Uprooted by Naomi Novik : Review

“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 ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

There is no denying that Naomi Novik is an amazing author and anyone who has read her Temeraire series would probably agree with me. With Uprooted Naomi Novik shows she can move books about dragons and feuding governments and still manage to write a great story. I wasn’t really sure what to make of Uprooted in the first couple chapters but I knew right away I was reading something special. Like every other book by Naomi Novik I found myself sucked into the book as the story progressed and by the last chapter I didn’t want to see it end.

Every ten years the Dragon comes down from his tower to pick a young girl from one of the local villages to take back up to his tower with him. No one can say what happens to a girl chosen by the Dragon once the doors of his tower close behind her. The only thing people know for sure is she will emerge in 10 years a changed person who quickly leaves her village far behind her, never to return. It has now been 10 years and the Agnieszka, along with all the other girls of the nearby villages are lined up and waiting for the Dragon to emerge and make his choice.

This book was simply amazing, it was bar far one of the better books I have read this year, and while I probably say that after every book I read, there is just something enchanting about Uprooted. I don’t know if its the almost fairy tale like plot and setting or the the enjoyable cast of characters, but i was unable to put this book down from start to finish. I would warn anyone who has read anything else by Naomi Novik not to go into this story expecting anything remotely similar to her Temeraire series, because if they do they will find themselves greatly disappointed. Uprooted was really like nothing else I have ever read, and considering how much I read that’s really saying something.

I would easily give Uprooted 6 out of 5 stars, and put it on my list of books I will probably be reading over and over again for the rest of my life. I really hope this turns out to be a long and drawn out series of books.

I received a free copy of this book for an honest review.
Uprooted by Naomi Novik is set to be published on May 19th, 2015 by Del Rey