Rather than feeling like you’re desperately trying to cram in all the various plot points at breakneck, half-done speed, Novik provides a book that flows profoundly beautifully and well, offering up an exquisitely-well poised narrative, vivid characters who leap to life with minimal introduction, dark undercurrents and an imperfect protagonist whose heart is most certainly in the right place. What first reads as a bucolic story of peasant girl discovering her gifts, and winning over her gruff mentor in the process – the Wizard is nothing if not cantankerous, unwilling to get close to anyone in any form – soon transforms into a lushly-told, epic beyond words battle between flawed good and horrific evil, with a resolution that rewards the muscular storytelling that precedes it.Īnd muscular the narrative most certainly is.Īn unflinching look at the darkness that hides in the hearts of men and women, even those with the best of intentions and purity of belief, and the way this can take physical form, Uprooted manages to pack a series’ worth of narrative into perfectly-told length.
He is compelled by the King’s law to choose her to train in the magical arts, a pressing concern in the kingdom of Polnya, and its neighbour Rosya with whom it has a fractious, often warlike, relationship, where an evil malignant entity known as the Wood, which can corrupt and despoil people and is hellbent on humanity’s destruction, constantly seeks to wipe out all life in its path. Much to her surprise, she is chosen, largely because of her latent magical ability which she doesn’t recognise she possesses, but which the aged wizard, who looks far younger than his century plus years thanks to some measure of immortality conferred by his gifts, knows she possesses in spades. The book starts out innocently enough with the protagonist and narrator Agnieszka, a 17 year old girl from a village called Dvernik, wondering who will be chosen by the local wizard and lord, the Dragon, to be his sole companion in his immense tower over the next 10 years.Īgnieszka, along with her entire village, is certain that she won’t be chosen, with the dubious honour of being the chosen one falling to her best friend and soulmate Kasia, who has been groomed from a young age to appeal to everything the Dragon seems to look for in his, supposedly platonic, companion. There is something deliciously subversive about Noami Novik’s Uprooted, an epic fantasy novel that seems to promise something sweetly benign in the first few chapters, before giddily defying expectations every step of its uniformly excellent way.
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