Uprooted by Naomi Novik

It has been a bad few months for reasons I wont get into now, but for a while there I lost not just writing but reading too. That was a truly awful feeling.

But then I read something excellent, and I got to spend an entire afternoon doing nothing but reading and that made me feel a lot better.

The book that pulled me out of the doldrums: Uprooted by Naomi Novik which was simply brilliant.

Not as intensely fairytale in its feeling as Spinning Silver or as gothically romantic. But thick with interesting characters and a sense of a much larger political world and conflict than is experienced by our protagonist.

It’s one of those books where it feels like so much happens, but when you go back and read it over again the story was actually moving pretty quickly. The growth that felt so gradual is actually accomplished over just a few scenes.

What I loved about the book was the way it all folded together around the themes. Its a book about home and family. From Agnieszka and her people’s attachment to their valley, to the other witches and wizards, especially the dragon, and their cold detachment from people and the world. But also importantly to the way the evil in the wood was attached to this same idea. It both explains and resolves the conflict in such a neat, satisfying way. I laughed out loud at the last line of the book, but it really does drive the theme home. And somehow it feels like the secondary themes about the different magics (Agnieszka’s instinctive kind vs the traditional regimented kind) as well as the class superiority were likewise woven into the ideas of family and home.

I just want to keep living in it.

Own copy to be obtained tout de suite.