Nieshka is a delightful narrator! She’s always practical, largely sensible, but she’s always 2 seconds away from an accident. “What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.” However, expectactions are quickly turned on its head when the Dragon whisks Nieshka to his tower instead. Nieshka was born a Dragon-girl, but everyone knew that the Dragon will undoubtedly choose her best friend: bright, beautiful, brave Kasia. The girls never choose to linger in the village, they set abroad almost immediately. Anyway, the Dragon takes these girls, then return them with a handsome fortune ten years later. Go on, click the link, go buy it, I’ll still be here waiting. Oh, this book has one of the best opening paragraph ever, I knew I had to own it as soon as I read the free sample on Barnes & Noble. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful. Of course, that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley… They talk as though we were doing human sacrifices, and he were a real dragon. The focus of the tale is on Agniezka (henceforth referred to as Nieshka, I can’t spell her name, ok), her friendship with Kasia, her tumultuous relationship with Dragon and magic, and her struggle with the Wood. This time, the dragon in the story isn’t the adorably blunt Chinese Celestial Temeraire, but a (mostly!) human man. It also reminds me of Naomi Novik’s previous series: the wildly entertaining Temeraire. Uprooted is a modern take on a classic coming-of-age fantasy, the tone reminds me of all of my old favourites: Juliet Marillier, Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones.

Uprooted barnes and noble