Uprooted in The Sword and Laser

Apr 06, 2017 Eric rated it it was ok

Shelves: book-club, fantasy, unfinished

While this book had potential -- and my attention -- in the first third, it went off the rails shortly afterward, and I couldn't be bothered to finish it. Once the initial mystery was lost and the protagonists left the tower on their adventure, the story completely lost my interest. Also, the romance between the Dragon and Agnieszka, whom he had abducted, was icky. ...more

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Dec 08, 2015 John Wiswell rated it it was amazing

About as charming as Fantasy gets. Agnieszka is a precocious youth who's about to be sacrificed to the local dragon. Hers is a story that delights at upturning conventions from its opening paragraph:

“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

About as charming as Fantasy gets. Agnieszka is a precocious youth who's about to be sacrificed to the local dragon. Hers is a story that delights at upturning conventions from its opening paragraph:

“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.”

We soon realize the Dragon won't devour or ravish Agnieszka, but wants to train her. Those girls who are sacrificed are educated in how to keep places like her local haunted woodland safe, in a cuter version of Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher series. So rather than fear for her life, Agnieszka's greatest problems are what a prick the Dragon is about lessons, and the enormous downtime between bouts of working with him.

She has ample time to use his stores to learn to cook impossible food (if the food is terrible, she'll eat it; if it's good, she'll give it to him in hopes of winning a favor), and prying into libraries of books that can steal your soul if you read them wrong. She's a literal mess of a protagonist, slow to learn, unable to walk through the woods without tearing up her clothing no matter how careful she is. She seldom self-shames, rather being used to a hard-knock life and adjusting quickly. That's why she's able to handle possessed zombies so well. They're terrifying, but she's practical... and armed.

The novel is at its best when it upturns simple expectations. Agnieszka thinks she's replaced her best friend as the sacrifice, and when she's taken away, we figure that's it for ever seeing her family again, perhaps until a teary reunion at the end. But no! Her best friend is one of the first victims of a nasty possession that strikes the local area, and returns to the plot as Agnieszka tries to leverage both her lessons and her position to save her. It benefits the drama greatly because this is someone Agnieszka profoundly cares for, and because Novik is willing to get dark enough that she might actually lose this person. And it's not like she's living that far away. It's just so conventional to most books that she wouldn't see her again, but it's a convention Novik rightly shoulder-blocks aside.

Then there are the wildly inventive bits, mixing creative magic with uncomfortable things Fantasy about young people usually avoids. In that way, Uprooted is a prototype of what New Adult should be: adventurous and full of heart, but shielding its audience less, less naive about the awfulness of violence, or the presence of sexuality.

Agnieszka is attracted to the brave prince, until he tries to force himself on her. He doesn't ask for a 'yes,' and she doesn't know how to say 'no.' Her conflict is that, if he'd asked, she would have gone to bed with him. She liked him, found him attractive, and wealthy. She's conflicted - it's the kind of thing that YA Fantasy has particularly run away from, and even To Kill a Mockingbird decided to skirt around. But this stuff happens to too many young and new adults for it to be right to ban it.

Then Agnieszka uses a spell to summon infinite skirts, so the prince can't actually get at her underwear no matter how many layers he goes through. What happens next is alternately justice, troubling, and hilarious. It's a minor spoiler, not ruining the book, but revealing one of the book's early highlights. Click if you like.

(view spoiler)

Unusual resolution, right? That's an early example, before the evil woods begins to stretch its tendrils out toward the heart of the kingdom. Before the foreigners mount an army to invade. Before the Dragon, so lonely for human contact he can trust, reaches out to Agnieszka for a relationship she didn't know she wanted. The resolution to each problem is dirtier and at least a little more creative than they usually are.

I'm not at all surprised Novik's novel took off. I couldn't have asked for a more refreshing final book to read in 2015. ...more

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Jul 13, 2015 Megan rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, fantasy-supernatural

This was probably a 5 star book, until the second half where it started to lose me a bit. Overall I adored this book and highly recommend it to all my fantasy loving reader friends. While the basic premise isn't something I haven't seen before (ordinary person because powerful wizard), there were so many likable elements added to this that some of the old tropes felt fresh instead of tired. Agnieszka's relationship with the Dragon (a powerful but vain Wizard) reminded me of Howl's Moving Castle. ...more

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Apr 24, 2016 Caitlin rated it it was amazing

This book was a delightful surprise. I'm not sure why I was expecting a quick, light read, but it was one of the best fantasy novels I've read in a while. The characters are complex and compelling, the tension keeps ratcheting up, and she often zigs where I expect her to zag. It also passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, and all relationships are well-developed. The Wood is creepy and threatening in a way it hasn't been since I was a child reading Hansel and Gretel -- Novik does a great jo ...more

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Aug 30, 2015 Kelsy rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy

I sped through this one and really enjoyed it for the most part. There was a section towards the middle where I started skimming (view spoiler) which made it a less than 5 star book for me, but I'll probably read it again the future. ...more

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