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A review by wtfwincho
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
3.0
2.5/5 Ok sis this book was a ride with a bunch of transitional confusion, unset magical boundaries and poorly resolved character conflict.
Let's start with what I liked, I enjoyed the overall theme, the way the author melded eastern-European folklore and managed to make it seem fresh and even though it had issues it still managed to entertain me.
Having said that:
The first thing that caught me was that romance they tried to push between the dragon and Agnieszka, there was no cohesive and progressive attraction between them, hell there wasn't even warmth between them, Sarkan (the Dragon) was constantly a dick throwing Merriam-Webster insults at her, and she was constantly resentful and lowkey scared of him for the whole dragging her out of her life to basically serve him and learn magic while she was at it. Later in the story, they do magic together and all of a sudden they sorta feel horny for each other. Mind you, this is a teenage girl with a centuries-old wizard man. Long story short, I didn't buy their romance.
We all know that OTP should've been Kasia/Agnieszka. It just makes way more sense in my mind.
Another thing that I struggled with was the transitions between action and normal story building, they were blunt and sometimes required you to go back some pages and see where did all this come from.
The magic lore and boundaries in this book are all over the place, sometimes magic requires a whole deal of effort and concentration mixed with complex or long chants and other times a girl can say a one word spell to summon, at her whim, deadly thunderbolts that killed a powerful chimera monster made from the flesh of a powerful wizard, who btw was a literal master of protection and anti-corruption spells and managed to get corrupted in a moment.
Finally, I was kinda disappointed that they kept the Wood's (the main antagonist) backstory and main fuel of intention at the very end of the story, it just felt awkward and rushed and I think it didn't serve the character very well.
I really wished they'd made this book into two books to further expand on a lot of character interactions I feel were missed.
Let's start with what I liked, I enjoyed the overall theme, the way the author melded eastern-European folklore and managed to make it seem fresh and even though it had issues it still managed to entertain me.
Having said that:
The first thing that caught me was that romance they tried to push between the dragon and Agnieszka, there was no cohesive and progressive attraction between them, hell there wasn't even warmth between them, Sarkan (the Dragon) was constantly a dick throwing Merriam-Webster insults at her, and she was constantly resentful and lowkey scared of him for the whole dragging her out of her life to basically serve him and learn magic while she was at it. Later in the story, they do magic together and all of a sudden they sorta feel horny for each other. Mind you, this is a teenage girl with a centuries-old wizard man. Long story short, I didn't buy their romance.
We all know that OTP should've been Kasia/Agnieszka. It just makes way more sense in my mind.
Another thing that I struggled with was the transitions between action and normal story building, they were blunt and sometimes required you to go back some pages and see where did all this come from.
The magic lore and boundaries in this book are all over the place, sometimes magic requires a whole deal of effort and concentration mixed with complex or long chants and other times a girl can say a one word spell to summon, at her whim, deadly thunderbolts that killed a powerful chimera monster made from the flesh of a powerful wizard, who btw was a literal master of protection and anti-corruption spells and managed to get corrupted in a moment.
Finally, I was kinda disappointed that they kept the Wood's (the main antagonist) backstory and main fuel of intention at the very end of the story, it just felt awkward and rushed and I think it didn't serve the character very well.
I really wished they'd made this book into two books to further expand on a lot of character interactions I feel were missed.