The Dragon takes girls. He doesn't eat them. I'm condensing, obviously, and you'll see because you're going to read the book. Because it's great! But it starts out very strangely, what with the girls getting taken, but not eaten, and returned 10 years later, all wealthy and sophisticated. And the village knows that, this year, he will take Kasia. He must, for she is the most special girl. And yet, he takes Agnieszka. The Dragon is a wizard and Nieshka, is, to her utter flabbergastation, a witch.

Novik sets the scene so well, and draws the characters so thorough and sympathetically that eat turn of the plot is new and unexpected. It's a delightful sensation, tempered by the violence and death. The story is, generally, a fantasy on Eastern European fairy tales, with enough twist and flourish to capture the imagination while still being grounded. Novik's world is well drawn and the story telling is subtle, so that you can fill in quite a bit of the story as you like.

Nieshka is just the right sort of heroine: she does bad things for good reasons, which generate events that overwhelm, but which she doggedly pursues, doing even more bad things for better reasons. Kasia is just as great a heroine, although Novik never quite elevates her to primary character status. And, just for the sake of saying it, The Dragon was the character that actually drew me into the story. Tall, dark, and sarcastic, he comes across like the Severus Snape of fanfiction, all brains and potions and cutting words and smoldering, unresolved sex appeal. I, ahem, maybe would have liked Novik to give me a little more there.

TL;DR: Enjoy this! It's got wizards and evil queens and woods and werecows and magic rivers. Woo!