Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
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Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
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WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL • Naomi Novik, author of the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Temeraire novels, introduces a bold new world rooted in folk stories and legends, as elemental as a Grimm fairy tale.HUGO AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR | BuzzFeed | Tor.com | BookPage | Library Journal | Publishers Weekly“Uprooted is confidently wrought and sympathetically cast. I might even call it bewitching.”—Gregory Maguire, bestselling author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon “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.” Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood. The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her. But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.Praise for Uprooted“Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book I’ve Read Yet This Year. . . . Moving, heartbreaking, and thoroughly satisfying, Uprooted is the fantasy novel I feel I’ve been waiting a lifetime for. Clear your schedule before picking it up, because you won’t want to put it down.”—NPR “A very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic . . . Naomi Novik skillfully takes the fairy-tale-turned-bildungsroman structure of her premise . . . and builds enough flesh on those bones to make a very different animal. . . . The vivid characters around her also echo their fairy-tale forebears, but are grounded in real-world ambivalence that makes this book feel quietly mature, its world lived-in.”—The New York Times Book Review “Novik here delivers a tale that is funny and fast-paced, laced with hair-raising battle scenes and conspiracies; it also touches on deeper ecological concerns we grapple with today.”—The Washington Post “Novik takes us on a surprise-filled journey. . . . The resulting warmth and intimacy provide a nicely nurturing environment for her heroine’s unusual adventures.”—The Seattle Times “Breathtaking . . . [Novik] weaves a tale that is both elegantly grand and earthily humble, familiar as a Grimm fairy tale yet fresh, original, and totally irresistible. This will be a must-read for fantasy fans for years to come.”—Pubilshers Weekly (starred review) “An original and fully realized fantastical place guaranteed to enthrall her longtime fans and attract new readers.”—Library Journal (starred review)From the Hardcover edition.
Uprooted, by Naomi Novik- Amazon Sales Rank: #1588 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-05-19
- Released on: 2015-05-19
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review “Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book I’ve Read Yet This Year. . . . Moving, heartbreaking, and thoroughly satisfying, Uprooted is the fantasy novel I feel I’ve been waiting a lifetime for. Clear your schedule before picking it up, because you won’t want to put it down.”—NPR “A very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic . . . Naomi Novik skillfully takes the fairy-tale-turned-bildungsroman structure of her premise . . . and builds enough flesh on those bones to make a very different animal. . . . The vivid characters around her also echo their fairy-tale forebears, but are grounded in real-world ambivalence that makes this book feel quietly mature, its world lived-in.”—The New York Times Book Review “Novik here delivers a tale that is funny and fast-paced, laced with hair-raising battle scenes and conspiracies; it also touches on deeper ecological concerns we grapple with today.”—The Washington Post “Novik takes us on a surprise-filled journey. . . . The resulting warmth and intimacy provide a nicely nurturing environment for her heroine’s unusual adventures.”—The Seattle Times “Breathtaking . . . [Novik] weaves a tale that is both elegantly grand and earthily humble, familiar as a Grimm fairy tale yet fresh, original, and totally irresistible. This will be a must-read for fantasy fans for years to come.”—Pubilshers Weekly (starred review) “Drawing on her Polish heritage and fairy-tale tropes, [Novik] has penned an original and fully realized fantastical place guaranteed to enthrall her longtime fans and attract new readers. This exceptional fantasy for adult and teen readers should appeal to those who love fairy-tale influenced stories such as Robin McKinley’s Spindle’s End.”—Library Journal (starred review)“Every so often you come upon a story that seems like a lost tale of Grimm newly come to light. Uprooted is such a novel. Its narrative spell is confidently wrought and sympathetically cast. I might even call it bewitching.”—Gregory Maguire, bestselling author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon“The magic in Uprooted, with its realistic moral dimension, is so vividly believable that it almost seems you could work the spells. But the book will do that for you.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, award-winning and bestselling author of The Earthsea cycle “Uprooted has everything I love: a great heroine, new takes on old myths and legends, and surprising twists and turns. A delight.”—Cassandra Clare, New York Times bestselling author of The Mortal Instruments series “Magical and practical, otherworldly and planted in the real, I could not stop reading this book and neither will you!”—Tamora Pierce, New York Times bestselling author of Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen “Wild, thrilling, and deeply, darkly magical. An instant classic.”—Lev Grossman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians Trilogy “Uprooted is one of those tales you come back to over and over again because it’s just that enchanting. The adventure builds with such tension that you are peeking through your hands at the end, hoping it will all be okay, and Naomi Novik delivers a conclusion that’s deeply satisfying, earning a permanent space on my bookshelf that I’ll revisit often.”—Kevin Hearne, New York Times bestselling author of Shattered “Reading Uprooted was like rediscovering a favorite old sweater, familiar and beloved. It feels as if it has always existed and has been waiting patiently for me to return to it.”—Maggie Stiefvater, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Shiver Trilogy “I didn’t know how much I wanted to read a book like this until it was already in my hands. Uprooted has everything I love about Novik’s writing style, with the added bonus of some old-world magic and the flavor of a dark faerie story.”—Patrick Rothfuss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Kingkiller Chronicle series“Uprooted by Naomi Novik is enchanting, in every sense of that fine old word. A charming and inviting story that looks unflinchingly at the strangling roots of hurt and revenge.”—Robin Hobb, bestselling author of Fool’s Assassin “The roots of Uprooted are planted deep in fairy tale lore, but the story that Naomi Novik has coaxed forth is fresh and compelling. It reads like a previously undiscovered origin myth in the best possible way!”—Jacqueline Carey, New York Times bestselling author of the Kushiel’s Legacy series “I’ve been a diehard fan of Naomi Novik’s work since reading His Majesty’s Dragon, and her new fantasy, Uprooted, is an utter delight. Novik writes the kind of book that wins your heart and lights up all the pleasure of your brain.”—Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble “Novik has written a living heart-book, its mythology vital, deep, and true. I am in awe.”—Rachel Hartman, author of Seraphina “This is a beautiful book. The magic is true magic, and the human relationships—especially those between women—complex and believable.”—Ellen Kushner, author of Swordspoint “The most darkly compelling fantasy I’ve read in ages, Uprooted is overflowing with profound dread and real beauty, and boasts a heroine who blazes with spirit and originality. Not to be missed!”—Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind “Naomi Novik’s Uprooted is a marvelous fantasy reminiscent of Howl’s Moving Castle. Her setting, characters, and the magic they use are all brilliant. I devoured the book in one reading. Well done! I want more!”—Todd McCaffrey, New York Times bestselling author of Sky Dragons
About the Author Naomi Novik is the acclaimed author of His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory, Victory of Eagles, Tongues of Serpents, Crucible of Gold, and Blood of Tyrants, the first eight volumes of the Temeraire series. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award and has won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, as well as the Locus Award for Best New Writer and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. She is also the author of the graphic novel Will Supervillains Be on the Final? Fascinated with both history and legends, Novik is a first-generation American raised on Polish fairy tales and stories of Baba Yaga. Her own adventures include pillaging degrees in English literature and computer science from various ivory towers, designing computer games, and helping to build the Archive of Our Own for fanfiction and other fanworks. Novik is a co-founder of the Organization for Transformative Works. She lives in New York City with her husband, Charles Ardai, the founder of Hard Case Crime, and their daughter, Evidence, surrounded by an excessive number of purring computers.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1Our 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.He doesn’t devour them really; it only feels that way. He takes a girl to his tower, and ten years later he lets her go, but by then she’s someone different. Her clothes are too fine and she talks like a courtier and she’s been living alone with a man for ten years, so of course she’s ruined, even though the girls all say he never puts a hand on them. What else could they say? And that’s not the worst of it—after all, the Dragon gives them a purse full of silver for their dowry when he lets them go, so anyone would be happy to marry them, ruined or not.But they don’t want to marry anyone. They don’t want to stay at all.“They forget how to live here,” my father said to me once, unexpectedly. I was riding next to him on the seat of the big empty wagon, on our way home after delivering the week’s firewood. We lived in Dvernik, which wasn’t the biggest village in the valley or the smallest, or the one nearest the Wood: we were seven miles away. The road took us up over a big hill, though, and at the top on a clear day you could see along the river all the way to the pale grey strip of burned earth at the leading edge, and the solid dark wall of trees beyond. The Dragon’s tower was a long way in the other direction, a piece of white chalk stuck in the base of the western mountains.I was still very small—not more than five, I think. But I already knew that we didn’t talk about the Dragon, or the girls he took, so it stuck in my head when my father broke the rule.“They remember to be afraid,” my father said. That was all. Then he clucked to the horses and they pulled on, down the hill and back into the trees.It didn’t make much sense to me. We were all afraid of the Wood. But our valley was home. How could you leave your home? And yet the girls never came back to stay. The Dragon let them out of the tower, and they came back to their families for a little while—for a week, or sometimes a month, never much more. Then they took their dowry-silver and left. Mostly they would go to Kralia and go to the University. Often as not they married some city man, and otherwise they became scholars or shopkeepers, although some people did whisper about Jadwiga Bach, who’d been taken sixty years ago, that she became a courtesan and the mistress of a baron and a duke. But by the time I was born, she was just a rich old woman who sent splendid presents to all her grand-nieces and nephews, and never came for a visit.So that’s hardly like handing your daughter over to be eaten, but it’s not a happy thing, either. There aren’t so many villages in the valley that the chances are very low—he takes only a girl of seventeen, born between one October and the next. There were eleven girls to choose from in my year, and that’s worse odds than dice. Everyone says you love a Dragon-born girl differently as she gets older; you can’t help it, knowing you so easily might lose her. But it wasn’t like that for me, for my parents. By the time I was old enough to understand that I might be taken, we all knew he would take Kasia.Only travelers passing through, who didn’t know, ever complimented Kasia’s parents or told them how beautiful their daughter was, or how clever, or how nice. The Dragon didn’t always take the prettiest girl, but he always took the most special one, somehow: if there was one girl who was far and away the prettiest, or the most bright, or the best dancer, or especially kind, somehow he always picked her out, even though he scarcely exchanged a word with the girls before he made his choice.And Kasia was all those things. She had thick wheat-golden hair that she kept in a braid to her waist, and her eyes were warm brown, and her laugh was like a song that made you want to sing it. She thought of all the best games, and could make up stories and new dances out of her head; she could cook fit for a feast, and when she spun the wool from her father’s sheep, the thread came off the wheel smooth and even without a single knot or snarl.I know I’m making her sound like something out of a story. But it was the other way around. When my mother told me stories about the spinning princess or the brave goose-girl or the river-maiden, in my head I imagined them all a little like Kasia; that was how I thought of her. And I wasn’t old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.She didn’t mind it, she said. She was fearless, too: her mother Wensa saw to that. “She’ll have to be brave,” I remember hearing her say to my mother once, while she prodded Kasia to climb a tree she’d hung back from, and my mother hugging her, with tears.We lived only three houses from one another, and I didn’t have a sister of my own, only three brothers much older than me. Kasia was my dearest. We played together from our cradles, first in our mothers’ kitchens keeping out from underfoot and then in the streets before our houses, until we were old enough to go running wild in the woods. I never wanted to be anywhere inside when we could be running hand-in-hand beneath the branches. I imagined the trees bending their arms down to shelter us. I didn’t know how I would bear it, when the Dragon took her.My parents wouldn’t have feared for me, very much, even if there hadn’t been Kasia. At seventeen I was still a too-skinny colt of a girl with big feet and tangled dirt-brown hair, and my only gift, if you could call it that, was I would tear or stain or lose anything put on me between the hours of one day. My mother despaired of me by the time I was twelve and let me run around in castoffs from my older brothers, except for feast days, when I was obliged to change only twenty minutes before we left the house, and then sit on the bench before our door until we walked to church. It was still even odds whether I’d make it to the village green without catching on some branch, or spattering myself with mud.“You’ll have to marry a tailor, my little Agnieszka,” my father would say, laughing, when he came home from the forest at night and I went running to meet him, grubby-faced, with at least one hole about me, and no kerchief. He swung me up anyway and kissed me; my mother only sighed a little: what parent could really be sorry, to have a few faults in a Dragon-born girl?Our last summer before the taking was long and warm and full of tears. Kasia didn’t weep, but I did. We’d linger out late in the woods, stretching each golden day as long as it would go, and then I would come home hungry and tired and go straight to lie down in the dark. My mother would come in and stroke my head, singing softly while I cried myself to sleep, and leave a plate of food by my bed for when I woke up in the middle of the night with hunger. She didn’t try to comfort me otherwise: how could she? We both knew that no matter how much she loved Kasia, and Kasia’s mother Wensa, she couldn’t help but have a small glad knot in her belly—not my daughter, not my only one. And of course, I wouldn’t really have wanted her to feel any other way.It was just me and Kasia together, nearly all that summer. It had been that way for a long time. We’d run with the crowd of village children when we were young, but as we got older, and Kasia more beautiful, her mother had said to her, “It’s best if you don’t see much of the boys, for you and them.” But I clung to her, and my mother did love Kasia and Wensa enough not to try and pry me loose, even though she knew that it would hurt me more in the end.On the last day, I found us a clearing in the woods where the trees still had their leaves, golden and flame-red rustling all above us, with ripe chestnuts all over the ground. We made a little fire out of twigs and dry leaves to roast a handful. Tomorrow was the first of October, and the great feast would be held to show honor to our patron and lord. Tomorrow, the Dragon would come.“It would be nice to be a troubadour,” Kasia said, lying on her back with her eyes closed. She hummed a little: a traveling singer had come for the festival, and he’d been practicing his songs on the green that morning. The tribute wagons had been arriving all week. “To go all over Polnya, and sing for the king.”She said it thoughtfully, not like a child spinning clouds; she said it like someone really thinking about leaving the valley, going away forever. I put my hand out and gripped hers. “And you’d come home every Midwinter,” I said, “and sing us all the songs you’d learned.” We held on tight, and I didn’t let myself remember that the girls the Dragon took never wanted to come back.Of course at that moment I only hated him ferociously. But he wasn’t a bad lord. On the other side of the northern mountains, the Baron of the Yellow Marshes kept an army of five thousand men to take to Polnya’s wars, and a castle with four towers, and a wife who wore jewels the color of blood and a white fox-fur cloak, all on a domain no richer than our valley. The men had to give one day a week of work to the baron’s fields, which were the best land, and he’d take likely sons for his army, and with all the soldiers wandering around, girls had to stay indoors and in company once they got to be women. And even he wasn’t a bad lord.The Dragon only had his one tower, and not a single man-at-arms, or even a servant, besides the one girl he took. He didn’t have to keep an army: the service he owed the king was his own labor, his magic. He had to go to court sometimes, to renew his oath of loyalty, and I suppose the king could have called him to war, but for the most part his duty was to stay here and watch the Wood, and protect the kingdom from its malice.His only extravagance was books. We were well read by the standards of villagers, because he would pay gold for a single great tome, and so the book-peddlers came all this way, even though our valley was at the very edge of Polnya. And as long as they were coming, they filled up the saddlebags of their mules with whatever worn-out or cheaper stock of books they had and sold them to us for our pennies. It was a poor house in the valley that didn’t have at least two or three books proudly displayed upon the walls.These might all seem like small and petty things, little enough cause to give up a daughter, to anyone who didn’t live near enough the Wood to understand. But I had lived through the Green Summer, when a hot wind carried pollen from the Wood west a long way into the valley, into our fields and gardens. The crops grew furiously lush, but also strange and misshapen. Anyone who ate of them grew sick with anger, struck at their families, and in the end ran into the Wood and vanished, if they weren’t tied down.I was six years old at the time. My parents tried to shelter me as much as they could, but even so I remembered vividly the cold clammy sense of dread everywhere, everyone afraid, and the never-ending bite of hunger in my belly. We had eaten through all our last year’s stores by then, counting on the spring. One of our neighbors ate a few green beans, driven foolish by hunger. I remember the screams from his house that night, and peering out the window to see my father running to help, taking the pitchfork from where it leaned against our barn.One day that summer, too young to understand the danger properly, I escaped my tired, thin mother’s watch and ran into the forest. I found a half-dead bramble, in a nook sheltered from the wind. I pushed through the hard dead branches to the protected heart and dug out a miraculous handful of blackberries, not misshapen at all, whole and juicy and perfect. Every one was a burst of joy in my mouth. I ate two handfuls and filled my skirt; I hurried home with them soaking purple stains through my dress and my mother wept with horror when she saw my smeared face. I didn’t sicken: the bramble had somehow escaped the Wood’s curse, and the blackberries were good. But her tears frightened me badly; I shied from blackberries for years after.The Dragon had been called to court that year. He came back early and rode straight to the fields and called down magic fire to burn all that tainted harvest, every poisoned crop. That much was his duty, but afterwards he went to every house where anyone had sickened, and he gave them a taste of a magic cordial that cleared their minds. He gave orders that the villages farther west, which had escaped the blight, should share their harvest with us, and he even gave up his own tribute that year entirely so none of us would starve. The next spring, just before the planting season, he went through the fields again to burn out the few corrupted remnants before they could take fresh root.
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156 of 162 people found the following review helpful. Destined to be a Classic Must-Read Fantasy Novel By Benjamin Thomas Having been a fan of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series for many years, I have often wondered what she would do if she ever decided to write something else. After all, this is a woman who studied English Literature at Brown University, holds a degree in Computer Science from Columbia, and wasn’t afraid to show her geeky side as a game designer on Neverwinter Nights. That’s a pretty awesome combination in my book and when she chose to write the Temeraire series, a fantasy/historical mashup combining the concept of intelligent dragons working as a sort of Air Force with wartime forces in the Napoleonic era, well…I was hooked.So now comes this new novel and my bottom line verdict is that it is fantastic. It’s straight fantasy but absolutely reminds one of that nostalgic feeling of fairy tales you read (or were read to you) from childhood. After reading the opening two chapters I thought I was on my way into just such a fairy tale, but it wasn’t long before any ideas I had about predicting where this was going were thrown out of the proverbial window. The plot begins as a twist in the age-old concept of a young maiden being picked every ten years by the village elders to sacrifice to the dragon in order to buy its protection. The twist is that this time it’s not an actual dragon but a renowned wizard who requires the sacrifice. And he doesn’t select the pretty young maiden that everybody was planning on but instead chooses Agneieszka, our protagonist, and it is though her eyes that we see the story unfold.OK…interesting twist but I still thought I knew where the plot was going. I was wrong.No spoilers from me but suffice it to say that this novel kept me turning the pages way past my bedtime. Ms. Novik is a masterful storyteller and knows how to pace a book to keep the reader hooked all the way through. Her use of language is perfect for this type of tale, combining the lighter fairy tale elements but also taking a deep dive into battle scenes with a hard grittiness that, frankly, surprised me. And the world building…this is how it should be done. It’s obviously fully developed but we aren’t bombarded with extraneous details that we don’t need. We can understand everything and how all the characters fit together but don’t spend much time with info dumps.I understand this book is being marketed as YA although I confess to not really understanding the distinction anymore. The only thing remotely YA about this is the fact that Agneieszka is seventeen years old at the beginning of the story. Rest assured there is no “dumbing down” of the plot, the rich characterization, or the language/word choice. True, there is no swearing to speak of but there is violence aplenty. Lots of fighting action and violent deaths, plenty of creative use of well-imagined magic, and a tasteful but on-stage sex scene all combine to make this one a keeper. And the plot about the woods…the intelligent life force of the dark woods and how it consumes people…oh yeah…no spoilers. You’ll have to read that yourself.This book is complete in and of itself. I could see how there may be a sequel or two (or seven) but there may never be more.Well done Ms. Novik. Highly recommended!
90 of 105 people found the following review helpful. A cozy, rather predictable, fun, fast YA read By A. J Terry Uprooted is a comfortable, homey YA fantasy, reminiscent of Patricia McKillip’s work. It’s predictable, but pleasantly so. The narrator/heroine Agnieszka lives in a vaguely Russian village at the edge of a sinister wood. Every ten years, the local sorcerer/lord known as the Dragon chooses a village girl to live in his tower. When their term is up, the girls come home educated and refined, with purses full of silver for their dowries. They briefly visit their parents, then move to larger cities that have better opportunities. The chosen girl is always a local belle. While Agnieszka was growing up, everyone expected her best friend Kasia to be the Dragon’s next choice. Kasia is the most beautiful girl, and the most skilled in all the domestic arts (her parents made sure she was trained to serve a nobleman). No one expects the Dragon to choose Agnieszka, who is perpetually muddy and untidy, and whose only skill seems to be finding the unexpected, whether fruit out of season or more often, trouble.Of course, the Dragon’s choosing spell lands on Agnieszka. Once in the tower, Agnieszka discovers that the returning servants told the truth when they claimed the Dragon didn’t molest them. However, Agnieszka’s inability to cook, clean, or even dress neatly, coupled with her plain face and low social status, leads the fastidious Dragon to utter an endless stream of sarcastic comments typical of a certain kind of romance hero. Agnieszka also finds it very hard to learn even the simplest spells. (Interestingly, she’s already literate.) But Agnieszka does have magical ability. Lots of it. It’s just a *feminine* magical ability: Organic, intuitive, inconsistent, largely nonverbal, nurturing, and cooperative. The only manual she’s in tune with is a neglected handwritten journal by the long-dead witch Baba Yaga. Whereas the Dragon’s magic is masculine: Logical, scientific, explicable, and tidy. It takes the Dragon awhile to understand and work with Agnieszka’s ability, but he does.Agnieszka’s talent for getting into trouble is also in full force. By trouble, I mean politics, treachery, assassination, and war, which quickly lead Agnieszka back into the wider world, including the court, its royalty, and its experienced wizards. Here the 17-year-old Agnieszka is fully the awkward adolescent—insecure, socially inept, emotionally driven, and constantly bumbling around major political issues. However, her intense loyalty to her home village and to her friend Kasia, and her instinct for somehow figuring out the right thing to do, remain in force.Through all the book’s action. And there is lots of action. Uprooted is one of those books where the characters seldom eat or sleep but somehow, remain strong enough not to only keep their wits about them but to constantly work strong magic. Or for the lesser characters, just to kill people with swords and arrows. This book keeps you reading fast enough to ignore not only a certain amount of predictability in the plot, but a certain amount of shallowness in the characters. The author throws in a couple of female warriors but other than them (maybe even including them), we’ve met most of the characters before in other books by other authors.If you’re looking for a fun, fast, light, fantasy read, check out Uprooted.
209 of 257 people found the following review helpful. A Lost Chance By Alydia Rackham I picked this up on a lark because I was snatched by the premise. I could tell right away that the main relationship, the critical point of interest, was going to be between the Dragon and the protagonist. At least, that's what I'd hoped for. Stories about two very different people who are forced to live and work together and then gradually come to understanding and affection as a result are my very favorites to read and write. First, I want to explain that I found the actual writing, the turn of phrase in this book, to be FANTASTIC. Beautiful, detailed, living imagery; such creative and tactile uses for magic. The author makes a real world, with real history, and the Woods are absolutely chilling--a breathing, moving villain in the story, though faceless. One becomes very afraid of this Wood as one reads, feeling its darkness creep up in the shadows all around. That writing is what kept me reading for the majority of the book, nonstop, even past one red flag, and a plot detour I didn't really feel like taking. (Spoilers ahead) I must confess, as I was reading the first few chapters, a strange feeling came over me--one that I expressed to a friend of mine who is an avid reader of fanfiction. It almost seemed, at first, that this was a story that had been converted from a fanfiction about Marvel's Loki. The Dragon just seemed so very like him in some respects. However, he didn't develop. I kept waiting for him to do so--because he starts out as frightening and a little abusive, but then loses all his fangs and claws almost right away in two shows of startlement and clumsiness. Beyond that point, he's just insulting, but none of his insults carried any sting for me, though they manage to frustrate the protagonist. Then, as he begins teaching the protagonist--since she shows talent for magic--he's always crabby and irritated, and opens up very little, if at all. We don't learn his actual name until halfway through the book, when someone else speaks it. He never tells Agnieszka, the protagonist, and there's not a good reason for that. How does she address him when he wants to get his attention? Does she call him "'Dragon"? She might, but it's never said. I feel this is a good moment--his revealing his name to her--that was lost. Then, their magics click together at one point, during an experiment, and they fall to wild kissing and fondling. This confused me greatly, because I could see that some faint sparks were gleaming between them before this--enough to warrant a sudden, passionate kiss before he pulls back and asks "What am I doing?"...but they almost go all the way before he comes to his senses, and she never does. This seemed like an overload. They weren't there yet. I didn't even know this Dragon, beyond that he was constantly in a sour mood, but not evil or totally heartless. I wanted them to talk about that incident afterward. I wanted to see a little more vulnerability from him. I wanted them to get to know each other truthfully--not just intimately know the workings of each other's magic. But my hopes were not rewarded. Instead, I got yanked on an arduous journey to the capital, without the Dragon. Yes, it was interesting, though very violent, but I didn't really want to be there. I wanted to go back to the tower, to the Dragon, and fight this battle alongside him whilst getting to know him better. Nieszka's relationship with her best friend Kasia figures centrally, pretty much replacing the relationship between Nieszka and the Dragon in importance, but though Kasia is brave throughout, and becomes superhuman, I failed to find her interesting. In fact, she's close to being a completely flawless person, and without quirks. And the author summarizes most of the girls' conversations, saying things like "We held each other's hands and wept about..." So I didn't get to know her, either, other than that she was brave and good. Throughout my stay at the capital, I began to grow worried that we weren't actually going to get back to the Dragon until the very end, and instead I was going to be pulled to the front lines somewhere with a hotheaded prince. I breathed a sigh of relief when this didn't happen, and we FINALLY got to go back to the tower for some much-needed character development. I mean, Nieszka had developed fine--she was interesting and flawed and strong and smart. But her counterpart had been neglected. I cheered when they all got pulled into that tower again, and the Dragon was there. My excitement didn't last very long. Instead of talking, REALLY talking, the two of them fell back to their...it isn't even banter. It was her asking questions, and him being slightly insulting and closed off. They came together once to make a spell, but I'd seen that done before. And then, out of nowhere one night, she suddenly can't handle her fears. Instead of completely collapsing (which she should have done, since the healer had warned her not to use magic or she'd die, but she kept on doing it--so I became confused about the magic rules) she spirals into a panic about what's about to happen concerning this evil Wood. She gets up and she goes to find the Dragon and I was very interested, hoping and HOPING that they'd finally have a real conversation. That at last, they'd actually become real friends, show some affection and understanding. Nope. They just have sex. I read all the way through that part (which explains things pretty graphically, so parents, be aware), with a frown on my face. What was this? Do these people even know each other? If they do, it's been summarized away and I missed it. Sure, they have had some special moments making magic together. But so what? He didn't even tell her his NAME of his own volition. He's shared one personal story with her, and that's it. And she doesn't seem herself when she's getting all frenzied like that. Her character slips away. In short, I was disappointed. I put the book down, all of the tension falling loose like a cut tether. I didn't care. The author wasn't going to give me what I wanted: a slow-burn, interesting, complicated relationship unfolding one piece at a time, until these two so-very-different souls knew each other so well that they couldn't live without each other. Instead, I'd been dragged out of the tower, forced to focus on other relationships that weren't as interesting, then yanked back and thrown into a bed. I hadn't wanted to be in any of those places. Yes, the writing is poetic.The villainous Wood and all its evil workings and creatures is the best creation in the book. Her magic systems are also very fun. But the chance for a REALLY interesting relationship dynamic, not just an excuse to jump in the sack, was lost. And I wish it hadn't been.
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