Agnieszka lives in a small village protected by the wizard known as the Dragon. Every decade or so, the Dragon comes down from his tower and hand-picks a young girl from the village to come live with him for a decade. Very little is known about what occurs between the two during that time save the woman leaves the tower a practitioner of magic herself and seemingly is no longer connected to her home-village. Nieshka thinks her best friend Kasia will be chosen by the Dragon as the time approaches for his ten-year visit. Much to her surprise (but not to any genre reader, I suppose especially because the tale is told through Agnieszka’s first person voice) Agnieszka is chosen and brought to the wizard’s tower.
Agnieszka is not the most agreeable of the Dragon’s students. She constantly challenges his authority, seeks alternate methods for practicing the magical arts and generally acts in a defiant manner. Superficially, that could make for an annoying character, but I was enthralled with Nishka and her plight. Novik did a marvelous job of building empathy and sympathy for her through nearly every twist and turn of the plot. On the other hand, the Dragon was a man who showed little patience for Agnieska through many of their interactions, but who wielded great power.
One thing that struck me throughout the novel is a pervading sense of anger; it fueled much of the character interaction and pulled much of the plot along. Anger seems to be the only emotion, or a version of it such as disdain, the Dragon exhibits for much of the narrative. The prince, Marek, who visits the Dragon and later implores Agnieszka and the Dragon for their help, shows disdain and anger towards the Dragon. The other wizards introduced later in the novel seem to feel anger towards each other, while the Dragon condescends to interact with them with a great deal of spite. When Agnieszka interacts with people from her village in the middle-to-latter portion of the novel, they emanate an air of anger bordering on hatred to her. And yet, despite that anger driving many of these characters and the plot, Novik manages to overlay that anger with a sense of beauty and hopefulness; hope through the fierce determination of her character Agnieskza. Of course there are other emotions at play here, too. There’s a deep abiding love-of-friendship between Agnieszka and Kasia that provides an emotional backbone to the novel. There’s also sorrow and compassion and those come through in some of the minor characters.
There’s a subtle play between the characters throughout the novel in their interactions, specifically when Agnieszka is in the presence of either the Dragon or any of the wizards. Because the novel is told from her first-person perspective, we as the reader are directly linked to her thoughts regardless of whether she vocalizes them. So we’ll read her thoughts and a character will directly respond to them as if she had spoken those words. This seems an indication that wizards in Novik’s world might also be mind-readers or even speak their own language. More importantly, it is an indication that Novik has invested a great deal into this world and characters beneath the surface that work on multiple levels.
The main external conflict of the novel is the encroaching dread of the Wood; it has taken over villages, is filled with monstrous creatures, and has a dark magic of its own that can be poisonous to those who come into contact with it. In other words, Naomi Novik has given readers a tale of the Dark/Haunted Forest of European Lore (or The Lost Woods as TVTropes). The Dragon has taken as his primary mission the defense of the realms under his protection (primarily the village from which Agnieszka hails), against the encroaching Wood. The Wood has been growing in power and malevolence and has even taken the Queen into its heart, which is what sets Prince Marek on the path to the Dragon’s tower. Even though 20 years have passed since the Wood has taken her, he still thinks she can be saved.
By setting the Forest as the primary force of darkness in Uprooted, Novik has given a man v. nature dichotomy to the narrative. In today’s world, man can be seen as the enemy of nature, with the polar ice caps melting, deforestation, and the thinning of the ozone layer, among other happenings. Here, the Wood is depicted as a malevolent force that cannot be reasoned with and only destroyed before it destroys you. In Fairy Tales of old, this is quite common, whether nature is the form of a Wolf or other creature. Though the struggle of man v. nature in Uprooted is a somewhat black v. white dichotomy, it is the only such dichotomy as characters are not drawn in depicted in such a two-tone fashion.
Determination is what fuels many stories with a Fairy Tale feel to them. A tradition in such stories is that things have always happened the way they are supposed to happen: every 10 years the Dragon takes a young woman as a protégé(?), a concubine(?) and that young girl stays with him for a decade. Of course, that is until we encounter the story itself, in this case Agnieszka breaks that mold and (mild spoiler) she leaves the confines of the Dragon’s tower; an unprecedented thing in a story that fits the traditional fairy tale mold from which Uprooted initially seems to be carved. Despite this familiarity with the trappings of the story, Novik makes this story fully her own, a fresh story that can sit next to those tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, but with an entirely new story comprised of familiar parts. Not an easy thing for any writer to attempt, let alone pull off so successfully as Novik does here in Uprooted.
There was one problem I had with the novel and I won’t go into much detail, but unfortunately this element did take me out of the story briefly. Two characters find themselves drawn together ever closer as the story evolves, but there’s a culmination of their relationship that doesn’t feel in line with how they’ve interacted up to that point. It was the only part of the story that didn’t feel genuine in an otherwise very genuine story.
Perhaps because I recently wrote about the books for SF Signal, I found many emotional and linguistic resonances with Patricia McKillip’s Riddle-Master trilogy. There’s a sense that the world in Uprooted echoes the folk tales of Europe, that it has a rich tradition sewn into the DNA of the world the characters inhabit, but we as readers meet these character at a time of Great Change, after all why else would we meet these characters?
Uprooted is a fantastically drawn novel that echoes Fairy Tales of old balanced with a powerful narrative and marvelous protagonist. Part of me kept thinking this might make a great animated Disney tale as the pages were turning. I also would not be surprised if this made the shortlist for the World Fantasy Award or the Mytheopic Award (an award the aforementioned McKillip has received or been nominated for multiple times).
Highly recommended
© 2015 Rob H. Bedford
Published by Del Rey / Hardcover ISBN 978-0804-17930-4
May 2014 / 448 Pages
http://www.naominovik.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
I was fortunate enough to get an advanced reading copy of this and I loved it. I can definitely see why you see comparisons with McKillip’s Riddle-Master (also a great). I’ve been recommending Uprooted to everyone I can.
Michael, do you know if it’s a stand alone book or the first in a series?
Naomi has no plans to write another novel in this universe. Now that she’s finished the final Temeraire novel, she plans on writing several stand alone novels. I’m hoping she goes back. Loved UPROOTED as well.