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alobearMy wonderful brother bought me Uprooted by Naomi Novik, especially to fulfil my Magical Readathon prompt for June, so I could keep to my planned TBR theme for June of reading all the books he's given me that I haven't read yet...
I tried so hard, I really did - but I just couldn't do it and I DNF'd it on pg 160...
The book is a loose Beauty and the Beast retelling, whereby a wizard called The Dragon takes a 17-year-old girl from a nearby village every ten years and keeps her in his tower to be his servant, then releases her with a ton of money and picks another one. The main plot, though, is to do with the evil force in the neighbouring forest trying to take over the human realm, and our plucky protagonist, Agnieszka, teaming up with the wizard to try and defeat it.
I will say, it wasn't all bad - far from it. I struggled a bit at the start, since there are several chapters of Agnieszka being abused and assaulted by more than one man, purely because The Dragon doesn't have the decency to speak to her as if she's a human being or explain anything to her in a sensible way. And I really wasn't keen at all on the way Agnieszka made excuses for this behaviour and diminished herself in the process.
It picked up quite a bit once the training montage properly got going (with a particularly wonderful extended nature metaphor about Agnieszka's experience of learning magic), and I loved Agnieszka taking matters into her own hands repeatedly to try and do what she thinks is right. I also loved her best friend, Kasia, and the development of the relationship between them.
But - as soon as the sexual tension was brought into things, it just made me really uncomfortable - because Agnieszka is 17 and The Dragon is over 100 years old... Problematic power dynamics, much? And also - ick. And then it got explicit (way more so than I was expecting) and I just had to put it down.
It turns out, I have read it before and finished it that time, though the romance aspect also really put me off - and I apparently wasn't convinced the story as a whole was worth pushing through. The main thrust of the storyline hadn't actually even started yet when I DNF'd it, and the summary on Wikipedia suggests an awful lot happened in the last two thirds. But I just wasn't invested in it enough to get past the ick, I'm afraid.
I tried so hard, I really did - but I just couldn't do it and I DNF'd it on pg 160...
The book is a loose Beauty and the Beast retelling, whereby a wizard called The Dragon takes a 17-year-old girl from a nearby village every ten years and keeps her in his tower to be his servant, then releases her with a ton of money and picks another one. The main plot, though, is to do with the evil force in the neighbouring forest trying to take over the human realm, and our plucky protagonist, Agnieszka, teaming up with the wizard to try and defeat it.
I will say, it wasn't all bad - far from it. I struggled a bit at the start, since there are several chapters of Agnieszka being abused and assaulted by more than one man, purely because The Dragon doesn't have the decency to speak to her as if she's a human being or explain anything to her in a sensible way. And I really wasn't keen at all on the way Agnieszka made excuses for this behaviour and diminished herself in the process.
It picked up quite a bit once the training montage properly got going (with a particularly wonderful extended nature metaphor about Agnieszka's experience of learning magic), and I loved Agnieszka taking matters into her own hands repeatedly to try and do what she thinks is right. I also loved her best friend, Kasia, and the development of the relationship between them.
But - as soon as the sexual tension was brought into things, it just made me really uncomfortable - because Agnieszka is 17 and The Dragon is over 100 years old... Problematic power dynamics, much? And also - ick. And then it got explicit (way more so than I was expecting) and I just had to put it down.
It turns out, I have read it before and finished it that time, though the romance aspect also really put me off - and I apparently wasn't convinced the story as a whole was worth pushing through. The main thrust of the storyline hadn't actually even started yet when I DNF'd it, and the summary on Wikipedia suggests an awful lot happened in the last two thirds. But I just wasn't invested in it enough to get past the ick, I'm afraid.
