Book Review: UPROOTED by Naomi Novik

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"She'd remembered the wrong things, and forgotten too much. She'd remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she'd forgotten how to grow. All she'd been able to do in the end was lie down...not quite dreaming, not quite dead."

OHMYGOSH this is quite possibly the best book I've read this 2018! NO WONDER the person who recommended it to me was raving. I'M RAVING, TOO!! Well, perhaps it's only to be expected from a founder of AO3 (https://archiveofourown.org/), a fact that nearly blew my sister's mind when she was told :)

Don't be deceived by the fairy-tale cover. This is not for kids. This is serious reading, with a fairy-tale setting.

Take your standard ingredients: a woodcutter's daughter...the most powerful magician in the kingdom with your typical brooding Darcy vibe... a most evil corruption in the Woods... mix them all together and you have a story that defies description. The author's tale is WILD beyond imagining, I could not predict what would happen next! And at my age, that's VERY refreshing!

It's quite fitting to end 2018 with a book like this! Like the year that was, this novel was full of horrors written so simply and succintly, which adds to the shock of the terrifying imagery. Like the year about to die, the novel was full of love, the kind that steals up on one slowly and takes one's breath away. Like the year that will soon pass, UPROOTED has Truth as one of its most powerful spells. It is one of literature's great paradoxes that truth is told in its best examples, written in the guise of fiction. This novel's truth is that we live in a world where we cannot judge people's true nature based on appearances, that corruption can enter even the highest of strongholds, that all evil comes from a place of hurt and abuse, and that it will require great sacrifice to preserve the things that mean the most: our home, the place where we have planted our roots.

Many, many thanks to Honey and Elsie, who recommended this book! And hmmm... will you look at that... 10 hours to go before the New Year. Perhaps there's time to finish one more book? :D



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