Uprooted

By: Naomi Novik

Narrated by: Julia Emelin

Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel

Naomi Novik, author of the New York Times best-selling and critically acclaimed Temeraire novels, introduces a bold new world rooted in folk stories and legends, as elemental as a Grimm fairy tale.

Hugo Award Finalist

Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, BuzzFeed, Tordotcom, BookPage, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly

“Uprooted is confidently wrought and sympathetically cast. I might even call it bewitching.” (Gregory Maguire, best-selling author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon)

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: He may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every 10 years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.” 

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 10 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) 

©2015 Naomi Novik (P)2015 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

• Nebula Award for Best Novel, 2015

"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 best-selling 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 best-selling author of The Mortal Instruments series)

"Wild, thrilling, and deeply, darkly magical. An instant classic." (Lev Grossman, number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Magicians Trilogy)

this may be the worst performance by a reader ever

this was a struggle to listen to - I really wanted to like it but the narrator was just so bad. I thought her accent was fake at first because I just didn't believe it could be real. she had no ability to put any nuance into her sentences and every character had more or less the same voice. do yourself a favor and listen to a sample before buying this because I didn't and I strongly regret it.

narrator sounds

Story was ok but the narrator is terrible. They sound similar to a robot saying what you tell it to. Siri would have been better

The Narrator?!

The setting, pacing, world building and character development are all well and fine. It gets off to a bit of a slow start, but if you can make it through the first couple chapters you get some real tension, encounter a mystery that needs solving, and it draws you in.

But the narrator.

The story is told from the perspective of the main character, who (apparently) speaks with a moderately heavy accent. Something like a cross between Spanish middle class and Russian businesswoman. The enunciation, tone, and the hard stops between sentences, gives the impression of someone reading a shopping list. It's bizarre and extremely distracting from the story itself.

A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (With Terrifying Trees)

"Uprooted" feels like a forgotten fairy tale that somehow slipped out of our common culture, but would be right at home next to Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and all the rest. There's magic, wizards, princes, and evil forests. (WOW, the evil trees are AWESOME. But we'll come back to those later.) But despite that sense of familiarity, I can't think of too many other books like it. In some ways it reminds of Neil Gaiman's "Stardust," and in other ways of Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." Maybe a dash of Katherine Addison's "The Goblin Emperor." It's charming like those books, and yet it's also very much its own story.

Agnieszka is a fantasy heroine for the ages. She's messy, kind, stubborn, bumbling yet brilliant when it comes to magic. I loved how devoted she is to her friend Kasia (and how loyal Kasia is to her). Her relationship with the Dragon could've felt like a revamped Beauty & the Beast, or Pygmalion, and maybe there are hints of all that here. But Novik twists all those tropes and stories and comes up with a relationship and storyline that feels fresh. At it's heart, this is a story of love (not only the romantic kind, although there is that too) and friendship.

Can we talk about the forest and the trees? Because Novik has created some of the most horrifying evil trees I think I've ever read, and it's kind of delightful how vile and terrifying they are. The bark, the sap, the branches...the descriptions and details were terrifying (and delicious).

Julia Emelin's narration has come under a lot of criticism, which baffles me. Because of the Russian accent? Honestly, I cannot figure it out. After reading the reviews, I previewed the narration before I purchased the book, and remained puzzled -- Emelin's voice and accent helped ground tone for the story. I was captivated by every minute of her performance. Novik spun an incredible tale, and Emelin's narration complimented it to perfection.

"Uprooted" is one of my favorite listens in the last year. It feels like a story we've known our whole lives, even if we're just hearing it for the first time. And it's one I'll want to hear again and again and again.

Don't put yourself through this listen

This is the worst narrator I've listened to, bar none. Buy this book in paperback and save your ears.

The narrator's voice is so heavily accented that I was frequently unsure of what word it was that she was attempting to pronounce (was that "clothing," "clawing," or "clearing"? "feeling" or "filing"? "onion," "oven," or "open"?) and at some points literally couldn't understand her at all. If this had been a personal memoir narrated by the author or something, this sort of narration style could serve an interesting purpose, but this is fantasy; there's no "real" way of pronouncing the non-English words.

The worst bit, though, was that she had the cadence and emotion of a robot. Words that are italicized or followed with exclamation points in the book sound no different coming from the narrator's mouth as words without emphasis. Her timing was bizarrely off as well; it was impossible to tell when half the sentences ended and new ones began.

I could also understand why you'd want the narrator to pronounce the few words in the book's invented language with a realistic sounding accent, but the entirety of the rest of the book was sacrificed to this aim.

Narration is a Serious Issue

Trying to engage with the story and overlook the difficulties with the narration but audiobooks by their nature, make this an obstacle.

It isn't the accent that's at issue but the expression. Like other reviewers before me, I'm experiencing a challenge with the intonation and sentence cadence. It is similar to using an enabled audio feature on a webpage where an automated voice reads the words but doesn't impart any meaning. Comprehension is harder because one has to reconcile the odd cadence (pauses and emphasis are unexpected), discern the sentence structure, and figure out the story.

I want to finish the book but not sure if I can endure the automaton narration. :(

Wonderful story TERRIBLE narrator

It is a testament to how great the story is that I enjoyed it even though the narrator is absolutely the worst. I loved the story. I love it so much I’m buying it on kindle to read smoothly. I’m astounded that someone let her read this book aloud for money. I get that an accent can make this type of story interesting, and the other audible book from this author is WONDERFUL. But this one? The narrator’s words are so choppy and her pronunciation is just awful. The narrator doesn’t bother to try to change her voice to differentiate characters- or maybe she tried but was unsuccessful. She. Enunciates. Or. Pauses. After. Every. Word. Or sometimes she. Pauses after. A. Couple of. Words. But she just does not read well or tell the story. She. Just. Reads. With. Lots. Of breaks. If this were re-done with someone who speaks smoothly, even with a heavy accent, I would re-purchase because the story is just that delightful.

Charming, creepy and unique

Uprooted is an incredible story, completely absorbing and not at all what I expected. It feels like the real story that a thousand grim fairytales were based on. Surprisingly real, unpredictable and without the simplistic morality.

The narration is brilliant. The accent and the narrator's performance really brings the story alive. It made me feel as though Agnieszka herself was telling her story to me. It must have felt like a bit of a gamble, to use someone with an authentic accent, but it was very effective.

I cannot think of another novel to compare this to, but it did put me a bit in mind of the movie Pan's Labrynth - at times beautiful, charming and genuinely creepy.

This is hands down the best fantasy novel I have experienced in a long time, it's reawakened my love of the genre.

Great story, hard to listen to.

It isn't the accent so much as the woodenness of the narration that makes this a little frustrating to listen to. The story is great, but the reading really detracts from it.

A Wonderful Tale Well Told!

This is one of those stories that causes one to heave a contented sigh when it ends.
Naomi Novik has written a tale that reminded me of some of Peter Falk's lines from The Princess Bride, "revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes..." Yet none of this story is in the usual way. It is not a humorous story, but it is a tale of wonder.
Agnieszka, (a mouthful of a name), simple village girl, infuriatingly clumsy, untidy, seemingly slow; handed over to serve the wizard of the tower. He is called Dragon, impatient, cold, unkind, proud and arrogant.
There is an evil wood which is slowly expanding, overwhelming the land spreading grim darkness, evil and monsters. The Dragon is trying to keep the wood from growing but is not succeeding.
The tale unfolds with many other characters adding to a story more complex and nuanced with each chapter. It's quite a long tale and Agnieszka herself tells the story.
Some readers complained about the performance by Julia Emelin. I rather liked her Eastern European accent (though I have no idea how accurate it may be). It made the story more authentic in a way, even if it was at times a little difficult to understand.
Listen to the sample and judge for yourself. If you don't care for her performance, then read the book, it is a satisfying experience and worth the time.