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Aug 02, 2017
I read through Uprooted very quickly. It is action-packed. In this respect, especially as regards violent action, I was reminded of the young adult genre's move towards graphic violence, heralded by Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. It is not a move I have enjoyed seeing in literature. The action of Uprooted is what appears to have caused this book to be deemed a good one. In my "book", that does not make for a good book. Uprooted suffers from a lack of a coherent theme or themes. As I thought about the book afterwards I couldn't land on any--good versus evil? environmentalism? the evil inside us all? the fruit of bitterness? All found within the book, but none clearly the main theme. This was the result of the story's incoherence. It opens with one kind of story, about a foreboding character called the Dragon. It shifts to the protagonist's relationship with the Dragon. Then the protagonist is in the capital city, and so on and so on. These are connected in some ways--same characters, same setting--but in a jumpy fashion. I would think the story was going to be about one thing...and then it wasn't. Ultimately I did not find this was for the sake of suspense, but the result of a lack of story planning. Third, the magic was not believable. Its use came off too many times as a tool to propel the action of the story forward. Moreover, the development and history of the magic was not clear enough to cloud my mind from questioning it. And finally--thank you, Greyism (see comment below). The protagonists' relationship with the Dragon character is unhealthy, but not presented as such. Literarily, Novik did not fully form the relationship and misstepped further in amping the intimacy of it, particularly in a book considered YA. Disclaimer: there is a sex scene. No thank you, Novik. In conclusion, I wanted to like the book, but overall I did not.