

His Majesty’s Dragon the comfort book ever.. yes I have five hundred books on my tbr yes I am instead reading Temeraire again

[ace-and-ranty]

In retrospect, the scene of El going down the library stacks trying to get to Orion is so funny, because. She's doing such grim, survivalist, cold mental gymnastics to try and make sense of the school behavior. Over the course of it, El thinks the Scholomance is:

Trying to keep her from helping Orion so it can finish killing him

Accidentally loosing an invaluable, literally priceless, world-changing treasure to her in the attempt

Bribing her with an opportunity to show off, if only she lets the Mawmouth go devour all the little children

When in reality, what it was doing was:

Trying to keep El away from the Mawmouth, because its fucking job is to protect her.

Giving her a book that's already been paid for by her parents. It is literally just handing over her inheritance.

Asking for her help killing the Mawmouth, so it doesn't go devour all the little children.

It's. It's so funny. El is basically a cat trying to eat a piece of plastic, fighting against its helpless owner that just wants to help. She accused the school of trying to kill Orion whilst it was busy trying to save her fucking life. Herding teenagers: the world's most thankless job.

[ineedlelittlespace]

The thing that gets me about the Temeraire series is that the dragons are so seamlessly integrated into the time period that when other fantastical elements (e.g. sea serpents, bunyips, etc.) show up, it feels startling, as if this serious historical narrative has just taken a hard left turn into fantasy. And then you remember that oh, yeah, the military dragon units also did not actually exist.

[kingoftheu]

William Laurence truly has one of the funniest character arcs of all time. He does a complete 360 over the course of the series. Totally turned around yet somehow exactly where he started. He completely changed his worldview while being absolutely steadfast about it. He undergoes impressive character development while his character does not change at all. He is so damn stubborn about his preconceived notions of honor that he is willing to abandon his preconceived notions of dragons, gender, and race. He transcends the regency society he lives in not by breaking the confines of rigid values but by expanding those confines to include everyone.

[chekovpavelandreievich]

the thing about el higgins is that terry pratchett would have loved her.

I’ve never encountered a character or a series that I could call a spiritual successor to tiffany aching but el is perhaps the closest possible thing. the way that tiffany’s righteous anger is her magic, born from a sense of deeply rooted love and identity with her home and blossoms into a tempered, powerful ability to see what is in front of her. the way el rages against the systems of oppression she can see and how she follows that rage to the very core and from that core she dismantle those systems. how in both doing the right thing is a choice, always a choice, and one that requires choosing again and again and again. “this far and no further.” “you’re already dead but stay anyway.”

[mostlyghostie]

New commission!

I had started this in good time, then impulsively peeled off my screen protector because it got too dirty, not realising that I’m now so used to drawing with one on that I was incapable of continuing without ordering another, so I just got finished in time to retain my coveted Etsy perfect shipping record. Stressful!

Which of these have you read?

[isvoc]

Lien and Temeraire from Naomi Novik's books!

[rosiethorns88]

Aaaaand (after a small delay) the fourth and final bonus Sketch-a-Wish from my 2nd Patreon anniversary - a frequently requested scene from Uprooted, featuring Sarkan (the Dragon) and Agnieszka! Phew, I'm art-pooped after this one. 🫠

[erionmakuo]

Fanart of Mirnatirus from Spinning Silver by @naominovik Was lucky enough to catch her on her UK tour! :)

[reputayswift]

SPINNING SILVER ❆ NAOMI NOVIK

❝ THERE ARE MEN WHO ARE WOLVES INSIDE, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. ❞

[emily-e-draws]

bedtime stories (a mathematics textbook)

[maelancoli]

i'm kind of late to this but i just finished reading the scholomance trilogy by naomi novik and i feel like it is such an underrated urban fantasy?? taking the chosen one trope and turning it on its head with a fmc who has been prophesied to bring death and destruction, who is imbued with terrible power, but cannot even properly use said power to solve any of her obstacles because it would obliterate them and her soul. it takes a tired trope and the idea of an 'overpowered mary sue' and throws it back in your face by showing how all the power and destiny in the world is useless against a system filled with corruption that has burdened you with an easy way out (evil/destructive magic) that you can't take so now you have to work twice as hard as everyone else just to do simple, constructive spells instead of flicking your wrist and being done with it.

[izzenithal]

this is their whole dynamic and i love them for it

[krakenattack]

Mild spoiler for The Last Graduate ahead, but:

Having just reread the whole series, I love how at odds El and the Scholomance are. Like, El's pessimism is a great way of making your narrator unreliable, since El is sometimes right and sometimes wrong always expecting the worst response from everyone around her(a thought worthy of another entire post), but it becomes very funny once she realizes that part of the problem at school is that she can't do small spells? Like, she spends the whole first book being like 'this school is the devil tempting me to evil, it wants me to become a maleficier, I can't even ask for a simple cleaning spell without getting horrible spells for summoning mortal flames and enslaving an army of people, I hate it', and meanwhile the Scholomance is flipping frantically through its catalogue of spells gathered over thousands of years, desperately trying to find a spell in a language El knows that she can also cast with her affinity for working incredibly large and powerful spells. El's over here driving a bulldozer and saying, 'I would like to build a Jenga tower' and the Scholomance is looking at her with the weary despair of a preschool teacher knowing they're going to be suffering through a temper tantrum soon but unable to stop it.

El, a furious teenager who doesn't know as much as she thinks she does: I don't wanna summon a mortal flame! I want my room clean!

The Scholomance, a giant building that cleans its own hallways, floors, dishes and various and assorted other workings with mortal flame: Why is this child testing me

Also hilarious in retrospect is El's blithe statement in the first book about how no one would ever give her that much mana to do these high volume spells bc mana isn't free or easy to acquire and so the school is clearly telling her to turn maleficier and kill her fellow students all while Orion is humming to himself as he kills mals and dumps oodles and oodles of mana into the New York power sharers.

El "I'd rather die than ask for help" Higgins: I won't do these spells bc no one will give me mana

The Scholomance, as loudly as a building who may or may not be partially sentient and who can't speak human languages: Wow, those sure are some HIGH MANA VOLUME spells you got there! If only there was SOMEONE around who would be able to provide you with a NIGH LIMITLESS FLOW OF MANA so that you'd be able to cast them!

Orion: :)

El: *hisses like a feral cat*

Orion: :(

The Scholomance: oh my freaking god

Hilarious. Top tier humor.

[erosia-rhodes]

It took me 14 months to write my fic, but it only took 2 months to turn it into this:

That’s right, y’all. I learned the art of bookbinding. This is the dark path fic writing can lead you down. I wanted a copy of my 220K-word monstrosity on my shelf, but paying to have it bound is illegal. (Damn you, intellectual property law!) When I learned I’d have to make it myself, I was like, are you fucking kidding me? No way. That is insane. Then 24 hours later I was like, okay, I guess I’m learning bookbinding? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Then I started to enjoy it! Rejecting a life of crime gave me a new hobby. And it does look nice sitting on the shelf next to the Scholomance series that inspired it.

It really is gorgeous to me, mostly because I created the whole thing from concept to hardcase. I wrote the story, created the typeset, designed the cover, and bound it—all by myself! I feel a bit like Gwen Higgins creating that healing patch for El: tilling the soil, planting the linen seeds, spinning it into thread, and then weaving it into a patch. (Okay, I didn’t make the paper or the ink or the heat transfer vinyl, but we have to set boundaries somewhere.)

It was rather exhausting though. I feel like I’ve completed a never-ending quest full of side missions that each required a different set of skills and required me to obtain a wide variety of obscure supplies. I also spent a bunch of money that I don’t really have, which makes this the most expensive book I’ve ever owned BY FAR, which is ridiculous because all the flaws in its construction undoubtedly decrease its value. It cost so much that I feel obligated to bind a whole bunch of more books to bring down the average cost per project. That, or I’ll have to eat all the supplies instead of buying groceries next month.

I plan on writing a series of posts about how I made this thing, including all my trips to the hardware store, the fraudster on Amazon who sent me weird paper, and my newfound love for craft knives and bone folders. When I do, I’ll post the links down below.

In the meantime, if anyone has an urge to bind a copy of my fic themselves, here are links to zip files of the signatures and the cover images: Spellbreaker signatures | Spellbreaker cover images

Oh, and here’s a link to the fic on AO3. Spellbreaker: A Scholomance Sequel by Erosia Rhodes. Enjoy!