Uprooted

De: Naomi Novik

Narrado por: Julia Emelin

NEBULA AWARD WINNER • HUGO AWARD FINALIST • “If you want a fantasy with strong characters and brilliantly original variations on ancient stories, try Uprooted!”—Rick Riordan

“Breathtaking . . . a tale that is both elegantly grand and earthily humble, familiar as a Grimm fairy tale yet fresh, original, and totally irresistible.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, BuzzFeed, Tordotcom, BookPage, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly

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.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

Praise for Uprooted

“Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book I’ve Read Yet This Year. . . . Moving, heartbreaking, and thoroughly satisfying, Uprooted is the fantasy novel I feel I’ve been waiting a lifetime for. Clear your schedule before picking it up, because you won’t want to put it down.”—NPR

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book I’ve Read Yet This Year. . . . Moving, heartbreaking, and thoroughly satisfying, Uprooted is the fantasy novel I feel I’ve been waiting a lifetime for. Clear your schedule before picking it up, because you won’t want to put it down.”—NPR

“A very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic . . . 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. . . . The vivid characters around her also echo their fairy-tale forebears, but are grounded in real-world ambivalence that 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 also touches on deeper ecological concerns we grapple with today.”—The Washington Post

“Novik takes us on a surprise-filled journey. . . . The resulting warmth and intimacy provide a nicely nurturing environment for her heroine’s unusual adventures.”—The Seattle Times

“Drawing on her Polish heritage and fairy-tale tropes, [Novik] has penned an original and fully realized fantastical place guaranteed to enthrall her longtime fans and attract new readers. This exceptional fantasy for adult and teen readers should appeal to those who love fairy-tale influenced stories such as Robin McKinley’s Spindle’s End.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Every so often you come upon a story that seems like a lost tale of Grimm newly come to light. Uprooted is such a novel. Its narrative spell is confidently wrought and sympathetically cast. I might even call it bewitching.”—Gregory Maguire, bestselling author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon

“The magic in Uprooted, with its realistic moral dimension, is so vividly believable that it almost seems you could work the spells. But the book will do that for you.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, award-winning and bestselling author of The Earthsea cycle

“Uprooted has everything I love: a great heroine, new takes on old myths and legends, and surprising twists and turns. A delight.”—Cassandra Clare, New York Times bestselling author of The Mortal Instruments series

“Magical and practical, otherworldly and planted in the real, I could not stop reading this book and neither will you!”—Tamora Pierce, New York Times bestselling author of Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen

“Wild, thrilling, and deeply, darkly magical. An instant classic.”—Lev Grossman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians Trilogy

Narrator: Not that Bad

I read a lot of reviews down on the narrator, and I think in this instance, it's just about personal preference.

The thick accent does take a bit of time getting used to, and you could hear the narrator taking some words with particular care, but I would not say it was inarticulate. Personally, I'm not bothered by accents, but I am very bothered by voices that are overly dramatic, and this reading was nice and steady.

As for the story itself, I really enjoyed the characters. Although I thought the story itself was a bit long winded and meandering. I think it could have been tightened up. Still though, it was enjoyable enough. I might listen to it again

Narration was actually pretty good

I was a little skeptical about this recording, given how many people seemed not to like the narrator. But I stopped noticing the accent fairly quickly, and it was a nice break from the "fantasy books are read in a British accent" trope. And for people who know a bit of Eastern European/Slavic history and culture, the accent helped draw those parallels between the fairy tale world and real life.

Also, Naomi Novik is great. The main characters were wonderfully human, and it was delightfully feminist. All things told, it was a lovely story with decent narration.

Reader has irritating accent

I found the reader very hard to listen to as she has an strong (French?) accent.
I got so busy being bothered by how she spoke that I didn't listen to the story as well as I usually do.

Iron is not pronounced "I-Ron."

I am an early adopter of audio books and have listened to thousands of books. This was a first for me. Took so much away from the story. Ugh.

Weird pacing

Lots of people griping about the narrator but I actually enjoyed it.
My biggest complaint is the strange pacing. The book starts off slow with great development, and then about half way through speeds up with large gaps between events, so much so that's it difficult to tell how much time has passed and what is happening.

Emotional abuse and narration mar creative tale

The actual plot, and the world created for the plot is creative and compelling. However, the relationship between the heroine and her lord is overt emotional abuse. It is cringeworthy when he hurls insults at her and she feels affection towards him.

In addition, the narration detracts from this audio production. The narrator has a thick accent. I am guessing names are in Polish? It is a difficult language and perhaps the narrator was chosen so she could pronounce them and lend color. (If so, kudos. It is frustrating to have to listen to butchered pronunciation throughout a book. ) However, she read in a monotone with little distinction between the character voices.

Not a bad story but not a great one.

The story was strangely entertaining while being kinda badly written. The author has a bland and blunt way of describing things. A tell you rather than show you approach. Descriptors are repeated, like a lot. Outraged crops up every few pages. The sequence of events are often predictable and sometimes cliche, "...she clumsily falls on him and they tumble together limbs entwined..." reminds me of a bad YA novel romance.

There's not much character development. The protagonist's best friend is basically her character foil, ever the faithful helper. The wizard has one personality setting, that of outraged, as we're often reminded. Plus it gets rediculous how mean he stays throughout everything and how she takes the verbal abuse, making you sense nobody really grew as individuals.

Things are often inconsistent. The magic that we are to believe has a cost will arbitrarily make Aneska weak. Sometimes she works tremendous spells and walks away a total badass, other times she gets weak after a couple small spells, etc. She'll creep into the woods as stealthy as possible as it's full of monsters, but then go in with trained soldiers who shout and each other and plod along, drawing the attention of everything.

Despite these things it was still entertaining in the same way a cheesy 90's show can be entertaining, you want to know what happens next even though sometimes you'd cringe at the plot and characters. The ending was pretty good and explained things in an interesting way. So I give it a 3/5, which I dub as a lazy reading novel.

Excellent

A truly magical folk tale told by a woman from a foreign land. I love this audiobook from start to finish.

Fantasy in the woods

Naomi Novik's Uprooted is a fantasy tale set in an eastern European middle age setting. Witches / wizards are stationed around the land to hold back a slowly invading evil essence in trees. A wizard chooses a young girl every decade for training, although the locals don't understand the basis for his selection. An unlikely girl who has magical potential is selected and is quickly thrust into training along with palace intrigue as well as saving her best friend from certain death. At the same time, she displays a knack for magic of a more non-cosmopolitan nature that defies academic explanation. She gradually learns the background on the evil menace in the woods and pushes herself to enter the fray prematurely.

Novik projects magic as an inherent skill or talent that needs training. At the same time, there is a scholarly component that the young girl's more uncouth background runs into, but manages to overcome and be able to take advantage of older texts that have defied understanding. There is also intrigue afoot with a queen that has been co-opted by the evil menace. The tale drags a bit in the later segments with a bit too much focus and detail of battles scenes. While there is a hint of a beauty and the beast motif, this seems more of an afterthought.

The narration is conducted with an eastern European accent that lends authenticity to the rendition, although character distinction is less well developed. Pacing is a bit on the slow side.

The Dragon

A most unusual take on a dragon story
the narrator is outstanding and bringing her characters to life

Great Slavic mythology

I enjoyed the story. Really solid mythos and magic. I might have loved it, but the monotone off the narrator kept me from losing myself in the tale. Her accent was nice, but it was so stilted and without the passion some passages needed. I’d have enjoyed reading this more instead of listening.