Uprooted

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I do plan to edit this review some time later in the near future (hopefully whenever I get into the critical reviewing headspace) rewriting it into a more coherent and concise review. But for now, I'll just leave this little note.

If you want to learn more about Bookshelves specifically, please read the Bookshelves FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). This book would have been far more effective had the friendship at the start been allowed more time to develop. It was thrown into the action that much, that when the romance came it made no sense. It didn’t have time to work; it just sprung and left me feeling a little surprised. It was a case of where did that come from? I think there should have been much more time spent in the tower, as the rest of the world was slowly, and gradually, revealed. That way this could have easily ended at the midway point. Left to his own devices, he would never have chosen her as his new companion, but Agnieszka has magic, and the King's Law states that any found with the talent must be trained, so choose her he does.

Success!

Kasia is Agnieszka's best and only friend. She is also the girl that everyone expected the Dragon to choose. So imagine my dismay when shortly after she escapes that fate, she is abducted by one of the Wood's foul creatures. Through notes left by previous girls, Agnieszka gathers that her role is mostly household duties. But the reason for his choice is that she has magical abilities, and he starts teaching her simple spells. Agnieszka finds these acts of magic difficult and unnatural. I really enjoyed the later part of the novel as it had lots of court intrigue, fighting and Hest learning about mysterious powers he didn't know he had.

What an incredible fairy tale. This book is a lot like the The Wood that dominates this story, luring you close, whispering in your ear, offering you the most tantalizing temptations, if only you'll be persuaded into it. The difference between the two is that where The Wood is a dark, twisted creation that speaks only lies, this book delivers on its promises. 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 . . . Guys, I know I'm late to the party, but this book was so worthy of all the stars. I'm still goo-goo eyed at how beautiful and breathtaking the writing is; saying it is atmospheric and quirky and full of heart and soul doesn't even do it justice, but I'm not sure there are proper words in the english language to convey the feelings this book gave me. Right after I finished this one, Mr. Humphrey asked me what it was about and I stuttered and stumbled through some semblance of a description because HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE THIS BOOK? Everything I said made no sense, just as this review will likely make little to no sense, but I'll try my best to convince you to give this one a try if you enjoy a fantasy that is equal parts tenderness and epic growth. Oh wait, there's more. The Dragon also insulted her by calling her an idiot every steps of the way. About more than THREE times in the book. Indeed, even our author seems bewildered by the choice she feels she will have to eventually make. The book concludes without the reader discovering if or when Olmstead will return home, because she herself still does not know (though she suspects her parents' advancing age will force her hand). And this is a fine illustration of the difficulty that rootedness has to surmount today. The fact that someone with such deep, multigenerational connections to a particular place and a clear desire to send down new roots there can struggle so mightily and publicly to "return home" suggests that even those of us who know that place matters are unready, if not unable, to act that way.

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! A friend had previously warned me about the writing style but I did not heed caution cause in my mind you don't have to be a poet to woo me. But crap, you at least have to have some finesse. Agnieszka convinces the Dragon to help her to defeat the forest once and for all. They try to burn the heart tree in which the Wood-Queen is entombed, but she defeats them and forces Agnieszka into a tree trunk. Agnieszka has a vision of the past where the Wood-Queen was part of a magical people who lived in the forest. The Wood Queen married a human king, but when he died his people turned on the wood people, causing them to become trees to protect themselves. After the humans failed to kill the Wood Queen, she returned to her people only to find that they had turned themselves into trees. The Wood-Queen was distraught with grief and hatred for what humans had done to her people. She began sealing human beings into heart-trees in an effort to protect her people and preserve what was left of them. The Wood's corruption came from hatred and misery. Agnieszka escapes the tree and tells the Wood-Queen to heal her sister's tree with her own body. She helps the Wood-Queen change into a tree, something that the Wood-Queen had not been able to achieve alone. Several decades ago Robert Nisbet called the problem of rootlessness, of community lost, "the towering moral problem of the age." But despite the problem's crucial importance, it is one that is ignored no less in our day than it was in Nisbet's. Now as then, Americans move to and fro, seeking wealth, importance, and novelty, but rarely looking for home in the broad sense. A penetrating exploration of that problem, and its consequences for both places and the placeless, is badly needed. Unfortunately, Grace Olmstead's Uprooted is not that book. Hest is a stable hand in a country, which gets its light from two stars. Not much grows, but that's the only way he knows things. He's heard stories about the other side of the planet, where the sun only shines and burns everything. Then, there's area in between, and that's where their food and wood comes from. When a warrior from this lusher country visits the inn and demands Hest take special care of his horse, little does he realize that his life is about to change. The warrior pays Hest's foster mother money for him, and Hest finds himself as the squire to a man, who knows kings and is about to go to war.

Once in the Wood, they face the monsters that have been created by the Wood-Queen, a woman who was a member of the people who lived in the land long before Agnieszka's people and who had manifested herself in Queen Hannah's body. They clashed with Agnieszka's people and most chose to become trees in the Wood. But the Wood-Queen, who had been treated horribly in life, allowed anger to consume her to the point that she had corrupted everything in the Wood. Agnieszka and Sarkan initially try to destroy her, but Agnieszka comes to realize that she needs to help her make the transition to a tree state, and to understand that nothing is meant to last forever – including the trees.

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. Ok so to start with this book took me months to read...MONTHS I tell you. Actually looking at the dates on Goodreads it was close to a year but I did start and stop a lot so... I can normally devour a fantasy book twice this size in half the time . I just wasn’t interested. 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?) 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. It is also the story of the Dragon, a man steeped in a type of learned magic, someone who goes through an awakening just as Agnieszka does.