Books Like Uprooted

Naomi Novik’s Uprooted has one of the great premises in modern fantasy: Agnieszka lives in a valley shadowed by a dark wood - a forest that corrupts everything it touches, that the valley has been fighting for generations with the help of a wizard called the Dragon. Every ten years, the Dragon takes a girl from the valley, and everyone assumes he will choose Kasia, Agnieszka’s beautiful, brave best friend. He chooses Agnieszka instead.

The book is about her discovery of what she actually is - not the girl everyone underestimated, but the story’s true magic. It is a fairy tale with teeth, a romance with thorns, and a dark wood with real danger in it. If you have finished it and want more, here is where to go next.

If You Loved the Dark Wood: Forests With Teeth#

The defining presence in Uprooted is the Wood - a forest that is alive, malevolent, and constantly encroaching. These books have woods of the same kind.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

Vasya’s Russia is full of dangerous forests - woods full of spirits, wolves, and the cold. Arden’s book shares Novik’s understanding of the wild as something to be respected, not tamed, and its heroine shares Agnieszka’s gift for seeing what others cannot. The two books make a perfect pair: the same folkloric roots, the same dark woods, the same young women who turn out to be the story’s true magic.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Kelly Barnhill)#

The forest in Barnhill’s Newbery winner is a place of magic and danger - the Bog, the woods where the witch lives, the place the town is afraid of. It is a children’s book, but the forest has real teeth, and it shares Uprooted’s understanding of the wild as something alive.

The Winternight Trilogy (Katherine Arden)#

The second book in Arden’s trilogy, The Girl in the Tower, follows Vasya into Moscow, and the third, The Winter of the Witch, brings her back to the forest for a reckoning. The trilogy, taken as a whole, is one of the great achievements of modern fantasy, and it is the essential long read for anyone who loved Uprooted’s dark woods.

If You Loved the Reluctant Wizard: The Mentor Who Is Not What He Seems#

The Dragon is one of the great fantasy mentors: arrogant, exacting, and genuinely powerful - and, it turns out, not what anyone assumed. These books have mentors of the same kind.

The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss)#

Kvothe’s time at the University, learning magic from a series of demanding masters, shares Uprooted’s love of magical education - the sense that magic is a discipline, learned slowly and painfully. Rothfuss’s book is more sprawling and more literary than Novik’s, but it shares the delight in a student who surprises her teachers.

A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin)#

Ged, the greatest wizard of Earthsea, begins as a boy with too much power and too little wisdom - and the book is about his education, his mistakes, and his journey to understand his own shadow. Le Guin’s book is the ancestor of every magical education story, and it shares Uprooted’s conviction that the true magic is not power but understanding.

Uprooted, and the Education of Agnieszka#

One of the book’s great pleasures is its account of Agnieszka’s magical education - her wrong attempts, her intuitive breakthroughs, the slow discovery that her magic works differently from the Dragon’s. She is not a natural student; she is a natural something else, and the book is about her discovering what. That discovery - that her magic is rooted in the land, in the valley, in the people she loves - is the book’s deepest argument: the magic is not separate from life, it is life. The best fantasy education stories share that conviction: the student’s power is not something added to her, but something revealed.

If You Loved the Chosen One: The Girl Everyone Underestimated#

Agnieszka is the girl no one expected: not beautiful, not talented, not what anyone thought the Dragon would choose. The book’s joy is watching her discover what she actually is. These books are about chosen ones of the same kind.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

Vasya is the girl with the second sight - the gift her grandmother had, the gift the Church calls witchcraft. Like Agnieszka, she is underestimated by everyone around her, and like Agnieszka, she turns out to be the only one who can save her world. The two heroines are spiritual sisters.

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik)#

Miryem is a different kind of chosen one: a moneylender’s daughter who discovers a talent for turning silver into gold. She is not chosen by prophecy but by her own sharpness, and the book is about the bargains she makes and the price of them. It shares Uprooted’s interest in young women who refuse the roles assigned to them.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Kelly Barnhill)#

Luna was accidentally enmagicked as a baby - the witch who was supposed to save her gave her moonlight instead of starlight, and the magic has been growing inside her ever since. The book is about her discovery of what she is, and it shares Uprooted’s delight in the child who turns out to be more than anyone knew.

If You Loved the Fairy-Tale Retelling: Old Stories Made New#

Uprooted is a fairy tale - it draws on Polish folklore, on the Baba Yaga stories, on the old tales of dark woods and wizards’ towers - and its power comes from the way it honors the old stories while making them new. These books are retellings of the same kind.

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik)#

The Rumpelstiltskin story, retold with complete seriousness: Miryem’s talent for turning silver into gold attracts the Staryk king, and the book is about the bargain she makes and the price of it. Novik’s retelling shares Uprooted’s reverence for the source material and its willingness to take it seriously.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

A retelling of Russian folklore with complete seriousness: the domovoi, the rusalka, the spirits of the forest - rendered with such conviction that you believe in them completely. Arden’s book shares Uprooted’s understanding of what the old stories were for: not entertainment, but meaning.

The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter)#

The great ancestor of the literary fairy tale: Carter’s collection retells the classic fairy tales with a feminist, gothic sensibility. It is darker and stranger than Novik’s book, but it shares the conviction that the old stories are alive, and that they have more to say than the versions we were told as children.

If You Loved the Slow-Burn Romance: Love Beneath the Magic#

The romance between Agnieszka and the Dragon is one of the great slow burns in modern fantasy: prickly, reluctant, and deeply earned. These books have romances of the same register.

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik)#

Miryem’s romance is stranger and more subtle - a marriage that grows out of a bargain, in a world where bargains have real power. It shares Uprooted’s conviction that love and magic are woven together, and that the slowest romances are the ones that last.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

Vasya’s romance, when it comes, is tied to the magic and the winter - slow, complicated, and earned. It shares Uprooted’s understanding that love in a fantasy world is part of the magic, not a distraction from it.

Sorcery of Thorns (Margaret Rogerson)#

Elisabeth is a librarian raised among magical books that can become monsters, and when she is framed for a crime, she must work with a demon - bound into the body of a young man - to clear her name. It is a slower, younger romance than Uprooted’s, but it shares the same conviction that the best romances grow alongside the magic.

If You Loved the Magic System: Magic With Rules and Costs#

One of Uprooted’s pleasures is its magic: the Dragon’s careful, precise magic versus Agnieszka’s intuitive, chaotic magic, and the discovery that both are real. These books take their magic seriously.

The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss)#

Rothfuss’s magic is rigorous - sympathy, naming, the physics of it - and the book’s pleasure is in watching it learned and used. It shares Uprooted’s conviction that magic should have rules and costs, and that the best magic systems are the ones you can almost believe in.

A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin)#

Earthsea’s magic is the magic of names: to know the true name of a thing is to have power over it. Le Guin’s system is the ancestor of every serious magic system, and it shares Uprooted’s understanding that magic is not a weapon but a discipline.

The Fifth Season (N. K. Jemisin)#

The most rigorous magic system in modern fantasy: orogeny, the power to control the energy of the earth, and the cost of it. Jemisin’s book is darker and more political than Uprooted, but it shares the conviction that magic should be taken seriously - with rules, costs, and consequences.

If You Loved the Ensemble: The Valley and Its People#

Beneath the magic, Uprooted is about a place and its people - the valley, the villages, the families - and about what it means to protect them. These books are about communities of the same kind.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

Vasya’s story is rooted in her family and her village - the household spirits, the neighbors, the people she loves and protects. Arden’s book shares Uprooted’s conviction that the magic is for the people, and that the people are worth the magic.

The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison)#

A very different kind of community: Maia, the half-goblin youngest son of an emperor, suddenly inherits the throne and must learn to rule an empire that did not want him. Addison’s book shares Uprooted’s warmth - the sense of a protagonist who cares about the people around her - and its conviction that kindness is a form of power.

On the Meaning of the Wood#

The Wood in Novik’s novel is one of the great fantasy antagonists, and it is worth asking what it means. It is a place, and it is a force - it corrupts, it encroaches, it is never fully defeated - and the book’s refusal to explain it away is part of its power. The Wood stands for the things that cannot be conquered once and for all: the dangers that return, the darkness that is part of the land itself, the knowledge that safety is something you protect, not something you win. The book’s heroes do not destroy the Wood; they hold it back, and the book ends not with victory but with a truce - a peace that must be kept. That is a more honest fantasy than the ones that end in triumph: it acknowledges that the struggle does not end, and that courage is not a single battle but a lifetime of them. It is why the book resonates so deeply, and why its magic feels so real.

Building Your Own Valley: A Reading Order#

Here is a suggested path that moves from the closest match outward:

• Start with The Bear and the Nightingale for the essential companion.
• Move to Spinning Silver for Novik’s other great retelling.
• Try The Name of the Wind for the magical education story.
• Pick up A Wizard of Earthsea for the ancestor of them all.
• End with The Fifth Season when you are ready for the rigorous version.

For more books with this kind of magic, our meaningful books without graphic violence list gathers fantasies that are rich without being rough, and our thoughtful guide to no-spice romance helps you find love stories that are romantic without being explicit. The stories section of our site is full of guides like this one, so there is always another door to open.

The Wood That Grows in Every Reader#

Uprooted endures because it is a book about the girl everyone underestimated - and about the discovery that underestimation is not the same as truth. Agnieszka was not the beautiful, brave, chosen one; she was the messy, intuitive, unexpected one, and she turned out to be the magic. The book’s triumph is the way it makes that discovery feel personal: every reader who has ever been overlooked, ever been told they were not the right choice, ever been underestimated recognizes Agnieszka. The books on this list are full of girls like her - Vasya, Miryem, Luna, girls who refuse the roles assigned to them and discover what they actually are. Step into their woods, and you may discover something about yourself.