I didn’t read the first chapter of Uprooted – I read the first four, in rapid succession, because Novik has crafted an exhilarating novel, a real page turner, and I regret not having picked it up sooner. It did not surprise me to learn that Novik was one of the founders of Archive of Our Own (AO3), a fanfiction archive for budding writers the world over. Her work has the hallmarks of all the best elements of fanfiction*, brilliantly crafted into something that is more than the sum of its parts.
There’s a mystery at the heart of Uprooted – a wizard, who every ten years takes a seventeen year old girl from his holdings to be his assistant, whisks away the inconsequential and unkempt Agnieszka, who in the book’s early chapters manages to nearly kill a visiting prince by battering him about the head with a metal tray when he tries to rape her. The mystery is not only why the wizard chose her and not her beautiful best friend, Kasia, but what her ten year stint in the tower will hold, and how she will change and grow by the time her decade is done.
This novel is all the things a novel should be. It’s intriguing, it’s inherently readable – no swimming upstream to the next juicy revelation – and it already contains a cast of characters that feel real, along with a world that, despite only minimal building, somehow feels fleshed out and vibrant. There’s serious skill in delivering a fantasy setting that is believable without bogging it down in endless exposition. Novik should be applauded for her efforts (and, from the list of awards she has won, she often is).
My copy of Uprooted was acquired upon the death of a close friend, along with the rest of Novik’s works, so my enjoyment of the novel is a little bittersweet. I wish I’d read it sooner so I could share my joy in reading it with my friend, but this blog will have to make do – though it’s a poor substitute.
Rating? Upvoted
Keep reading? Way ahead of you
Seriously, it’s great – buy Uprooted from Hive or your nearest local independent bookshop.
*This comparison is not meant as a slight: fanfiction is brilliant, Paradise Lost was fanfiction, fight me.
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