Books like “A Deadly Education”

What to read after “A Deadly Education” by Naomi Novik: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Magicians
Lev Grossman · 2009
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Academia” and “Dark Fantasy”
Quentin Coldwater is recruited to a hidden college of magic in upstate New York, where years of study leave him restless and still searching for meaning. When he and his friends find a way into Fillory, the enchanted land from his childhood books, its dangers turn out to be very real.
2
Vita Nostra
Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Academia” and “Dark Fantasy”
Sasha Samokhina fails her exams and is told to attend a remote institute instead. There the lessons are strange and punishing, and students are asked to do things that break the usual rules of the world. Obedience may unlock a terrifying kind of power.
3
Vicious
V. E. Schwab · 2013
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Academia”
- Dark Academia
- Found Family
Victor and Eli are brilliant, lonely college roommates who turn a theory about near-death experiences into something real. Ten years later Victor leaves prison to hunt the friend who became his enemy, each armed with dangerous powers and neither willing to stop.
4
Sabriel
Garth Nix · 1995
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Fantasy”
- Dark Fantasy
- Found Family
Sabriel has grown up safely across the Wall, far from the Old Kingdom and its dead. When her father, the Abhorsen, vanishes, she crosses into a land where the dead walk and takes up his bells and his duty. With a free magic creature and a trapped soldier, she sets out to find him.
5
The Atlas Six
Olivie Blake · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Academia”
- Dark Academia
Six talented magicians are invited to the Alexandrian Society, a secret fellowship that guards lost knowledge. Only five can be initiated at the end of the year, and the recruits must decide how far they will go to keep their places, and whom they are willing to betray.
6
The Way of Shadows
Brent Weeks · 2008
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Fantasy”
- Dark Fantasy
- Outcast Hero
Azoth survives as a guild rat in the slums of Cenaria, where life is cheap. To escape he apprentices himself to Durzo Blint, the city's most feared assassin, and must abandon his old name and life to become Kylar Stern, a killer schooled in dangerous magic and politics.
7
Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo · 2019
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Academia”
- Dark Academia
- Outcast Hero
Galaxy Stern, the lone survivor of a brutal murder, is offered a place at Yale by the secret societies that run the university's magic. Her task is to watch their rituals, but when a local girl dies, Alex must use the very power she fears to find the killer.
8
If We Were Villains
M. L. Rio · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Academia”
- Dark Academia
Seven acting students at an elite Shakespeare conservatory are so close they share every role. When one of them is found dead during their final year, the friends must decide what story to tell the police. Ten years later, one of them finally explains what really happened.
9
Six of Crows
Leigh Bardugo · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Fantasy”
- Dark Fantasy
- Found Family
A street criminal offers six dangerous outcasts a fortune to break into an impregnable fortress and rescue a captive inventor. The heist needs a plan no one has tried before, and none of the crew trusts the others.
10
The Shadow of the Torturer
Gene Wolfe · 1980
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Fantasy”
- Dark Fantasy
- Outcast Hero
Severian is raised in the guild of torturers and exiled from his city after an act of mercy. He narrates his own travels across a dying world, but his perfect memory is perfect only in his own account, and the past conceals far more than he admits.
11
Mistborn: The Final Empire
Brandon Sanderson · 2006
Similar atmosphere: “Dark Fantasy”
- Dark Fantasy
- Prophecy
In an ash-covered empire, a street thief is trained in allomancy, the magic of burning metals. She joins a crew planning to overthrow the immortal Lord Ruler, though the prophecy around her may be a lie.
12
The Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater · 2012
Same genre: “Young adult fantasy”
- Prophecy
- Found Family
Blue has grown up in a house of psychics and is warned she will cause her true love's death. Drawn into the search for a lost Welsh king with a group of boys from a prestigious school, she finds her life tangled with theirs and with their dangerous families.