2016 read #20: Uprooted by Naomi Novik.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik
440 pages
Published 2015
Read from March 17 to March 22
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5

A nearly perfect balance of fantastical whimsy and horror, gliding smoothly from the mishaps of a clumsy, bewildered sorcerer's apprentice to the deep, alien strangeness of the ancient Wood in the European imagination. Initially I was inclined to be dismissive of the meet-cute cliches and usual convenient awakening of magic precisely when it was needed; I even had a few lines prepared about how tiresome I found the gendered differences in magic use, with the central woman's power flowing instinctively like a river while the male wizard's magic moved more like clockwork gears, all rigid and rational, before another witch was finally brought in to demonstrate that this was indeed a difference in schools of use, and not another gendered fantasy binary. But that, and all my other quibbles with the early going, were washed away in the strangeness and beauty and mythopoeic depth of Novik's magic and the Wood. Actions have consequences; people die, and leave behind grief; easy victories turn out to be mere preludes and false assurances before a tighter twist of the screw. Yet the tale never sinks into the grim-and-gritty morass of, say, a Martin novel. Again, a lovely balance -- one rarely so well-realized in genre fiction, at least in my reading experience.