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A review by onejadyn
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
1.5
This review has spoilers
I read this based on a recommendation online and honestly had a terrible time with this book. I almost DNF'd it, but instead skimmed to the end. Honestly, the concept was cool. I liked the concept of the Woods and the corruption, but honestly the characters were just so dry.
The main character was an overwhelmingly strong wizard despite a lack of training due to using a specific kind of magic, and honestly was roughly as dull as a rock. Aside from her love for Katsia, there were little real motivations or anything deep that drove her to action.
While the first few chapters in the tower weren't amazing, I assumed they'd build up to be greater then themselves. Instead we end up dawdling in the court of a nearby city, getting made fun of by some random noble woman while the main character just does nothing useful.
Soon after, everything goes wrong, corruption is discovered, the army is on the move, the king is dead ... but I just don't care. I can't even fully describe why, but while I did somewhat want to know how the situation resolved, reading about it was like pulling teeth. It was hard to convince myself to continue. It felt dry, dry, dry. I think largely because I didn't care for the main character.
At the end we got a half baked love story with the Dragon which seems to be 80% magic-lust and 20% "I guess we've been through a lot together".
Honestly I didn't much enjoy this, and it was hard to get through.
There were a lot of decent ideas and there was a cool story in there somewhere, but for whatever reason, I could never be made to care.
tl;dr: The plot could've been good but the characters were dry and boring. I was about as invested as I would've been reading a history book about people I didn't know and had only scarcely heard of. The "romance" was half baked, the penultimate friendship was not explored, and overall it fell short in a number of ways
1.5/5
The main character was an overwhelmingly strong wizard despite a lack of training due to using a specific kind of magic, and honestly was roughly as dull as a rock. Aside from her love for Katsia, there were little real motivations or anything deep that drove her to action.
While the first few chapters in the tower weren't amazing, I assumed they'd build up to be greater then themselves. Instead we end up dawdling in the court of a nearby city, getting made fun of by some random noble woman while the main character just does nothing useful.
Soon after, everything goes wrong, corruption is discovered, the army is on the move, the king is dead ... but I just don't care. I can't even fully describe why, but while I did somewhat want to know how the situation resolved, reading about it was like pulling teeth. It was hard to convince myself to continue. It felt dry, dry, dry. I think largely because I didn't care for the main character.
At the end we got a half baked love story with the Dragon which seems to be 80% magic-lust and 20% "I guess we've been through a lot together".
Honestly I didn't much enjoy this, and it was hard to get through.
There were a lot of decent ideas and there was a cool story in there somewhere, but for whatever reason, I could never be made to care.
tl;dr: The plot could've been good but the characters were dry and boring. I was about as invested as I would've been reading a history book about people I didn't know and had only scarcely heard of. The "romance" was half baked, the penultimate friendship was not explored, and overall it fell short in a number of ways
1.5/5