Spinning Silver
#1374.17 in the official ranking · full ranking
Books 1 book Status Complete 2018 Reading commitment Low Naomi Novik Last reviewed 2026-08-05
Overview
Spinning Silver (2018) is a standalone high fantasy novel by Naomi Novik, a Rumpelstiltskin retelling drawing on the author's Lithuanian Jewish heritage and engaging directly with the antisemitic undertones of the original tale by making its moneylender protagonist, Miryem, a Jewish girl whose talent for turning silver into gold draws the attention of a dangerous, otherworldly Staryk king. It grew out of a 2016 short story of the same title, published in the anthology The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which Novik expanded into a full novel with multiple interwoven narrators. Despite frequently being shelved alongside Novik's earlier fairy-tale standalone Uprooted as "Novik's fairy-tale standalones," the two novels share no confirmed continuity, setting, or characters. Spinning Silver was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for Best Novel, and won the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature in 2019.
Fairy-tale retelling · For Adult
Core Canon: Reading Order (1 work) counts toward ranking
Spinning Silver (2018) core · 4.17 (158,776 ratings); Standalone. Expanded from the 2016 short story of the same title. No confirmed shared setting/characters with Uprooted.
Library / Expanded (1 work)
Spinning Silver (short story) (2016) ; Precursor short story published in the anthology The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales (ed. Parisien & Wolfe, Saga Press, 2016), later substantially expanded into the 2018 novel. Registered separately because it is a collected, independently citable/awardable text (own venue, own publication date) that predates the novel, distinct from the uncollected-shorts convention, which withholds registration until collection; this one is already collected.
Quick answers
- How many books are in Spinning Silver? Spinning Silver's Core Canon is 1 book, plus 1 more in the wider Library/Expanded material.
- Is Spinning Silver finished? Complete (2018).
- How much reading does Spinning Silver take? Low reading commitment (estimated from 1 Core Canon book · ~465 pages).
- How is Spinning Silver ranked? #137 in this site's official ranking, based on 158,776 reader ratings across 1 Core Canon book. See the full ranking for how this is calculated.
Why is it ranked #137?
Ranked #137 in the official ranking.
- Average reader rating of 4.17 across 1 core book.
- Backed by 159k reader ratings.
- Less than 0.01 behind #136, The Grishaverse (a finer tie-break level decides the order).
- Below the top-10 average of 4.45.
- A single standalone novel: ranked on that one book alone.
Why explore this universe?
Highly rated · 1 book · Complete · 159k ratings · Ranks #137 overall
Good choice if you want a quick, low-commitment fairy-tale retelling fantasy universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.
Reading order
A single Core Canon work: no sequencing question to resolve.
Awards (verified)
- Hugo Award (Best Novel), 2019: nominated: Spinning Silver
- Nebula Award (Best Novel), 2018: nominated: Spinning Silver
- Locus Award (Best Fantasy Novel), 2019: won: Spinning Silver; Locus reader-poll winner (1st place).
- Alex Award (YALSA), 2019: won: Spinning Silver
- Readers' Choice Awards (Fantasy), 2018: nominated: Spinning Silver; Reader-vote finalist round; did not win.
- Audie Award (Fantasy), 2019: won: Spinning Silver; Confirmed directly against audiopub.org's own 2019 Audie Awards results page (Fantasy category winner: Spinning Silver, narrated by Lisa Flanagan, Penguin Random House Audio).
Related universes
- Same author Temeraire: Both by Naomi Novik. Spinning Silver was flagged as a candidate at Temeraire's admission and confirmed a wholly separate standalone continuity.
- Same author Uprooted: Both by Naomi Novik. Often shelved together as her “fairy-tale standalones”, but confirmed to share no continuity, setting, or characters, an editorial/marketing pairing, not a textual one.
- Same author The Scholomance: Both by Naomi Novik. Confirmed no shared continuity between Spinning Silver and The Scholomance.
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Suggestions computed from what Spinning Silver and each of these worlds have in common on record (subgenre, audience, shape, reading commitment and score), not a documented narrative connection.
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- The Winternight Trilogy Fairy-tale retelling / Historical fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 4.23
Official resources
Research details
Ranking metrics: weighted average 4.17 across 158,776 ratings on 1 Core Canon book. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.
How do we know this?
Admission: Spinning Silver admitted as a single-work universe accepted 2026-08-05
Sources: (see source tier definitions)
- Wikipedia: Spinning Silver Tier 3
- https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/naomi-novik/spinning-silver/
Related universes: see the Related universes section above.
Last reviewed: 2026-08-06
Rule: Core = 1 novel (2018). Expanded = 1 short-fiction precursor (2016). Admitted as a single-work universe: the fourth use of the pattern. The 2016 short story is registered separately from the novel because it is already collected (in The Starlit Wood) and independently citable, which distinguishes it from the uncollected-shorts withholding rule applied elsewhere.