Review: Uprooted

Uprooted by Naomi Novik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Will you come into the Wood with me?"

If I could go back in time and read this book again like it was the first time, I would, simply because it is that good. Uprooted will be the book that I recommend to everyone who loves fantasy, hell to everyone in general, for the rest of the year. Hands down favourite book I've read in a long, long time.

"There should have been endless birds singing in those branches, and small animals gathering fruits. Instead there was a deep strange stillness. The river sang on quietly, but nothing else moved here; nothing else lived."

Oh me, oh my. The Dragon. Agnieszka. Kasia. Marek. The Wood. Magic. Folklore. Blood. Beasts. Love. Loss. The Summoning.

I'm not sure what I could say to really do this beautifully written story justice and entice you to read it, certainly not without sounding quite incoherent and over the top...but this story makes me feel over the top! It has swept me up into a tizzy and hasn't let me go. You could say that the Wood has left me a little corrupted and enchanted (ha ha! bad joke).

Ahh but in all seriousness, Uprooted is a truly special story. Even as I look back through the pages while I write this, re-reading my favourite passages, I am once again enchanted by Novik's way with words and her power as a weaver of tales that feel at once familiar and comfortable, like I've always known these characters as my own kin and the Wood as something to fear.

"I wanted to rub handprints through his dust."

Everything within this story unfolds slowly and organically, a running theme throughout that ties our own emerging understanding of the dangerous Wood and magic and the mysterious Dragon to that of Agnieszka's. There was not one moment where I thought something could have been any better - well, maybe a tad more romance - which surprised even me as I am usually not the one to say "more romance please!" That said, I thought that the relationship between the Dragon and Agnieszka was perfection - a slow building up, like an ember in a fire, long-burning underneath the story while we're carried away to far lands and castles and creatures that do much more than bump in the night.

This is not your average fantasy. Nor is it your average love story. It's a bit of both, but it's also a journey of self-discovery, a collection of folktales and songs, of murmurings and spells, pain and death, and ultimately of sacrifice.

I adored every minute of it.

Originally posted at A Bookish Occasion

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