Uprooted, by Naomi Novik | Book Review #285

This review may contain spoilers.

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.

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Uprooted is a very entertaining novel. I enjoyed reading Uprooted the first time I read it in 2016, and this year again, in 2017. Uprooted was my first read of Naomi Novik’s work. I’m looking forward to reading her other works whenever I find the time to do so!

The start to Uprooted was incredibly interesting to me. Yet the beginning was a tad difficult to actually start to get into. However, once I got used to the story I found that the plot may move slowly in general, a lot will actually happen per scene.

The best way for me to explain this is that in the books I’m used to reading, what happens within a hundred (100) pages of one book, seemed to only happen within 50 pages of Uprooted. And of course, there are jumps in time in the plot as well, so we don’t get an everyday telling of what happens. We learn what the character does, and then we find ourselves a few weeks deeper into Agnieszka’s life.

Uprooted was quite the compelling read, truth be told. To be quite clear with you, once I finished reading Uprooted, I was very glad that I’d finished the book. This story is like a fairytale all unto its own.

I love Novik’s writing in Uprooted. As I’ve said before, I haven’t read anything else of Novik’s works, but I do enjoy Uprooted.

I still wasn’t able to take very good notes of my re-read. But I do know that I had forgotten a lot of what actually happened in this book, so I’m very glad that I took the time to re-read Uprooted this month. I even tabbed quite a few pages on my re-read of the book! So now I can go back and read some of my favourite scenes all over again.

There are two sex scenes (that I remember) in Uprooted (for those of us who don’t like sex scenes).

If I had to pick one thing to love about Uprooted the most, I’d honestly say that my favourite thing about the novel is the last 45-ish pages. Not because the book is ending, but because the story seems to clear and open to so many more possibilities than what the book had begun with. The ending to Uprooted is an incredibly bright one.

I gave Uprooted 4 of 5 stars on GoodReads the first time I read it, and I’m keeping it that way this second time around.

Have you read Uprooted?
What did you think of it?

Happy Reading!
Adele