The best books to bring folk, magic, and fantasy off the page and into the real world

Uprooted has it all: the cultural Easter eggs, the adventure and fantasy, and of course, the touch of enemies-to-lovers romance that, to me, completes any story set in its own world. The main character was a gem, as was her counterpart, the Dragon. Both of them were spunky in their own way, grating against each other as they held their ground in a relationship neither of them expected to develop the way it did. 

I also tend to learn quite a bit from my fantasy books as much as my academic books when it comes to my own magic, and this here was a fantastic example of ceremonial magicians vs. witches. Whereas the Dragon spend a lot of time holed up over grimoires and texts by their predecessors, those who take a more personal and fluid approach to magic, like Agnieszka, are making magic with whatever’s available, to serve their own ends.

Like Naomi Novik, Katherine Arden is a master at weaving folklore and fantasy together, this time with a touch of history, too. The touch of Russian folklore woven throughout a coming-of-age story is gripping, each character grappling with their own social, cultural, and political struggles alongside a dangerous world of magic.

And, again, for all its fantasy and fiction, this whole series gave me some insight on how to understand the power of magic and faith itself in the world we live in right now—the modern world full of stresses and struggles and seemingly inexplicable situations. As a Christian witch myself, the mix of old and new faith, and the power of them both represented together here, was something that made me really think more about how “real life” magic works with strong faith as its backbone.

Gaiman’s fairytale-like writing gives it a nostalgic feel I didn’t even know I was looking for, and the idea that stars aren’t just big balls of hot gas, but people? That lines up with the idea that every star is an attendant angel, for me—or older ideas of religions past, that the stars themselves were the “visible gods” of our world, watching over us from the cosmos.

All fiction comes from something someone said before, and it’s one of the things I love most about fantasy. Stardust is one of those books that really just gives you the old-school whimsy and magic and romance that, when you’re trying so hard to think of something never-been-done-before, reminds you that there’s a reason stories like these are called classic.

I am Slovene-American, my mother being off the boat. This book told me what I’d wanted to know: how my people engaged with the world around them, not just physically, but metaphysically. Anyone interested in understanding the way folk belief mixed with medicine, and why people would resort to beliefs we would view strange in modern day, could learn quite a bit from this book about the rural folk of Slovenia and their medicine.

It’s also a key resource for one fantasy book I still have in the works, which is reminiscent of Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, and it is a wonderful anthropological resource that shows, very plainly, how magic is alive in this world as much as it is in the fictional ones we love so much.

Like Mlakar’s book, this book reveals old folk traditions, but in a more explicitly stated and conversational way. For anyone with Italian ancestry who wants to look at the ways that old folk religion hides, adapts, and stays alive under the dominant religion of the area, this is an incredible read—and whether you’re a writer or a witch or both, you’ll find a lot of inspiration from it.

Say what you will about whether or not magic is real: this book reminds us that we’re not all so different from our fantasies—that our imaginations are as real as anything else, and that the world around us brims with power, even if it’s just the power to shift our mindset to look at our situation a different way.