Uprooted by Naomi Novik
“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”
Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.
Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.
But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.
I picked this up at a bookstore. The cover was so pretty (the EU cover is also so pretty). It's a high fantasy, which I normally love. I think it wavers between Young Adult (YA) and New Adult (NA), and dare I say...maybe even Adult age level.
I think I rated this at 3.5 stars (Goodreads won't let you do half points). I liked it, but I didn't love it. I thought it was overly slow (I'm in the minority on this) and suffered from the pissy male lead (the "dragon")/special-but-does-not-know-it female lead issue (Agnieszka).
So, it's typical in the sense that the main male character, the "Dragon" (who is not an actual dragon but is a wizard type), is a grumpy jerk. He comes down to the village where Agnieszka lives to pick the girl who is special (who is, of course, Agnieszka) to live with him in a castle. He acts like a dick-head and she cries and is clumsy. It's all very annoying.
The character that I liked is actually "The Wood", the fantastical place next to the village that the Dragon protects. While the Wood is a character, it is voiceless, but Novik does a fabulous job of evoking the menace that it has. It's creepy, dark, and atmospheric.
At heart, this book is a fairy tale with many Polish references and folklore. The concepts included, the evil woods, the dragon, the wizard, and the young heroine, aren’t new, but Novik does a good job of using them. Her prose is lovely, but slow. I wish I loved it much more than I did.
