Book Review: Uprooted by Naomi Novik.

By: abby on 9:59 AM

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I had been craving a new fantasy read -- something standalone (not a series) that had some teeth (or fangs) and an interesting premise -- when I glimpsed Uprooted by Naomi Novik and, drawn in by the description on the back of the book, brought it home with me.

Here, I found a fantasy novel that, while not offering anything particularly ground-breaking, had well-developed characters, a likable narrator, strong female friendships (as well as some strong females in general, the men mostly didn’t know what to do with them) and an original take on traditional lore. Admittedly, much of fantasy involves a series of tropes that make the genre comforting in a way, albeit occasionally repetitive, but Novik inverts many of these standard tropes in her storytelling. Yes, there are dragons, witches, sorcerers, magic and a complicated royal court, but not always in the way one might expect.

Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.

I have a soft spot for fantasy with deep roots in folklore / fairy tales and Novik does an admirable job mining Eastern European folklore for her novel. Agnieszka, the daughter of a woodcutter, lives in a valley near the Wood, where nothing much ever seems to happen -- except for the nightmare creatures that come out of the Wood to carry people away and drive them mad. They allow the Dragon, a powerful sorcerer, to protect them, in exchange for “sacrificing” a girl to him every ten years. But, those women return, clad in beautiful dresses, and leave for better lives outside the Valley. They emerge unscathed, but do not return home.

Agnieszka worries for her best friend, Kasia, the most beautiful girl in the village. Since birth, everyone assumed the graceful Kasia would be chosen as sacrifice. And everyone, including Agnieszka, is shocked when she is the one who must go to the tower instead.

The Dragon didn’t always take the prettiest girl, but he always took the most special one, somehow.

Unsurprisingly, Agnieszka is gifted with a hidden magic -- which is what the Dragon is actually hunting for. However, in a fairly low-magic world, her skill is precious -- and Agnieszka must navigate learning how to use her newfound skills and trying to understand the dark rage hidden within the Wood as it inches ever closer.

Agnieszka, who describes herself as ordinary and clumsy, begins to tear down the Dragon’s expectations (and tug at his heartstrings -- again, unsurprisingly) as she gravitates more toward a type of natural magic he doesn’t understand or can’t quantify, eventually discovering her own way to becoming a powerful witch -- a discovery with its own implications.

There is also quite a lot of darkness in Uprooted -- horrible monsters, brutal murders, and battles that leave evil triumphing over good more than a few times. The wizards and witches stand apart and are more chaotic neutral than lawful good -- their emotions stunted, their reactions calculated. In the end, Agnieszka’s love interest isn’t Prince Charming, but a cranky sorcerer, she ends up in a cottage, rather than a castle, and she tends to do a fairly impressive job of saving herself.

Rating: 4.5/5
Recommended for: fans of well-crafted stories, folklore / fairy tales, strong female characters