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Sep. 30th, 2015 10:33 amUprooted by Naomi Novik
This book was great. Everything everyone said about it is true, Novik is dazzling at telling a story that upturns fairy tale convention at every turn while still being a really, really great fairy tale.
Agnieszka is a fantastic heroine and I love how Novik's magic system entwines itself with and supports the narrative. There is Harry Pottery/Vancey mechanical magic where particular words and phrases and spells, pronounced in exactly the right way with exactly the right spell components creates a specific, known effect, but then there is fairy tale magic of intuiting how to make use of the spell components and emotions and ideas available to create new magic, and Novik uses both of those ideas comprehensively to build a single magical system that is thrillingly complex and alive.
And rather than privileging one or the other, rather than saying that fairy tale magic is better because Agnieszka our hero does it, Novik forces the Dragon and Agnieszka to work together, to harness rationalist magic and intuitive magic, in order to do the most powerful spells, which require a stable platform and then improvisational creativity together to unleash their effects. That itself is a pretty rare synthesis in fantasy novels (Something similar but less developed haunts the end of Lev Grossman's The Magician King). But Novik doesn't stop there! She then has Agnieszka later combine her magic with Solya and with other rationalist mages, with differing effects each time. The synthesis of rationalism and intuition isn't an end in itself, it's just a resonance pattern in a complicated and dynamic magical ecosystem. <3 <3
And the Agnieszka/Kasia relationship! And Agnieszka and Alosha! And the sword that will kill anything and the unkillable forest and the marvelous subversion of fairy tale tropes it constitutes! And the slow realization over many chapters that leads to Agnieszka's triumph being not some magical ascension, but her return home to her family and her community, so that she defies all the predictions of the novel's first page at last. What a beautiful ending Uprooted has.
This book was great. Everything everyone said about it is true, Novik is dazzling at telling a story that upturns fairy tale convention at every turn while still being a really, really great fairy tale.
Agnieszka is a fantastic heroine and I love how Novik's magic system entwines itself with and supports the narrative. There is Harry Pottery/Vancey mechanical magic where particular words and phrases and spells, pronounced in exactly the right way with exactly the right spell components creates a specific, known effect, but then there is fairy tale magic of intuiting how to make use of the spell components and emotions and ideas available to create new magic, and Novik uses both of those ideas comprehensively to build a single magical system that is thrillingly complex and alive.
And rather than privileging one or the other, rather than saying that fairy tale magic is better because Agnieszka our hero does it, Novik forces the Dragon and Agnieszka to work together, to harness rationalist magic and intuitive magic, in order to do the most powerful spells, which require a stable platform and then improvisational creativity together to unleash their effects. That itself is a pretty rare synthesis in fantasy novels (Something similar but less developed haunts the end of Lev Grossman's The Magician King). But Novik doesn't stop there! She then has Agnieszka later combine her magic with Solya and with other rationalist mages, with differing effects each time. The synthesis of rationalism and intuition isn't an end in itself, it's just a resonance pattern in a complicated and dynamic magical ecosystem. <3 <3
And the Agnieszka/Kasia relationship! And Agnieszka and Alosha! And the sword that will kill anything and the unkillable forest and the marvelous subversion of fairy tale tropes it constitutes! And the slow realization over many chapters that leads to Agnieszka's triumph being not some magical ascension, but her return home to her family and her community, so that she defies all the predictions of the novel's first page at last. What a beautiful ending Uprooted has.