 Hey guys it's Leanne and I'm here today to rant about uprooted by Naomi Novik. This is once again a book that I thought I would love that everybody seems to love and I hated. And if you've been watching my vlogs then you've watched me struggle with it. So this will come as no surprise. In fact it has been requested. Yeah so uprooted. Let's just get into it real quick. If you've never heard of uprooted and you don't know what it is, uprooted is a standalone adult fantasy. I have seen people say it's YA. It is not YA. It is adult. And it should be considered adult. It's not one of those where like it could be either. It's definitely adult. And it is kind of Slavic, Russian, Eastern European inspired. The world and names and magic and food are. And basically the beginning of the book, the premise is that there is this little village that lives, that is situated near this magical dark mysterious wood. And the wood is kind of sentient and evil. The thing, the who that is protecting the village from this evil wood is this wizard known as the dragon who lives in a tower in the vicinity. And every 10 years the dragon chooses a girl who's 17 I think from this village to come to his tower with him and live with him for the next 10 years. And then after those 10 years elapse then he's done with her and she leaves and doesn't return to the village. She's like goes off and lives her life somewhere else. And then he chooses another girl and then she lives with him for the next 10 years. And he's kind of immortal. So like he looks young but he's been doing this for who knows how long. So the story starts out with our main character Agnishka. Yeah Agnishka I think is how you say it. I might be wrong about that but her name is spelled intensely. She's also called by her friend Mishka. So maybe I'll refer to her as Mishka for the rest of this video because it's effort. So Mishka is best friends with this girl named Kasia who's very very very very beautiful and everyone in the village is kind of assumed for most of their lives that Kasia when she came of age would be the one the dragon would choose next. But the dragon shows up and this is like page five when this happens. It's not a spoiler. The dragon shows up and instead of choosing Kasia he chooses Mishka. I mean no one saw that coming. So he takes Mishka to his tower and then from there the book is like her being in the tower, her learning more about his magic, her learning about just magic in general, and then the wood becomes like the threat of the wood is wrapped up and then the rest of the world of the book becomes more involved. Like because of the threat of the wood then like kings and princes and neighboring countries and war and like other stuff comes into it because the stakes are raised is I feel like the easiest way to explain without spoilers that like more parties become involved in the threat of the wood. So that all sounds fabulous. A Slavic Eastern European world with dark magic and a mysterious ancient wizard figure and an evil wood and all of that sounds atmospheric and great and this book had been written by Catherine Arden who wrote The Bear and the Nightingale or Lainey Taylor or someone with a gift for lyrical poetic, archaic, ancient sounding magic and stuff. This probably would be a great book but the book is the flattest prose that I have ever read. The flattest most two-dimensional and boring characters that I have ever read, they none of them have personalities, well they have like traits but they don't have personalities and then the magic system is one of those extremely soft magic systems that makes absolutely no sense. There are no rules, there are no, there's no boundaries, there's nothing explained to you which does absolutely work for me if the story is told in that extremely fairy tale kind of way because magic and fairy tales doesn't really have rules. So again or when I was listing authors who should have written this if this had been written by Catherine Valente who wrote Deathless, the magic in Deathless is doesn't make any sense and is Russian inspired. If a book is written in that way where it comes across like this ancient old story with ancient old fairy tale folklore stuff and your magic system is kind of wibbly wobbly that works for me just fine because the whole thing has this sense of mystery and earthy ancient magic but the prose in this book was so flat and then all of a sudden we'd have this instance of magic that makes zero sense. It's told to you in this way that's, it's trying to be lyrical for a second because you have these utterly flat characters and prose and all of a sudden like to explain the magic thing that's going on all of a sudden it turns into like somebody like envisioning what they're doing as a form of nature and it's all explained in this extremely metaphorical way that I can't really even picture and because the rest of it is so flat it doesn't just flow as like one of those like magical things if that makes sense like I don't have a problem with self-magic systems but you have there's a trick to executing them well and it's not in a prudent and once again like I've complained now for a few books because I do not care about the characters because the characters are badly written then I do not care about the rest of the world I do not care about the stakes I don't care that they're in danger and between the flat prose and the flat characters and everything else even the things that were somewhat well executed I didn't care about the people in this situation so I did not care about the situation so Nishka has no personality and she's kind of insufferable and the only trait she has is that she's kind of clumsy and filthy and this is a source of great frustration for the dragon who's very neat and tidy and ornery and that is them you do not there is nothing else to be known about Nishka or the dragon that that's all you that's the only sense of them you ever get to that and then Nishka is supposedly devotedly in love with her friend not in love but she loves loves loves loves loves her friend Kasia now is this relationship developed do you really get to see the friendship of these girls and how is it shown to you how tightly bound these two girls are no it is told to you over and over and over again because Nishka throughout the book because Kasia comes into it because Kasia's in danger and so Kasia becomes one of the main characters and you know in Rise of Skywalker how people like to make fun of the fact that that for the entirety of Rise of Skywalker Finn just kept going Ray Ray Ray what what do you want so for the entirety of a rooted the amount of times Nishka is like but Kasia but Kasia but we have to save Kasia but I can't leave Kasia because I love Kasia what about Kasia and I was just like what about Kasia because she has even less personality than you do all we know about Kasia is that she's beautiful she's beautiful and your best friend and you are a filthy mess and you are her best friend and that's your entire personality that's the entirety of your relationship I do not give a shit and then it was honestly very creepy and gross to me that Nishka fell in love with the dragon which again I don't think that's a huge spoiler he's it's in the very beginning of the book I was just like things better change a lot there better be like an explanation for why he's treating her the way that he is because I know that he's gonna be a romantic figure or he's gonna be in a love interest and there better be an explanation for why he's treating her the way he is because otherwise what and no there's no explanation for that that's just how he is he's there there isn't it's there's nothing interesting romantic or more tense there's no chemistry between them there's no again in a book like Deathless or even in Jane Eyre where Rochester is ornery and considerably older and not very attractive like those stories if they're if the characters are are very complexly developed and intricately painted for the reader then I could totally get behind that and see the the messy darkness of the attraction between these people but it was they were just like cardboard cutouts with a with a brief three-point list on each one of like what they look like and what their traits are and then you know they're apparently attracted to each other for some for some reason and that was just it was just gross to me because he was abusive and older and mean and and just no it wasn't like fun and quippy it wasn't like mr. Darcy who was like kind of mean at first and then you kind of like peel back the layers and he's actually kind of interesting and good and it's off the side no the dragon is boring and mean and nishka is boring and filthy and clumsy just no okay and then this is something that annoyed me personally most out of everything honestly and this is a totally me thing the other stuff I was just like I don't get why people like this because that to me seems like a structural flaw but this is a personal preference taste thing that really really annoyed me and that is I didn't even know this was the thing that bothered me until I saw it so in life I know that I have been guilty of this I would imagine other people have been guilty of this there's this this uh I have experienced a reticence to learn to do something the proper way or the right way because it takes more effort and I'm like I'm I do it well without all of that so like for example for writing an essay I'm a pretty good writer I always have been that's a thing that I can I can get by with with writing and not putting an extreme amount of effort into it but for that reason like when teachers and professors and study partners whoever would tell me you know you should outline you know you should have multiple drafts you know you should do x y z all these other steps and I'm just like or I could just spew it out and it's it's brilliant the way it is only the thing is when I actually go and do it and put the effort in that everyone has told me that I need to do because there is a reason that people have been saying you should do it this way there's a reason that it's taught this way that putting in that extra effort it does improve my writing it did make my essays better it did make the whole process of writing better because I got into good habits like boys with art it's why artists even who end up developing their own avant-garde style they first learn how to do still life you first learn how to do something completely accurately something completely precisely and then once you've mastered that now you can veer off course now I mean you can get creative with language but only after you've learned proper grammar so there's I I know that just like every girl you know dreams of being secretly a princess dreams that you know you're actually a prodigy at something if people just don't get how brilliant you are and it'll just come to you because it's not that you're bad at this it's just that you're a secret genius or something like there's that part of you that wants that or thinks that's possible and this in in my life in my experience that has not been rewarded and that it's been a hard lesson to learn that there is a reason you have to put in the work because putting in the work does help you does improve it and being stubborn about it doesn't help you all of that to say the magic in this world on the I mean for being a soft magic system there's a surprising amount of rules supposedly but because nishka does not abide by rules or believe in rules then the reader doesn't really get a sense for rules either this is a source of great frustration and a source of contention between her and the dragon because the dragon is meticulous and precise that's why he's immaculately dressed clean and tidy and he's also that way about his magic that there are spell books there are rules there are ways you cast spells there are ways that you do it there there's a certain process there's a certain order there's a certain everything and this is how you do magic and nishka doesn't do magic that way nishka is a mess and she's a mess about her magic and so at first she tries to do it in the organized way that the dragon wants and it doesn't work for her and then she does it in a messy way that just comes easily to her and that's the secret to unlocking how much more powerful she is with magic than anyone thinks she has a right to be and then that anyone else really is and i hated that her not putting in effort was being rewarded by the narrative so i'm all for saying not everyone is the same and using in the same metric to measure everybody means that you're going to overlook some you know like i think that was an albert einstein thing about like if you know a fish is only like a fish a fish's abilities are only measured by its ability to climb a tree then it will always think it's a failure or something so of course there's a spectrum and we should make allowances for the fact that people learn in different ways operate in different ways and whatever but the fact that if the narrative had been like this isn't the way nishka does magic okay fine but there should be an equal and opposite amount of effort that she needs to put into doing magic her way but instead it's just like whatever just kind of like feels natural whatever just pops into her head and then she just kind of does it and there's like no cost to it there's no effort that she didn't have to learn it in fact there are spells and magic words and she does better when she just kind of like fucks them up or makes up her own or just does something random because it just it just feels right and the narrative constantly rewards this her version of just like what if i didn't put effort into it though like what if i just said fuck it and just kind of did it and then that's what works for her and that was so frustrating to me because it wasn't the narrative wasn't promoting the idea of a of a character arc of her growing of her learning it was her being rewarded for just remaining a pile for her remaining just lazy and and not really trying and that was so frustrating to me i was like why why again if her version of magic was different from everyone else's and there's another way to do things and she's not going to show everybody there's another way to do things as opposed to because it's not like that either it's not like the narrative is saying that like all these people have actually been holding themselves back and she's now going to show them that her way is actually going to be better for them too it only works for her this way like she does this like wishy washy willy nearly random magic but other people who would try to do something they have to be precise about it because otherwise they really can't do it and she just waltzes in is just like blah blah blah and she's like 10 times more powerful and everyone's like how did you do that and she's just like only just felt right i'm supposed to root for that character i'm with everybody else who sat there like we have been studying magic books and studying the these precise spells and we have mastered them and you just waltzed in here and we're just like blah blah and ta-da magic i'm gonna be so deeply frustrated and pissed off as those characters work like of course the dragon was annoyed with her he's like 150 years old has been he's an expert on magic and he's good at it and he's meticulous about it he puts in the work he puts in the time and she's just like yeah yeah magic oh it's so frustrating like it wasn't a good world constructed magic system that i could be fascinated by and then she was insufferable about just like half-assing it anyway and oh the whole thing was a goddamn mess i hated it so so so much okay those are all my thoughts about it brooded i hated it you can let me know why you loved it or why you also hated it um most people seem to have loved it i have heard that spinning silver which is also by Naomi Novik which i also own is quite different both in terms of the story and the writing style so i have hopes that i will like spinning silver i am intending to read it i've also heard that her temerara theory is very different from uprooted so i'm not uh i haven't given up on Naomi Novik as a writer yet i really hope i like spinning silver because i'm a very gorgeous edition of spinning silver which i would like to keep spinning it let me know in the comments down below your thoughts and feelings about uprooted if you have read it if you haven't read it if you want to read it whatever my first bookish videos on saturdays blogs midweek so like and subscribe and i'll see you when i see you bye