Uprooted

Disappointment, that's the word I would use to describe this book. Disappointment and something of a catastrophe. Like so many books I’ve read lately, this is one that has gotten great reviews, that I’ve heard wonderful things about and that I’ve looked forward to reading. And like most books it was a huge disappointment. I can’t even begin to understand why people love it so much and here are my reasons for disliking it and for telling you to say away and spend your time on something better than Uprooted.

Every ten years, the Dragon comes down from his tower to the valley and chooses one girl who will live with him for the following ten years, in exchange for the Dragon protecting the valley from the Wood and its corruption which tries to take over everything and everyone. Now, when it’s time for the Dragon choose again, everyone knows he will pick Kasia, the most beautiful and lovely girl in Agnieszka’s little town and her very best friend. But when the Dragon comes he doesn’t choose Kasia at all, but Agnieszka, who is brought to his tower where she learns that she’s a witch and that the Dragon, not an actually dragon but a wizard, is going to teacher her magic. The threat from the Wood is greater than ever and can Agnieszka help to save her people?

This was pretty much everything I knew when I started reading Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, except for the last part. I had no idea that the story would escalate into war with the Woods and was instead under the impression that this was about the Dragon and the girl he chose to serve him in his tower and the love story that would so obviously evolve between them. It turned out that that part, the choosing and the moving-to-the-tower part only covered the first fifty or so pages of the book. The rest was about Agnieszka learning how to be a witch, Agnieszka saving Kasia, Agnieszka fighting the Wood, Agnieszka going to the capital and spending time doing not very much at all, Agnieszka being in the middle of a political conflict, Agnieszka fighting a fierce battle, Agnieszka fighting the Wood again and Agnieszka saving everyone. It could’ve been mentioned on the back of the book that it wasn’t a story about a girl having to live in a tower with a wizard for ten years, but that of a witch fighting a very evil Wood-queen.

I found nothing in this book to be good and actually turned away from it every chance I got. The feeling of wanting to read, of liking to read, drained out of me and eventually I forced myself to finish it by pure will – and by skimming the bigger portion of it. It turned out that that was enough because I still got the gist of the story, I still understood what happened despite the fact that I skipped whole passages and pages, and that’s not a good thing for a book. Novik dragged everything out, spent long passages explaining and giving great detailed descriptions of everything that didn’t matter. The world in which Agnieszka lives was never explained and I had such a hard time picturing it in my head. I had a bunch of questions, like why did the Dragon only choose girls and not boys to serve him?, but none of those were answered. Instead Novik focused on repeating herself time and time again to the point that I was contemplating pulling out my hair or setting the book on fire. It was exhausting to read and it certainly didn’t help that the writing wasn’t good. It lacked flow to bring me deep into the story and at times I had to go back to reread sentences because I couldn’t understand them.

Much of the book was simultaneously filled with a lot of action and useless parts that could easily have been cut out and I’m certain that two hundred pages could’ve disappeared without it making much of a difference. So much of what happened was not needed for the story but it made the book cramped and heavy to read. Everything was so dragged out that I expected a big blow-up in the end, but nothing really happened. When Agnieszka finally faced off with the Wood and its Wood-queen it was all over so quickly that I had to question if I’d missed a chapter. The big revelation about the story of how the Wood came to be was extremely weak as well, which was disappointing since the entire story-line is built on the horror of the Wood. For this book I would suggest either to cut out the useless parts or to split the novel in two so it would be easier to read because this was like a brick. A very dry and boring brick.

On top of this, the characters were awful. Agnieszka is said to be the reverse of Kasia, who is brave and beautiful and perfect in every sense. Agnieszka is sloppy, always dirty and smudgy and not talented in any way, yet she takes to the art of magic right away and despite only having studied it for less than a year she still manages to be better than wizards and witches that has lived for hundreds of years. She’s powerful and smart and just knows things, she can do magic the Dragon spent years trying to learn after only reading about it in a book once. It later turns out that she is brave and she is wonderful and she is perfect and she catches not only the Dragon’s eye but also a young prince, so I suppose she’s beautiful as well. She’s in every sense lovely and her loveliness made me ill.

The Dragon, on the other hand, was clearly created to be the kind of male love interest that both the female main character and the reader first hate and then fall in love with. While Agnieszka did fall for him (as for why, I don't know since they kissed about twice during the entire book, never talked about their relationship or showed the other one any sweet feelings so I guess this was yet another thing that was supposed to happen without it actually having any foundation at all) I did not. He never showed a sweet side, ever, and took every opportunity he had to call Agnieszka stupid, an idiot and a bunch of other degrading things. He acted like a complete ass and it was never explained why so I guess that’s just the way he is and it’s not a personality I liked. I do like some tension between love interests, but the Dragon was a down-right douchebag and since I didn’t like him it made it so much harder to like the book.

Kasia was an interesting character as well, but not because she was an actually good character but simply because she, just like Agnieszka, was able to do a lot of things she’d never practiced or even done before, on her first try and obviously succeeding in it. Who, I ask, can just pick up a sword, swing it around and expertly kill a bunch of people when you’ve never held a sword before? No, she wasn’t believable, but neither was any other character in the novel.

Later in the story we meet two princes, a king and a handful of wizards and witches. They have battle experience, a lot of knowledge on the Wood and can think tactically. Yet despite that they still acted like stupid children, believing only what they saw with their own eyes and obviously never taking Agnieszka and her fears for real. That for me is not believable at all. I could so strongly feel Novik’s hand behind everything that happened in the book and it was extremely annoying. Things just happened because that was how the storyline looked, that was how Novik wanted it to be and that's alright as long as you have characters strong enough to hold that story up but Novik did not. I felt nothing for any of the characters and nothing for the story itself, except when I came to the end and was relieved that it was all over.

I thought this was awful and am so sorry I ever bought this book, wasted any money, energy and time on it and I advise you to not make my mistake. Don’t read this. There are so many other, better, books out there. Give them your time and love because this book, this book was awful in every sense and then some.