I was reminded of the love I felt while reading Rachel Hartman's Seraphina and Shadow-Scale, the love peculiar to inhabiting the perspective of a young woman trying hard to do and be her best in very difficult circumstances. Uprooted is a triumph on several fronts - characterization, pace, a warm and beautifully realized setting, a tensely escalating threat level - but for me its most remarkable, wonderful aspect was in Agnieszka's love for her friend, which becomes the novel's driving force. I'm forever talking about how sad and strange it is that the only stories that seem worth telling or reading are stories about sexual romantic love.

It's no secret-in the way that the sun is no secret-that I crave seeing strong friendships between women in fiction. 'Uprooted is a triumph on several fronts - characterization, pace, a warm and beautifully realized setting, a tensely escalating threat level - but for me its most remarkable, wonderful aspect was in Agnieszka's love for her friend, which becomes the novel's driving force.' The Dragon has been doing this for as long as anyone can remember. He always chooses the girl who seems special in some way, the most beautiful or talented, the one whose loss will be most keenly felt. Every 10 years the Dragon chooses a young woman from the villages to come live with him in his tower as a servant - after which she never returns to her family, even once released. Protecting the villages of Polnya against the Wood is a wizard called the Dragon, to whom the villagers owe fealty. Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book I've Read Yet This Year.īetween the warring kingdoms of Rosya and Polnya is the Wood, a place of corruption and danger.

By all rights I should have tumbled into Uprooted feeling disoriented and confused, dissonant and harsh in my criticism - but no. I'm not sure the human brain was meant to read so many brilliant books in such short order - even less sure that swinging my reading-pendulum from Hannu Rajaniemi's collected science fiction stories to Naomi Novik's sword-and-sorcery fantasy novel is at all wise.

I've read a staggering number of excellent books recently, and it has done things to my head. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Uprooted Author Naomi Novik

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