caitlin ✶

This book is about a girl named Agnieszka who lives in a valley ruled by a wizard called the Dragon. The Dragon keeps the fearsome Wood at bay, but he regularly takes a girl from a village every ten years to serve him in his tower. As you can probabl

This book is about a girl named Agnieszka who lives in a valley ruled by a wizard called the Dragon. The Dragon keeps the fearsome Wood at bay, but he regularly takes a girl from a village every ten years to serve him in his tower. As you can probably guess from this synopsis, Agnieszka gets taken by the Dragon to his tower.

This book managed to be good the whole way through: good, but not amazing. The plot and the world are interesting enough. The magic system is not completely explained, but you are given enough knowledge to understand how most of it works. I like how it was explained to us, because it wasn’t info-dumping or too hard to understand.

Maybe what would have saved this from being a “meh” book would’ve been if I had enjoyed the characters more. I didn’t hate any of these characters, but that’s because I didn’t have any emotions attached to any of them. Also, I was not a fan of the romance between Agnieszka and the Dragon. All throughout, it seemed to me like the relationship between Agnieszka and the Dragon was strictly that of a century-old teacher and his much younger student. I couldn’t imagine why a romance had to have happened.

My last complaint is that Agnieszka was too much of a special snowflake for my taste. She somehow managed to create her own way of casting spells in a very short span of time. And with barely even a year of learning magic with the Dragon and hardly listening to his lessons, she cast spells like she was an expert already. Also, Agnieszka takes the license exam for wizards and witches, which takes seven years of study to prepare for, and she somehow passes in a flash. I can suspend my disbelief a little, but not that much.

I wouldn’t consider this to be a disappointment, because it doesn’t have any glaring issues. I can see why some people completely love this book. I’m not very interested in Naomi Novik’s other works, but reading this has shown me why her books are so popular.