Uprooted (Naomi Novik)
Aug. 22nd, 2026 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakShort version: I liked it a lot, though I didn't love it the way I did/do Spinning Silver (with which it shares an fantasy!Eastern European setting and fairy tale motives) . But it's an excellent novel with great characters, genuine horror (the creepiest fairy tale wood I ever encountered in fantasy) and for the most part very satisfying solutions.
To get out my one complaint that keeps me from loving this the way I did some over Novik works out of the way first: it's the "man with power over woman insults woman non-stop at the start, deeply resents being in this situation with her, later, after misunderstandings are cleared up, true motives are revealed and woman owns her power ends up in real relationship with her" trope. Now, this did work for me in both cases (Miryem/Staryk King and Irina/Minartius) it was used in "Spinning Silver", likely because in neither case the romance was the point, so to speak. Miryem didn't change her mind about the Staryk King after having plotted to trap and in the long term kill him because she suddenly fell in love with him, or because of the fact he had started to change his behaviour and apprecciate her before the capture; she did it because she felt responsible to the other Staryks who were suffering from the King's captivity and would end up as demon food if he remained captive. Irina didn't ask for Minartius' freedom at the end because she thought he was hot but because she was compassionate, and had found out he really didn't get into this demon arrangement because he himself had made the choice, but because he was traded to Czernobog as a foetus, and because, again, she felt responsible as Queen. So it did work for me, but all the same, I was relieved when in The Summer War, this particular Novik trope was subverted because Celia and the Summer King (who start out the same way, with him insulting her non stop) did NOT end up as a couple once she had come into her power, but instead he ended paired up with her brother (which had been built up through the last third of the novella) and she ended up as an independent single Queen. P
Now, in "Uprooted", one of the central relationships is the one between our heroine Agnieszka (starts out as a "clumsy" peasant girl, discoveres she's a witch-in-training) and "The Dragon", aka Sarkan, the sorceror who gets given a girl from the local village every ten years (said girls always show up alive and well after that, but they always leave the village, so no one really knows wht he did with/to them). As a reluctant mentor/protegee relationship, this works for me, and also as a platonic odd couple one where both people learn from each other and neither is the way the other assumed. But the moment it went for UST and romance I groaned, and that is the one complaint I have about the novel. Everything else is great! And I should add that while this is an important relationship, it is by far not the only important one our heroine has. For roughly two thirds of the book, her primary motivation is to save her bff Kasia, and the way the two girls come through for each other and keep saving each other is the emotional core of the novel.
Also very impressive: the way both the narrative and Agnieszka as a character keeps aware of what we flippantly call "redshirts", the many, many people dying, and how this is horrible not just if caused by a blatant villain but equally when caused by ostensible heroic types. That one of the antagonists is willing to sacrifice soldiers to the thousands in pursuit of his goal without being bewitched into it is what marks him an antagonist. But even he, like the Big Bad of the novel, is being given a moment of grace directly before their deaths, which is another endearing quality of the novel - it is humane in the best sense, refusing at any point to buy into "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" type of storytelling, without losing any suspense due to this, on the contrary. It's firmly of the belief that no, you do not have to become a monster to fight monsters. And also that "What created the monsters in the first place?" never ceases to be an important question.
Lastly, about the setting: If Spinning Silver is set in fantasy Lithuania, Uprooted is set in fantasy Poland, and the fact fantasy Poland is either in a cold orhot war with fantasy Russia at various points of the story is important to the plot. Which begs the question: where are fantasy!Prussia and fantasy!Austria? (Just kidding, them being around would complicate the Polnya - Rossiya situation even more and isn't necessary for the novel's plot.
To get out my one complaint that keeps me from loving this the way I did some over Novik works out of the way first: it's the "man with power over woman insults woman non-stop at the start, deeply resents being in this situation with her, later, after misunderstandings are cleared up, true motives are revealed and woman owns her power ends up in real relationship with her" trope. Now, this did work for me in both cases (Miryem/Staryk King and Irina/Minartius) it was used in "Spinning Silver", likely because in neither case the romance was the point, so to speak. Miryem didn't change her mind about the Staryk King after having plotted to trap and in the long term kill him because she suddenly fell in love with him, or because of the fact he had started to change his behaviour and apprecciate her before the capture; she did it because she felt responsible to the other Staryks who were suffering from the King's captivity and would end up as demon food if he remained captive. Irina didn't ask for Minartius' freedom at the end because she thought he was hot but because she was compassionate, and had found out he really didn't get into this demon arrangement because he himself had made the choice, but because he was traded to Czernobog as a foetus, and because, again, she felt responsible as Queen. So it did work for me, but all the same, I was relieved when in The Summer War, this particular Novik trope was subverted because Celia and the Summer King (who start out the same way, with him insulting her non stop) did NOT end up as a couple once she had come into her power, but instead he ended paired up with her brother (which had been built up through the last third of the novella) and she ended up as an independent single Queen. P
Now, in "Uprooted", one of the central relationships is the one between our heroine Agnieszka (starts out as a "clumsy" peasant girl, discoveres she's a witch-in-training) and "The Dragon", aka Sarkan, the sorceror who gets given a girl from the local village every ten years (said girls always show up alive and well after that, but they always leave the village, so no one really knows wht he did with/to them). As a reluctant mentor/protegee relationship, this works for me, and also as a platonic odd couple one where both people learn from each other and neither is the way the other assumed. But the moment it went for UST and romance I groaned, and that is the one complaint I have about the novel. Everything else is great! And I should add that while this is an important relationship, it is by far not the only important one our heroine has. For roughly two thirds of the book, her primary motivation is to save her bff Kasia, and the way the two girls come through for each other and keep saving each other is the emotional core of the novel.
Also very impressive: the way both the narrative and Agnieszka as a character keeps aware of what we flippantly call "redshirts", the many, many people dying, and how this is horrible not just if caused by a blatant villain but equally when caused by ostensible heroic types. That one of the antagonists is willing to sacrifice soldiers to the thousands in pursuit of his goal without being bewitched into it is what marks him an antagonist. But even he, like the Big Bad of the novel, is being given a moment of grace directly before their deaths, which is another endearing quality of the novel - it is humane in the best sense, refusing at any point to buy into "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" type of storytelling, without losing any suspense due to this, on the contrary. It's firmly of the belief that no, you do not have to become a monster to fight monsters. And also that "What created the monsters in the first place?" never ceases to be an important question.
Lastly, about the setting: If Spinning Silver is set in fantasy Lithuania, Uprooted is set in fantasy Poland, and the fact fantasy Poland is either in a cold orhot war with fantasy Russia at various points of the story is important to the plot. Which begs the question: where are fantasy!Prussia and fantasy!Austria? (Just kidding, them being around would complicate the Polnya - Rossiya situation even more and isn't necessary for the novel's plot.
