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Posted 20 hours ago

Uprooted

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ZTS2023
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So. Yeah. Already prejudiced against the Strangle-Trees ( or whatever they're called) in this story. If you love fairy tale-ish books - and don't mind if things get bleak and violent for a while - and haven't read this book yet, I strongly recommend Uprooted! Note should be made of the Dragon’s relationship with Agnieszka. At first, it feels very My Fair Lady, which lots of negative, insulting comments about every aspect of Nieshka’s character. I wasn’t surprised at the growth of emotional connection, and I thought it was handled reasonably organically. Likewise, Nieshka’s growing realization about the long lives of wizards and their growing emotional disconnection made sense. However, I was a little disappointed in how it developed, because it felt like a simple modernization (I’ll spend time on my own without a man! Grow my own life!) of a very old romance trope. The upshot is going to be Nieshka humanizes her calculating, emotionally distant man and will reconnect him to the roots of the world. A five start book might have pushed that conclusion harder. You'll take no one who doesn't wish to go', the Dragon said. 'Since you were a child, you've imagined yourself a hero out of legend—' all of that and there’s nothing overt that i can point to and say “ that’s where it lost me. that’s what i didn’t like.” it wasn’t that it was unenjoyable or a chore to read, it just never made my readerheart sparkle.

I had hated him, but I wouldn't have reproached him, any more than I would have reproached a bolt of lightning for striking my house. He wasn't a person . . . And Ag-noying (my new name for her) is just so...so...ordinary! At seventeen I was still a too-skinny colt of a girl with big feet and tangled dirt-brown hair, and my only gift, if you could call it that, was I would tear or stain or lose anything put on me between the hours of one day.You don't say! ONE STAR to character developments. I cannot stand any of them. Nearly all of them are as flat as a cardboard cutout. None experienced huge break throughs and if they did, it did not show in the book. The characters are none I can connect with and none I could care less about. As part of her own quest to decide whether or not to return to her roots, Olmstead revisits the stories of those who, like her great-grandparents and grandparents, made Emmett a strong community and her childhood idyllic. She looks at the stark realities of farming life today, identifying the government policies and big agriculture practices that make it almost impossible for such towns to survive. And she explores the ranks of Emmett’s newcomers and what growth means for the area’s farming tradition.In which we discuss the brilliant, beauteous, dark, and enchanting new fairy tale from Naomi Novik. its hooks hooked me: it’s a fairytaleish book with a spooky forest and a mysterious castle and an enigmatic wizard and a village with a long-standing and creepy tradition of gifting a young woman to the enigmatic wizard in the mysterious castle every ten years. I was under the impression this would be a bit more of a memoir (a la J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy) about a young woman grappling with her roo His nature is taciturn, impatient, and formal, so the villagers, despite their dependence on him for protection, fear him, despise him: It made me smile because it sounds a little like the premise for Cruel Beauty (which I loved) and A Court of Thorns and Roses (which I didn't love), but it's better and different than either of those. There's a touch of the romantic (and the heart-poundingly sexy), but Novik is both a tease and someone not concerned about being PG - which made the book infinitely better on that front than either of the other two mentioned.

although i know, with my logic-brain and my experiences and my readers’ advisory training, that not every book is going to “work” for every reader, i always feel a little bit guilty, a little bit broken, when a wildly popular book i had every expectation of loving falls short for me. First off, we'll begin with the character development. It was pretty much non existent. There was no interesting detail about any of the characters, and that left me not caring about any of their fates. But as for Sarkan (who was always snapping, glaring, and growling, reminded me of my rabid chihuahua) and A-jkidhl (because you can't honestly expect me to recall her name right?)Her people rely on the cold, ambitious wizard, known only as the Dragon, to keep the wood’s powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman must be handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as being lost to the wood. Though Uprooted makes a great many insightful observations, it doesn't ultimately give much guidance on progressing, personally or socially, towards rootedness, other than to say that, wherever we are, we should endeavor to put down roots and build community as best we can. And fine advice though this is, there are questions about the suitability to these efforts of the social soil of our suburbs and cities. Might political and cultural centralization have the same effects on the sustainability of our communities that Olmstead notes monocropping has on farmland? Might some places be more prone to a culture of placelessness than others? Might we need, at some point soon, to intentionally embrace the small, the local, and even the rural? After hitting two for two, Naomi Novik has turned into a must-read author for me. I can't wait to dive into more of her books.

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