Book Review: "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik · 12:18pm Mar 18th, 2019
The Dragon’s just a wizard, not an actual dragon, but he might as well be one. Once every ten years, he comes down from his tower and takes one of the teenage girls from the village of Dvernik away. When the girls, now women, finally leave his tower with dowries after those ten years, they always claim he doesn’t do anything to them, but they never stay in the valley. The Dragon protects Dvernik from the Wood, and does it well, but he’s always something other, and he still takes the girls. He always chooses pretty girls, talented girls. Narrator Agnieszka knows, along with the rest of Dvernik, that he’s going to choose Kasia, her best friend and the prettiest girl in the village. Kasia’s parents have been preparing for when she’ll inevitably leave them, while she’s ready to face her fate. But when the Dragon finally comes that year, he takes Agnieszka instead.
Uprooted is a fantasy novel by Naomi Novik, and one I highly recommend. It’s rather hard to summarize accurately. It’s high fantasy on an incredibly personal level, it’s a wide-reaching fairy tale, it’s about growing up and letting go, it’s about accepting who you are, it’s… It’s good, is what I’m saying.
The plot is structured in a way I wish my stories could be like. It’s hard to tell where it’ll go next, since there’s rarely any singular “goal”, yet where it goes is always perfectly logical. It’s like watching dominos fall where a domino only appears after it gets hit by the previous one. And since watching the plot unfold is one of the best parts of the story, I don’t really want to say much about it, except that the Dragon is teaching those girls (and Agnieszka) magic, as ordered by the king. And, no, this isn’t a Beauty and the Beast type story about a poor, imprisoned girl and her abusive captor, as the above plot summary describes (that’s all in only the first chapter, by the way). Once Agnieszka gets her feet under her, she’s able to make the most of her situation, and it’s more about her and the Dragon against the Wood and its machinations. It’s also satisfyingly dense in plot; every single chapter has at least one plot point, so it manages to fit into one book what another author might’ve dragged out across a trilogy without feeling rushed.
The style in this book is amazing and fits perfectly with it. It’s the half-summary, half-description of fairy tales that plays freely with time and what needs to be known (not surprising, considering Polish fairy tales are one of the main sources of inspiration). It’s big on metaphor and imagery, pulling up descriptions that are amazing without being self-indulgent, and it makes magic feel magical, not just like a different branch of physics under a different name or vague descriptions of “drawing in energy” combined with flash. At one point, a spell is described as “like hearing again a half-remembered favorite tale from childhood and finding it unsatisfying, or at least not as I’d remembered it”. In fact, the difference between rigid arcanics and intuitive magic is a running subplot throughout the whole book. But at the same time, the fairy tale style isn’t overbearing and is gone when it needs to be gone. It ebbs and flows, ramping up and coming down whenever it needs to do either.
The characters are all solid and go through a decent amount of growth. Agnieszka goes from a confused, scared young woman to confident and self-assured. The Dragon starts out eminently punchable (think a teacher that can’t stand you and only teaches you because they absolutely must) but graduates more into a grumpy-but-secretly-impressed mentor as the story continues. And then there’s Kasia, and Prince Marek, and more than I can recount here, all with a personality and important relationship with at least one other character, the friendship between Agnieszka and Kasia the most important. The best part is that they’ve all got their own motives, so the story is almost completely character-driven (part of the reason it unfolds like it does). Some of them I’d like to see more of, like arcane smith Alosha, but the book at least avoids getting bogged down by showing off all its characters (which is more than I can say for some stories).
And then there’s the Wood, which… hoo boy. Picture the danger of the Everfree in the early seasons, throw off that TV-Y rating, mix it with the intelligent malice and viral qualities of the Flood from Halo, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what it’s like. The Wood is one of the most singularly messed up antagonists I’ve ever read. It’s basically a magical forest that’s hostile to human life; anyone who goes in either doesn’t come out or, when they do come, is corrupted by it and has the singular goal of spreading it. This corruption can spread through plants, the twisted animals that live in the Wood, even the water. No spoilers, but if you take water from the Wood, use that water to make ink, and use that ink to write a book, simply reading that book is dangerous. And unfortunately, that description doesn’t do it justice; it’s one of those things where the execution is far better than any summary of it. Even in chapters that take place miles and miles from it, simply the mention of it instantly suffuses the atmosphere with dread.
If I had to give a criticism, it’s that the worldbuilding can feel a little flat. We don’t hear much about the world outside Agnieszka’s village or the capital. There are mentions of other cities and countries here and there, but rarely anything concrete. It feels like the world is ultra-focused on Agnieszka. But, since this book is in first-person and Agnieszka has lived in Dvernik all her life, it’s not that surprising that she doesn’t know that much outside what she’s seen. And I guess I’d rather take a bit too little worldbuilding in a sleek story rather than ALL THE WORLDBUILDING in a bloated story.
I’ll admit I only read Uprooted because I liked one of Novik’s other series. Now I’m wishing I’d picked it up sooner. It’s a story that was just a joy to read and left me satisfied like few other books have. Read it. You won’t regret it.
I remember checking this out of the library. I read It in one sitting and loved it
I should probably give this novel another shot. I only ever hear good things about it, but when I tried picking it up two years ago I put it back down in the middle of chapter one. It's sitting in front of me now, and after reading through it again I think I just wasn't in the mood for the story I expected it to tell. The introduction read very much like a typical young adult narrative. A girl in the grip of adolescence is “abducted” by a dark and brooding older man who, in time, unfurls himself at the hands of the protagonist. I’ve definitely read that before, and while such novels are in my wheelhouse, I felt like consuming something not so predictable (on the surface). Apparently, I passed on the wrong novel.
On a (sorta) unrelated note, I really enjoyed Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels—up to a point. After binging four or five books in a row, which I probably shouldn’t have done, I had the distinct impression that nothing was happening. Every novel started to feel formulaic, and while the formula wasn’t bad the background arc, dragon freedom, kept going nowhere. They would fly to a new location, solve a problem, the awesome dragon companion would mention dragon freedom at some point, the less awesome (but still awesome) human protagonist would be conciliatory and agree, and then they would do the same thing in the next one. It may have been burnout getting to me, and the issue was probably tackled eventually, but my patience had run thin and I dropped the series. I am uncertain if I will go back, either. There’s so many good novels to read it’s hard to make choices like that.
I gather you’ve read Temeraire, Rambling, as it is her only other series. What do you make of it?
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I can see where you'd get the idea, but that's never really the focus. The Dragon does unfurl, but it's more a side note in character development than the central plot. In fact, more emphasis is placed on Agnieszka's friendship with Kasia than her relationship with the Dragon. Most of the plot is about dealing with the menace the Wood casts over the land.
Yeah, the Temeraire series was where I first heard of Novik. While I enjoyed it all the way to the end, I can definitely see where you're coming from. The whole "freedom" arc is rather wheel-spinningly slow-paced in the beginning (a pet peeve of mine) and I was reading the stories more for the war itself. You mention you read "four or five" books. Did you get to Victory of Eagles? That's the fifth book; the POV starts shifting between the dragon and the human, and Napoleon lands on British soil in the beginning. There's no extensive travel except within England itself, the whole concept of dragon freedom is the driving force of one of the plotlines, and things start happening a lot. But don't force yourself to read it; "I can only read so many books and I don't want to read this one" is a feeling I know well. (I almost put down the first Honor Harrington book because HOLY CROW the first three or four chapters are nothing but wall-of-text info dumps.)
Well dang. Provided there's an ebook version, you just made me spend money.