It has everything I wanted to read for the past few months– fairytale elements, evil cop-killing crop-poisoning forest, real dirty grungy heroines, homoerotic bestfriendship between two women that isn't fraught due to another guy, mothers both young and old, wizards in towers, wizards who fuck, wizards who don't fuck but do fuck around, wizards who found out, princes who are stupidly arrogant

and dead

, princes who are noble

and dead

, multiple nuanced queens, magic rivers that end nowhere, baba yaga's footnotes, rotten fruit you can't help but eat,

extra large praying mantises

, the first forays into video calling technology, the indescribable power of people never leaving their homes despite danger and the threat to life, and

rehabilitation after great environmental disasters.

10/10 would recommend and read other of Naomi Novik's works honestly

This was a fun, original, and sometimes nail-biting read. 

I had high expectations, and they weren't quite met.

I enjoyed this book. The plot was unique and interesting, but it was too long. It also could have benefitted from some breaks. Like Part 1 and Part 2, or Act 2 or something, because there is a dramatic shift in the story partway through.

The characters were a mixed bag. The MMC was fine for me, but he was very cruel and not well developed. The FMC was a special snowflake that somehow always knew how to do stuff. It was a pattern of people saying this can't be done and her being like, here you go, I did it! 

The writing could have been better as well. A lot of times I had trouble following the descriptions, like during fight scenes. Then other times, there was so much description of one tiny thing that I was feeling bored. Also this book was very gruesome and gory at times, just FYI. 

Overall, I enjoyed it, I'm glad I read it. I wish it was shorter and more time had been spent on the magic system and world building. Also, the very end annoyed me, but I'm still curious to try another of her books.

Like Spinning Silver, this book is far longer than it needs to be.  I like the story, but it didn’t need to be dragged out so much.  And I’m left feeling puzzled - so NO ONE was truly evil?  Just confused?
Spinning Silver is a better tale.

My third book by Novik! To be blunt, while I did enjoy this one, I prefer Spinning Silver. There were a couple things that felt off to me and stopped me from enjoying it as much as I thought I was going to. Part of it was the pacing towards the second half of the book. I thought it felt a little rushed, especially after Agnieszka

and Kasia escaped back to the tower with the children

, and that the ending was a little weird/abrupt, too.

The characters were fine - for me they fell a bit flat and weren’t particularly loveable or relatable. I also couldn’t get behind the romance - since there were so few scenes and so little development, it felt as though they would have made more sense as unlikely friends (and that it wouldn’t have affected the story all that much). I’m all for lowkey, second-to-the-plot romances - in fact, I usually prefer them - this one just didn’t work for me.

I should stress that while it wasn’t my favourite, and though I’ve gone into more depth about the things I disliked than the things I liked, there were lots of things I enjoyed about this book, including: 
- The overall writing/story/plot, which was on par with Novik’s usual standards - well written, thought-provoking, and creative. 
- The magic system was interesting, and I really liked the descriptions of it.
- Agnieszka’s friendship with Kasia. It’s always nice to read about a friendship that’s so obviously full of love and trust.

Overall, I’m glad I read this book, and recommend just giving it a try if you’re on the fence about it.

Uprooted comes alive on the page, the magic seeming to come alive on my fingers where they touch the page, alive. Novik's ability to translate the ephemeral into tangible - Agnieszka's magic likened to gleaning the forest for berries, and Sarkan's to academia  - is unparalleled. I almost believed I could cast a spell myself after looking up from the pages.

So, too, do Novik's characters come alive, leaping with life. It's hard to not love Agnieszka's scrappy defiance, Sarkan's dry wit, Kasia's unwavering devotion. 

This book begins by recounting a tale of the Dragon taking a girl from the valley into his tower every ten years, but Uprooted is not so simple. The story starts with the Dragon, but then winds itself through the valley, the whole of Polnya, into the Wood; then folds back on itself, layering life and violence and beauty and corruption into an intricate web. Just when you think the story is getting good, just when you think there's going to be the climax, there's still dozens to hundreds of pages left, leaving you thinking, What could possibly happen next? And then you peel back layer after layer, finally settling down onto the mossy forest floor, looking at the sun dappling through the leaves, boughs heavy with fruit.

There's a reason this book isn't a 5.0 for me, though: the love interest. I'll spoiler tag it, but it's really not that much of a spoiler:

Agnieszka and Sarkan.

The story goes that

the Dragon kidnaps a girl from the valley and locks her up in his tower

. How am I supposed to jive with that? That's not even mentioning that fact that he is 8 times her age. When they meet, she is seventeen goddamn years old, and he is at least 150. How do I know that? It's brought up more than once.

When they finally sleep together, he even protests, saying that he's way too old.

Honestly, that makes it even worse, like he's absolved of all blame just because he mentions the one-hundred-year age gap, but goes along with it anyway. Even though I love them both as characters, and by the end I was aching to see them together, it doesn't sit right with me to read the really old guy falling in love with the mature-for-her-age child. (Besides,

Kasia

was the obvious choice for

Agnieszka

, anyway. Why are we so afraid of putting gay people in our fantasy?)

That said, this is a truly beautiful book, and I enjoyed it very much.