From the Bookshelf of Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy…

Uprooted

Naomi Novik

Start date: December 21, 2017

Finish date: January 14, 2017

Discussion: Book Discussions

Discussion leader: Andrea

Why we're reading this: Group Contemporary novel discussion December 2017
Nebula Award for Best Novel 2015.
Hugo Award nominee for …more
[close] Group Contemporary novel discussion December 2017
Nebula Award for Best Novel 2015.
Hugo Award nominee for Best novel of 2015.

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What Members Thought

Mar 23, 2017 Brenda Clough rated it it was amazing

Yes! Excellent! Thank heaven, a novel you can pick up and just fall into, like stepping into a well. A confident and sure narrative style, so that I can feel the author knows what she's doing. Definitely fantasy, of the fairy-tale style (a good deal of Beauty & the Beast in here, with lashings of Sleeping Beauty), nicely renovated into something new. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Mar 27, 2016 Trice rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: europa, library, scifi-fantasy, ebook-kindle, sff-bkclub, 2016

Ended too soon

4 likes · Like · see review

Sep 06, 2015 S H A R O N rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, fiction, vaginal-fantasy-bookclub, ebook, 2015

I found this to be a very solid fairy tale that was easy to read and had some depth to it. I must confess though....it seemed Agnieszka was a bit too much of a Mary Sue. She was awfully accepting of the fact that she was a witch/wizard and could all of a sudden do all of these spells. Sure there was about 10 pages (approximately) of a "learning curve"...but then, suddenly, she could do EVERYTHING.

Once that happened I got a little fed up with it. Not enough to put it down or to rate it poorly, b ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 23, 2017 Sean DeLauder rated it really liked it

Shelves: harry-sf-book-club

Enjoyed the Polish elements of the story, hinted at by the names and the enchantments.

It creates an interesting dynamic. If Rosya is Polish for Russia, the wood could be an unsubtle allegory for the Cold War creep of Soviet Russia into Eastern Europe. That the two countries are girding for war gives weight to the clear reference to their literal counterparts.

Did not appreciate the main character initially. Her surprise and upset at being chosen was understandable, but her resistance to magic and Enjoyed the Polish elements of the story, hinted at by the names and the enchantments.

It creates an interesting dynamic. If Rosya is Polish for Russia, the wood could be an unsubtle allegory for the Cold War creep of Soviet Russia into Eastern Europe. That the two countries are girding for war gives weight to the clear reference to their literal counterparts.

Did not appreciate the main character initially. Her surprise and upset at being chosen was understandable, but her resistance to magic and her utter absence of curiosity and wonder made her a very frustrating character to like. There’s something to be said about appreciating a hardscrabble life, but something off-puttng about shoving aside an opportunity to utilize your skills and make things easier for yourself and for others (view spoiler). Amongst all her traits, it is her selflessness that made her a redemptive character. Eventually, the main character's disinterest became mine.

What helped me recover was the continually threshing plot. There isn't much respite from events, though some are less compelling than others. The tangential exploration of aristocratic life, which was frowned upon as pointless and hostile, was dull despite being an agreeable perspective. The struggles against the Wood are easily the most compelling parts of the story--moreso than dealing with the dragon, or learning magic, or Agnieshka's particular understanding of magic.

That said, her natural ability as a magic user versus a traditional, book-learned user was interesting, and somehow more effective than someone who knew what they were doing. The latter bit never felt right to me, as though it was a convenient function of magic to work just how Agnieska needed it to at that moment, though who am I to claim how an imaginary and impossible system of rules is supposed to work or whether magic, as its unnatural nature suggests, should have any rules at all? But it should, otherwise anything is possible, there are no limitations, and therefore there's no tension or anxiety because there's always an available, if not easy, magical solution. It came to the point that I started to believe one could be a perfectly amazing magic user through the creative use of three spells or so.

I complain, because this seemed preposterous to me, but I nevertheless liked the story. I liked the manipulation of a few spells for broad use. I liked the idea of feeling one's way through magic.

I appreciated the different applications of magic and how Novik expressed it in subtle, different, and unsubtle ways--some magic is easy and the work of moments; other magic is hard, takes effort, and sometimes years; infusing objects with magic was fascinating; slurring spells having an effect on the result was an interesting twist, meaning perfect enunciation was not required to perform some form of magic, though perhaps not the desired result, though a clever magician could alter just enough to make it an art, not unlike bending a note on a guitar and adding some vibrato.

The relationship between the Dragon and Agnieszka seemed to me a foregone conclusion. Bringing two main characters together for a prolonged period was destined to create a relationship of some kind. Despite this, the ending was smart and touching, and the obnoxiously distant Dragon finally seemed human, which was a relief. To that point his saving grace was that his peers were even more smug, impatient, and disdainful--apparently traits, by degrees, amongst all wizards.

Much of their relationship was love/hate, which I appreciated, until it burst forth into a shockingly intense, magic-infused lust, complete with husky groans and brushing of naughty bits. Surely the product of all the pent up tension and relief of recent events, not to mention the surprising cooperativeness(?) of their magic that hinted at a budding relationship in that requires only one person to bend. That the episode occurred wasn't so surprising as the detailed passion. All the comparative innocence the story and characters might have had was completely blasted away and my fantasy became abruptly very real and very lusty, which was a bit of a disappointment. A distraction, in fact, from far more interesting parts of the story, such as Agnieszka's latent magic, the purpose and source of the wood, the ultimate goal of the Dragon, etc.

Apart from this disconcerting event (and part 2), I enjoyed the book. There were plenty of character hangups that prolonged through the first 2/3 of the book before it finally took off, but it kept the motor running long enough for me to get to that point. And the ending, both the denouement and follow-up, was enjoyable and thorough. I worried we might not get the history of the Wood leading to its hostile nature, but we did, and that was appreciated.

A good book, if not an incredible one, only because I had to fight it for part of the way. ...more

1 like · Like · see review