12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=35c19604-aab9-406c-b25e-7ebb854ea00b&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&1/4HomeTop Picks: All BooksUprooted MoreUprootedby Naomi NovikPrice: $25.00(Hardcover)Published: May 19, 2015Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)From the Publisher: Naomi Novik, author of the New YorkTimes bestselling and critically acclaimed Temeraire novels,introduces a bold new world rooted in folk stories and legends, aselemental as a Grimm fairy tale.“Every so often you come upon a story that seems like a losttale of Grimm newly come to light.</p><p> Uprooted is such a novel.Its narrative spell is confidently wrought and sympatheticallycast.</p><p> I might even call it bewitching.”—Gregory Maguire,bestselling author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon “Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what storiesthey tell outside our valley.</p><p> We hear them sometimes, fromtravelers passing through.</p><p> They talk as though we were doinghuman sacrifice, and he were a real dragon.</p><p> Of course that’s nottrue: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and…Rate This Book|Rate/ReviewAdd To BookshelfGet This Book Go to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site whereyou can get this book.BookFilter12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=35c19604-aab9-406c-b25e-7ebb854ea00b&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&2/4 Personalize / Add More ChoicesWhat We SayLike most fantasy fans, I'm eagerly awaiting the ninth and final volume in Naomi Novik's wonderful "Temeraire" seriesthat cleverly and smartly imagines what would happen if there were dragons in the Napoleonic Era.</p><p> But the musecan't be denied.</p><p> For whatever reason, Novik felt compelled to write this stand-alone tale and it's a wholly satisfyinggem.</p><p> Based in fairy tale, it begins in classic fashion with a corker of an opening line: "Our Dragon doesn't eat the girlshe takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley." Novik has you immediately and never falters.</p><p> The novelbegins with a ritual: the once-a-decade ceremony when the local wizard (nicknamed the "Dragon") chooses a youngmaid to take away to his tower, where she serves him in ways the locals can't imagine but spend an awful lot of timetrying.</p><p> Everyone simply knows the beautiful and winning Kasia will be chosen and yet it's our narrator Agnieszka theDragon almost reluctantly takes.</p><p> From the fate of Agnieszka to the fate of her valley to the fate of the kingdom andindeed the world, the scope of this story slowly but inexorably expands.</p><p> So does the magic, whether the highlydetailed, scientific magic of the Dragon or the more creative, "instinctive" magic that Agnieszka soon proves adept at.The chapters fly by; in reading it, I kept thinking, "Ok, just one more, just one more" over the two days I gobbled itdown.</p><p> And the medieval world Novik creates is as rooted in reality as her Napoleonic one.</p><p> But unlike most fantasy,what I remember best is not the world but the vivid and complex characters.</p><p> In what is ultimately a rather remarkablenovel, I realized there were no genuine villains.</p><p> Oh there was danger and evil aplenty (as symbolized by themalignant Wood that encroaches on Agnieszka's valley); armies clash, people struggle for power and so on.</p><p> But timeand again Novik reveals characters driven not by a black heart but by sincere if sometimes misguided impulses:indeed, nothing is scarier than someone doing great evil for what they consider a higher purpose.</p><p> It also containsromance of a very adult and very believable nature, though as often happens in this book, events are very satisfyingand characters very real but they never seem to do quite what you expect.</p><p> The real triumph is at the end whereNovik displays the ability to make understanding your enemy just as thrilling as destroying them.</p><p> I love what Novikhas done in the Temeraire series but this is the best single novel she's written.</p><p> So far. -- Michael GiltzLessWhat Others Say“Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book I’ve Read Yet This Year. . . .</p><p> Moving, heartbreaking, andthoroughly satisfying, Uprooted is the fantasy novel I feel I’ve been waiting a lifetime for.</p><p> Clear your schedule beforepicking it up, because you won’t want to put it down.”—NPR “A very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic . . .</p><p> Naomi Novik skillfully takes the fairy-tale-turned-bildungsroman structure of her premise . . . and builds enough flesh on those bones to make a very different animal. .. .</p><p> The vivid characters around her also echo their fairy-tale forebears, but are grounded in real-world ambivalencethat makes this book feel quietly mature, its world lived-in.”—The New York Times Book Review “Novik here delivers a tale that is funny and fast-paced, laced with hair-raising battle scenes and conspiracies; it alsotouches on deeper ecological concerns we grapple with today.”—The Washington Post “Novik takes us on a surprise-filled journey. . . .</p><p> The resulting warmth and intimacy provide a nicely nurturingenvironment for her heroine’s…More
