As someone who grew up reading endless variations of fairy tales and folk tales, I absolutely love Uprooted as a new addition to an old genre. 

Novik crafts a story that feels right at home with other fairy tales: a farm girl, a wizard who lives in a tower, a malevolent forest. As a result, it includes fairy tale trappings that can disorient a modern reader: magical items that suddenly appear, a main character working off of instinct rather than strategy. It's also a story that doesn't shy away from the ugly bits that don't make it into songs, like the deaths of foot soldiers whose names you'll never learn. 

Particularly memorable: 
- The descriptions of the many awful ways the Wood twists its victims 
- Kasia and Agnieszka recognizing and working through the complicated feelings regarding who is chosen
- Agnieszka

figuring out that the Dragon is all bark, no bite

and then

doing whatever she wants