Uprooted

By: Naomi Novik

Narrated by: Julia Emelin

Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

NEBULA AWARD WINNER • HUGO AWARD FINALIST • “If you want a fantasy with strong characters and brilliantly original variations on ancient stories, try Uprooted!”—Rick Riordan

“Breathtaking . . . a tale that is both elegantly grand and earthily humble, familiar as a Grimm fairy tale yet fresh, original, and totally irresistible.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, BuzzFeed, Tordotcom, BookPage, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

©2015 Naomi Novik (P)2015 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book I’ve Read Yet This Year. . . . Moving, heartbreaking, and thoroughly satisfying, Uprooted is the fantasy novel I feel I’ve been waiting a lifetime for. Clear your schedule before picking it up, because you won’t want to put it down.”—NPR

“A very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic . . . Naomi Novik skillfully takes the fairy-tale-turned-bildungsroman structure of her premise . . . and builds enough flesh on those bones to make a very different animal. . . . The vivid characters around her also echo their fairy-tale forebears, but are grounded in real-world ambivalence that makes this book feel quietly mature, its world lived-in.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Novik here delivers a tale that is funny and fast-paced, laced with hair-raising battle scenes and conspiracies; it also touches on deeper ecological concerns we grapple with today.”—The Washington Post

Narration is a Serious Issue

Trying to engage with the story and overlook the difficulties with the narration but audiobooks by their nature, make this an obstacle.

It isn't the accent that's at issue but the expression. Like other reviewers before me, I'm experiencing a challenge with the intonation and sentence cadence. It is similar to using an enabled audio feature on a webpage where an automated voice reads the words but doesn't impart any meaning. Comprehension is harder because one has to reconcile the odd cadence (pauses and emphasis are unexpected), discern the sentence structure, and figure out the story.

I want to finish the book but not sure if I can endure the automaton narration. :(

Loved the story and narration

I loved this book and I didn’t have any problem understanding the narration. People seem to have issues with her intonation, accent, and rhythm but I liked it. I also thought it was refreshing to have a non English accented character. It’s good to expand your horizons.

A little village near a Dark Wood...

Agnieszka is the daughter of a woodcutter, living in a quiet village in a peaceful valley--bounded by a menacing Wood where dark forces lurk. The Dragon, a cold and remote wizard, is their valley's defense against the Wood, but there is a price: every ten years, he chooses one seventeen-year-old girl to serve him for the next ten years. The girls emerge from the tower at the end of their service seemingly unharmed, but changed. They don't stay in the valley; they take the dowry the Dragon gives them and move elsewhere. Admittedly to prosperous, successful lives, but leaving the valley seems unimaginable.

Agnieszka and her best friend, Kasia, are "Dragon-born," i.e., seventeen years old in the year the Dragon will next claim a new servant. Everyone knows that that new servant will be Kasia. Kasia is everything the Dragon looks for--beautiful, clever, kind, and brave. Agnieszka dreads losing her friend forever.

But when the day comes, it's not Kasia the Dragon takes away to his tower; it's Agnieszka. Grumpily, reluctantly, he announces that he "had better" take Agnieszka.

Because the Dragon does not explain anything, it's quite a while before she begins to understand why the Dragon decided he "had better" take her rather than Kasia.

Agnieszka has embarked, unknowingly, on an adventure that will take both her and Kasia to the Wood, to the capital, and on a journey of self-discovery that holds the potential to bring salvation or destruction on everything she loves.

Once I started Uprooted, I couldn't stop till I was done. Agnieszka is stubborn, argumentative, kind, and loyal. The Dragon is slowly revealed as a complicated, difficult character, with real strengths and real flaws. Kasia, too, is much more than the rather simplistic role everyone had unconsciously assigned her. Even Prince Marek, who in a superficial reading is assigned a "bad guy" role, is a good deal more layered than that simple role, brave, egotistical, seeing through manipulative scheming, ambitious, rebuking a lord for imposing too-high taxes rather than punishing the peasant who stole a sheep because of the burden of those taxes. Right to the end, I had real doubt about how Marek would turn out--and how he turned out remained complicated.

I want to say lots more about Agnieszka here, what she learns, what she accomplishes, and her complex, layered relationship with the Dragon, but every time I try I wind up deleting it as too spoiler-y. Read the book! Get to know her!

This book is a Hugo finalist this year, and it thoroughly deserves to be. Highly recommended.

I bought this book.

OK story, poor narration

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Not really. It's not up to the standard I expect from Naomi Novik. The characters lack depth, and the main character is difficult to relate to. She wavers quite drastically between insecurity and arrogance, and doesn't think most situations through. I realize impulsiveness and chance are a large part of what drives her magic, but a girl raised by a woodcutter next to a lethal forest would have a great deal more caution and forethought.

What didn’t you like about Julia Emelin’s performance?

The problem isn't the accent, it's the stilted, wooden performance. Emelin spends too much time forming the words, rolling out the too-heavy accent, and not focusing on acting. It's ponderous and challenging to listen to, which steals too much magic from the storytelling.

Her bio seemed noteworthy, and I'd thought a Russian-born speaker would be an intriguing change, but my expectations were clearly too high. I'm generally a huge fan of Tantor productions, especially considering I have all of Novik's "His Majesty's Dragon" series as narrated by Simon Vance and re-listen to them often.

Hard to focus...

Would you be willing to try another book from Naomi Novik? Why or why not?

If somebody else was reading I think my ratings would have been different. The author isn't the problem as far as I know, it's the cadence of the reader.

Any additional comments?

I had such a hard time following along with the story, it seemed horribly wooden because of the narrator. Her accent isn't what bothers me. I realized that after getting through, it's the cadence of it, It's like listening to new readers trying to awkwardly give a report.

Slow narrative (Spinning Silver is Better)

The character doesn't seem fluent in her own language so everything is painfully dumbed/slowed down.

the broken English was jarring.

The choice of a native Russian speaker to read this would seem like a good idea, but the disjointed, irregular pattern of English disrupted the flow of the written word-- Illogical also, since the characters were supposedly speaking in their native tongue.

Well Done

I really liked this story. There were a lot of old elements with new takes that I found enchanting. I personally really liked the narrator. The accent and speech patterns made it feel like I was sitting in front of a traveling story teller. However, I grew up around people who didn't speak English as a first language and with that plus the faerie tale feel, this story made me feel like a kid again. The only problem I had with it was the romance line, and it wasn't so big of a problem that it disturbed my enjoyment of the rest of the tale. Overall, I'd highly recommend this book to those who enjoy faerie tales or high fantasy.

read the book. skip the audio!

I read the book several times and loved it but when I tried to listen to the audio book it was agony. I understand the accent is meant to keep in line with the origin of the story but holy moly was the narration grating on the ears. You can't enjoy the masterful storytelling because you're so focused on understanding the words coming out of the narrator's mouth. I don't know how many times I had to rewind to catch what she was saying. I highly recommend reading this book though. Such a great story about learning to love yourself, but mostly about hatred and forgiveness. This is not a romantic love story between the two main characters. There is definitely an intimacy that grows between them but it is more like the intimacy shared by dance partners. There is a sex scene born out of "we're going to die here so why not!" and I think they grow to love each other but we don't get to see that and the story isn't about their romantic love. A huge section of this book is violent and dark and hope doesn't come until the very last moment but that is what makes it great.

Great story, tough listen

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

It was recommended to me by a friend, as a it happens! I think I'd be more likely to recommend the novel over this particular audio version, but that's just a personal preference.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Uprooted?

Every time any character set foot in the forest was shiver-city for me!

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

The pace was fine, but the editing of the performance left strange gaps, and made the narrator sound stilted.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, but it doesn't pay to be greedy. I wanted to savor it, too.

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed the authentic accent (while the location of the book is ostensibly fictional, it shares many characteristics with Eastern Europe) but did not think the audio was edited as smoothly as it ought to have been for a truly immersive listening experience.