Uprooted

By: Naomi Novik

Narrated by: 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.

©2015 Naomi Novik (P)2015 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“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

Enjoyable lightweight fantasy

Though Uprooted has an interesting setup and seems to be well-loved by readers, I found this fantasy novel to be pretty middling. The premise is that there's a kingdom threatened by an evil, corrupting forest, which is warded off by a solitary wizard called the Dragon. Every ten years, the Dragon selects a peasant girl from one village to serve him for the same amount of time. Nobody really knows what he does with the girls, but when they return to the world, they aren't the same and soon leave the village.

The protagonist is a girl named Agnieszka, who, to her own surprise, is chosen. The wizard proves to be an irritable, difficult man whose social graces have worn off over decades (sort of like me after too long of a coding session), and treats her like a scullery maid. As the reader might expect in a story like this, Agnieszka turns out to have some latent magical abilities, and the Dragon turns out to have a heart under his crusty outer layer.

The plot is fairly standard stuff for fantasy, with a bit of romance novel thrown in. There's an arrogant, dangerous prince; a queen taken by the evil wood; a loyal best friend; a cold, scheming king; an oily rival wizard; nasty magical monsters, and an ancient people whose uncovered secrets are instrumental to the plot. Unsurprisingly, Agnieszka realizes that her talents are superior to the Dragon's in some ways, and the two of them discover that they must collaborate to fight The Wood. Also, they discover that they have the hots for each other (I had a bad "wood" pun in mind, but thought better).

If you've read a lot of fantasy novels, especially ones with a folkloric basis, there's nothing surprising here. I didn't find the writing very compelling or the characters very complex, though I was engaged enough to keep listening. It's really not a bad book, and I think that readers who haven't become jaded to the tropes of fantasy might like it, but it's not a very heavyweight entry to the genre.

There have been complaints about the audiobook reader. While I didn't find her performance terrible and didn't mind her accent itself, she speaks with a weird cadence that gets a little irritating. Imagine some text-to-speech software that reads in a Polish accent, and you'll have a sense of the way that some passages and bits of dialogue sound. Voice actors, you don't have to make foreign accents THAT exotic, especially if it's the protagonist's own inner voice.

If you really want to read this book, don't let my three stars discourage you, but it might be one to get on sale.

That narration was distracting

I nearly didn't want to listen due not to the accented English but due to the unnatural pauses ( or should I say poses). But the story was too good to pass up.

Mildly entertaining

The story itself is entertaining enough to listen to from start to finish, so long as you have half of your mind on something else. There's a few good twists and turns that were noteworthy, even if the over arcing storyline got a bit stale part way through.

A word of warning however, if you're reading these reviews and thinking "the narrator's accent isn't that bad, people must be exaggerating." (Much like I thought) It definitely wears you down about 1/4 of the way into the book. Her accent tweaks simple words such as, "water" "iron" and "broad" just enough that it makes you overly conscious of how often the word are used. 3/4 of the way into the story and it would warrant teeth grinding anytime a few choice words are spoken. Aside from the accent, the cadence of the narrator's voice is often stiff and awkward and doesn't follow the mood of moments.

Overall, I wouldn't really recommend the book to someone with any gusto. Maybe with a different narrator, it could be presented a bit better.

the performer was too difficult to understand.

the narrator made it very difficult to listen to the book. very very frustrating. I wish I could give a better review. I understand the thinking in picking a performer with an accent, but it was too much in this case. after several hours of "what did she say?" we gave up on listening.

Lovely voice, awkward narration

The narrator has a charmingly accented voice with a distracting cadence, a careful novice reader for whom English is not her first language. So careful was the narration that I think emotion was often overlooked. The story was entertaining enough. But I failed to bond with any of the characters. It was a bit of an effort to finish the book. But I prevailed and fought the urge to return it.

A magical tale

This is a wonderful read (or listen). The opening has echoes of "The Hunger Games" and moves on to become a bit Wizard of Earthsea crossed with Harry Potter. The heroine is eminently likable, convincingly great at what she does, and yet never too obviously the greatest witch of all time. The suspense builds nicely, and the magical system outlined and devised feels fairly clear and understandable.

Many listeners have complained about the narrator -- but to me, she gives the story much of its gravitas and legitimacy. It feels like you're listening to a Russian folk tale. I don't think an American narrator could convey that as effectively.

I will say that the book flags a little as it progresses. Ultimately magic has to solve the problem, and that means there's a certain element of hand-waving involved. The author works hard to make the magic and the denouement as earned and rational as possible -- and she very nearly succeeds completely.

Overall, really worth a listen.

love her accent, hate her recitation

the story was excellent and it makes sense to me that has won awards. a couple of times in the story, it felt a bit wordy and in need of a pare-down, but these were few and far between.

the narrator I loved and hated. her accent lent a lot of immersion, but the rhythm of her words felt like i was listening to someone who was ESL. i don't mind putting myself into "understand what someone is saying" mode, but it makes it hard to immerse myself in the story because I am too busy trying to make sure I understand what is being said. even so, if she narrated a follow-up book, i would buy it to hear the story in her voice again.

I know some people struggled with the narration

I know someone with that accent and enjoyed the narration. The book was a fun listen :)

A Story So Good, Even the Narrator Can't Ruin It

What did you like best about Uprooted? What did you like least?

The story was great, brilliant and original.
The problem was the narrator. She is so focused on getting a particular accent and rhythm perfect that she never varies her inflection.

There are two main problems with this:
1. It's almost impossible to catch the jokes. The novel has absolutely hilarious bits, but they are read with the same tone and rhythm as fight scenes, sex scenes, and kitchen scenes.

2. No pauses. Several times, the narrative made the sort of forward skip that, on the page, is signaled with a white space or star. But the narrator gives these pauses the same amount of silence as at the end of a sentence. There are several major time and scene skips in the novel, but because the narrator kept reading smoothly from the last scene it takes a moment to realize what has happened, throwing you completely out of the story.

Would you be willing to try another one of Julia Emelin’s performances?

No.

Great Story but...

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The story is griping and makes you want to listen more but the performance creates a dilemma do you continue listen to find out what happens or give in to the frustration and turn it off.

What other book might you compare Uprooted to and why?

With in my library, I did not have anything similar to Uprooted which is why I bought it. I wanted something new. I will probably end up buying the book "print" so I can find out what happened.

Would you be willing to try another one of Julia Emelin’s performances?

No, I will steer clear of her performances. It isn't the Russian accent, I actually liked that for the book. It gave the book more charm, character and added something different. But she reads in such a start stop fashion that the flow to her performance is always broken leaving me unable to enjoy listening to the book and always debating over continuing or turning off the book.

Was Uprooted worth the listening time?

I liked the story but narration prevented me from finishing. I could only make it halfway through.

Any additional comments?

Listener beware, the story is worth the effort if you can get past the narration.