A Tale of Two MOBIs Part 1: The Best of Times

To Begin

I didn't start this blog with the intention of reviewing books. I have a post getting ready to be vetted and published talking about some of the things I discovered last year doing my Goodreads book challenge, but this has to take precedence. Being a writer with a fragile ego, I didn't even want to talk about other people's writing. Karmic retribution and all that. But the past two weeks have been interesting. In a powerful one-two punch, I found myself reading one of the absolute best books I've ever read...and then one of the absolute worst.

So to start with, here's the book that's changed my life.

Uprooted, by Naomi Novik

Oh, man. Obligatory Goodreads link, but I heartily recommend avoiding the synopsis or reviews or really any information. In fact, ignore the rest of this post.

As I was reading this, I was thinking to myself, "I can already tell that this will be a book I won't shut the hell up about to anyone." I first heard about it on the Writing Excuses podcast, where they let you pick up a free Audible book every week. They went for this one, and after I was done listening to Brandon Sanderson's explanation of why he thought this book was great, I had decided I would eventually get around to it. "Eventually," because I've known of Novik's Temeraire books and I've heard incredibly mixed messages about it. One person has told me they've devoured that series in one bite, and one person has told me it was the only series they couldn't finish.

The book is...flawless. I don't know. It's the kind of book that made me put it down and sigh, because I suddenly felt like nothing I would write would ever be this. That this book was what I had wanted to create, and now it had been created, and that was it. Time to pack up, turn the lights off one last time, and go home. For the first 24 hour after finishing it, the rest of life seemed perfunctory.

Without spoiling, the book starts with the knowledge that a girl is taken every ten years or so by the Dragon, much like in old stories. Only right away we're told, the Dragon isn't a dragon, but in fact a man, a powerful wizard. Everything in the main character's life is quiet, and insignificant, and expected. She is absolutely positive her best friend will be taken by the Dragon. She is absolutely fine with her provincial life.

And in the backdrop, something dangerously akin to the Black Forest of fairy tales looms.

Things just get steadily more cray from there.

Here there be slight spoilers.

The main character, Agnieszka, is everything you'd want in a heroine: imperfect, endearing, slowly gaining a sense of self and power over the course of the book through decisions she makes of her own accord.  

I wish I could gush about all this more, about the way the magic works and the way the Polish undertones of it shine through, an influence I almost nearly never see in literature, much less fantasy.  From the description of the food, to the clothes, to the mannerisms of the people, everything is fluid and believable. The politics start out complicated and discordant from the rest of the story before slowly weaving itself in to the larger plot as stakes raise themselves and Agnieszka lets herself move further and further out of her comfort zone. As her world broadens, so does the worldbuilding. It reads like a fairy tale, in that information is released only as it becomes relevant. 

For me I think the relationships really shone: one of the key points of the book is the love Agnieszka has for her best friend, Kasia. It almost overshadows the growing relationship that happens between herself and the initially unlikeable, unflappable Dragon. In fact, the ONLY complaint I had about this book is that I felt unsatisfied with the romance. Not because it was terrible,  but because what was there wasn't enough. I wanted even more. But what is there, is absolute magic. 

There's no more spoilers here.

I stayed up till sunrise reading this book, multiple times. I sleepily yelled at kids, because of this book. I was exhausted and sick for a week, because I could not stop reading this book. This is the second book reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast that I've read this year, the first being Sarah J Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses (also good), but this has left much more of an imprint on me. 

At times for me, this book felt like a much more grown-up Howl's Moving Castle. Being grown-up doesn't make it inherently better than Jones's classic, but it felt like it shared a lot of the same ideas and feelings, only without feeling stale and overused. It is real, honest fantasy, freshened by beautiful writing and a story that even when predictable, delights you with every passing sentence. Even the cover feels more reminiscent of YA fantasy the way it used to be, before werewolves and vampires took over and Steampunk blew in on an airship festooned with tropes.

This book is wonderful, this prose is phenomenal. This ending left me grinning from ear to ear. I feel like I have to run through the streets lobbing copies at people's heads like a deranged paperboy, only this book is the News and it is Good.

Read this book.