Uprooted

After seeing Naomi Novik's newest, UPROOTED, recommended a couple of different places, by people whose judgment I trust, I promptly ordered it. And I'm so glad I did! It was a wonderful novel: rich, warm, deeply-rooted in the best kind of folklore. It felt familiar and new all at once, set in a world vaguely recognizable as Poland (here: Polnya) with magic.

Agnieszka has grown up in the shadow of the Dragon, the reclusive wizard that protects her valley from the Wood. Every ten years, he selects a village girl from the valley to come back to his tower. No one knows exactly what he wants them for (though of course there's gossip), but after ten years when he releases the girls, they never come home again. Oh, they might visit, but they're unalterably changed. Agnieszka belongs to the cohort of girls from whom the Dragon will chose his next girl, but everyone knows he's going to choose her best friend, the best and brightest and prettiest of the girls. Imagine her surprise, then, when the Dragon chooses her.

Her surprise deepens when she discovers, in the Dragon's tower, a latent talent for magic. A talent that might just be called upon to save not only her beloved valley but the kingdom itself from the encroaching evil of the Wood.

I think one of the things I loved about the story is that the hook here isn't huge: it's not some end of the world, wizards pitted to the death kind of scenario. But it's no less compelling and fast-paced for all that. The wood is a very real menace: the kind of thing nightmares are made of. (And the ultimate secret of the wood is startling and wonderful).

I loved Agnieszka. I loved the Dragon. (And I'm nerd enough to feel chuffed that I figured out the source for the Dragon's name: he goes by Sarkan, a variation of sarkany, a Hungarian shape-shifting dragon--a minor bit of trivia I would not have known except I've recently been immersed in Hungarian folklore for bookish purposes. Novik graciously confirmed my guess on Twitter). Their unfolding relationship is sweet and spiky and charming.

This book isn't for everyone--there are a couple of adultish scenes that make it inappropriate for young teens. But I loved it.

The Story of Owen

EK Johnston's The Story of Owen, a finalist for the William Morris debut YA award last year (and who shares my agent, which is how the book was on my radar in the first place) has been on my to-read list for some time.



 I really enjoyed this book, which wasn't what I expected in a lot of good ways. Siobhan McQuaid is a pretty ordinary student in her small town in Canada: she's obsessed with her music, she works hard at school, and she mostly lies low. But everything changes when Owen Thorskard moves to town with his father and two aunts--all of them dragon slayers. Because Siobhan lives in an alternate world where dragons still live, and are drawn particularly to carbon emissions, which makes everything from driving to factory operations much more dangerous. Oil magnates organized the Oil Watch program, which requires young dragon slayers to enlist to protect the oil fields (which draw dragons for obvious reasons). Siobhan befriends Owen when they're both late to English and get detention, but when she's drawn into his world, she takes on a position as Owen's bard, called to sing the song(s) of his dragon-slaying to the world. While that sounds like it could be hokey, it's really not--partly because of Siobhan's wryness; partly because Owen and his family are doing something pretty incredible--in a world where top dragon slayers work for the government or command top salaries working for oil industries, Owen's family has chosen to eschew all of that to try and help a rural region that can only pay them in goods.

Things I liked: the setting here was fascinating: not just the world of rural Canada, but the world Johnston created. The alternate dragon mythology was pretty cool too. And I love that we get the story from Siobhan's perspective rather than Owen's. While he's literally the hero of this piece, I liked seeing his world from a bit of a remove, and the bard idea is genius. Siobhan has such a rich voice, full of musical notes and trumpets and woodwinds. And while a romance between Siobhan and Owen would seem like the obvious direction this story to take, that's not exactly what happens--and I liked that here, again, the author veered away from the expected and easy answer.