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Book Review: Uprooted

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Book: Uprooted

Author: Namoi Novik

Recommendation: Do not start this book until you have a whole day to devote to finishing it

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Uprooted

 

This book was recommended to me as a fantasy romance. It is NOT. It is still a fabulous book.

It’s so amazing, I stayed up until 3am trying to finish it. I couldn’t. I barely slept as the characters danced through my dreams, and once I woke up Saturday morning, I sat down and finished it.

There’s a grown-up in me somewhere, but she hides when I sink into a book this good.

The book is intense. The author hooks you in the beginning and never once gives you a spot to put a bookmark. It’s a heck of a ride.

 

Characters

I love the characters. They are rich and varied. The story is told in first person, and you really get a feel for the heroine. She’s not always brave, or beautiful, or cultured. I love that. She isn’t perfect. No one in the story is.

  • The prince slays a chimera, acts like an entitled jerk, and yet is still the 8 year-old-boy who lost his mother and is willing to sacrifice anything to get her back.
  • The powerful wizard who can’t connect to anyone or anything.
  • The best friend who was supposed to be perfect but then isn’t chosen and both resents not being chosen and is relieved she isn’t.

There is so much here it’s amazing. People are flawed, and those flaws have prices to themselves and those around them.

The only part I disliked was the some side characters I wanted to see live died. This is not a romance novel, but it’s not Game of Thrones, either.

 

Plot

The plot is intense. It grips you in the beginning, and what I thought was going to be the climactic rescue ends up being just another plot point about a quarter of the way through the story. Seriously intense.

But you get your ending, and it’s a good one.

 

 World Building

Truly spectacular. This is one of the strongest points of the book, and it has so many of them. Enough of the familiar mixed with the new that she creates something fresh but still wholly relatable.

 

Are there any bad things about the book? The only downside for me was I was looking for a comfortable fantasy romance. Instead, I got sucked into a hard core fantasy novel with all of the sadness and pain that they’re known to inflict on their characters.

There’s a reason I’m a romance reader and writer! I like the other stuff, and this was truly spectacular, but I felt so wrung out when it was over that I decided to clean the house! You know how much I love doing that.

If true fantasy is your genre, I’d say pick it up and give it a read. Days later, the plot and characters are still teasing around in my head so much they’re making my own writing difficult. I truly loved the story. It is powerful, riveting, and moving. But it also take a lot out of you.

 

Technology and Magic

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

 

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Better have a dragon, Joffrey.

Fantasy and science fiction share some elements, particularly the need to build a world for a reader. One thing that’s true for either genre, though, is that you can have so many things be true for the world depending on the level of technology.

Transporters = Teleportation Spell

Faster than light space travel = Cosmic ships following the time flow

Blasters = Wands

Seriously, if you told my great-grandmother about smartphones, netflix, and the internet, she’d have looked at you like you were crazy. Even my grandmother hasn’t gotten past basic television.

I can see how technology can very easily appear magical. As a reader, I am absolutely willing to suspend disbelief when I pick up either genre of books.

I will caveat this with some science fiction gives little lee-way for made-up science. One particular author I read years ago refused to use faster-than-light travel as it didn’t conform to what we know about space travel. Interestingly, however, the same author had cryogenics in the story to compensate for the long flight times to Jupiter where they were going to terraform moons.

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Terraforming in process. Or is that a magic spell…

Neither cryogenics or terraforming are exactly proven science, but it was a still a good story.

For me, that’s what it’s about. A good story. I want to read something and be immersed in it. I want to care about the characters and what they’re doing.

Start bogging me down in too much scientific detail or the minutia of your magic system, and I start skimming. If I can’t find the good bits again pretty quickly, I move on to the next book.

Both genres also have to be careful how they handle gender differences. I have seen too much misogyny masked in, “But that’s how it was.”

In some cases, it could be an accurate portrayal if medieval Europe, though frequently it isn’t. But here’s the thing, this is a fantasy world. The religion. The norms and mores. You can choose a Judaeo-christian society, just as you can choose to create one like the Mosuo.

Still, it’s interesting how certain themes come through both science fiction and fantasy.

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Okay, so maybe some we’d rather not see.

It’s fun to explore the impossible, and both genres do that. I enjoy reading both. Of course, there is that one thing I see in fantasy that science fiction has yet to tackle: dragons!

You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?

How about you? Do you see magic and technology as interchangeable? Perhaps indistinguishable? Why or why not?

Looking for Fantasy Romance Recommendations

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I’m looking for recommendations for good fantasy romance novels.

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Okay, yes, I have a pile of Regency novels, but these aren’t my preferred genre. They are just easy to find.

I prefer high fantasy with elves, knights, dragons, wizards and the like. Though, at this point, I’ll take recommendations for anything.

Happily-ever-after is a must or it isn’t a romance novel.

I don’t care if it had graphic steamy scenes, but I’d prefer no graphic violence.

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This is fine. I mean, it is fantasy.

I’ll even take something that fits this as a beta-reader or advanced copy reader and give an honest review in return.

Knights: Code of Chivalry

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The Knights of Valor are a prominent part of my fantasy romance novels. Why? Because I like the good boy, the knight in shining armor, so to speak. While I don’t feel the need to be rescued, thank you very much, I’ve always been drawn to the white knight.

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While the Knights in my stories live by a moral code directly tied to the god they serve, that code wasn’t created in a vacuum. I’ve never listed the code these Knights follow, because that wouldn’t exactly keep the story moving in my novels, but their code is very much based on historical precedent.

Real knights in the days of yore had a code of chivalry that they were supposed to follow. How many did, well, that’s another post. The punishments for not following it, again another post.

While many parts of our past are lost to us, The Song of Rolland documented the code of chivalry during the time of William the Conqueror, around 1066 AD.

1066 AD Code of Chivalry

  • Fear God and maintain His Church
  • Serve the liege lord in valor and faith
  • Protect the weak and defenseless
  • Give succor to widows and orphans
  • Refrain from the wanton giving of offence
  • Live by honor and for glory
  • Despise pecuniary reward
  • Fight for the welfare of all
  • Obey those placed in authority
  • Guard the honor of fellow knights
  • Eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
  • Keep faith
  • At all times to speak the truth
  • Persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
  • Respect the honor of women
  • Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
  • Never to turn the back upon a foe

Sounds a lot like what we’ve come to expect from knights that followed the code of chivalry. A few of these seem redundant to me, and a few seem too bravado for my Knights of Valor, but I did think through all of them as I was creating my own code.

The speak the truth at all times gives my Knights of Valor a great deal of trouble, and from time to time, they may have even had to interpret that a little creatively.

In my fantasy world, being chosen by the God of Justice to be one of his Knights and following the code of chivalry imbues certain holy powers, including the ability to channel the god’s power to smite evil. But that’s fantasy. I could see how some of this code could really hamper a medieval knight.

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There are other codes of chivalry, including the one espoused by the Duke of Burgundy in the 14th century, but it’s not really all that different from the list above. The code from King Arthur’s court is perhaps the most famous, though much of this is shrouded in legend. The lack of solid facts makes it fun to write about, but more subject to interpretation.

More interesting to my mind is that such a code had to be written. That many things which seem like basic values had to be spelled out. But then, it was another time and Dracor, God of Justice, has not always reigned supreme in human history.

 

How about you? What do you think of knights and codes of chivalry? Ever see any in a book you especially liked? Or maybe you think the whole thing was bunk and prefer the knight that follows no code?

Why Fantasy?

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I love science. You see me quote it in my posts a lot. Part of the reason I like it is because it can actually help give us predictable outcomes, make life better for everyone, and it isn’t dependent on opinion.

Science doesn’t care that you want the Earth to be the center of the universe. It isn’t. It’s demonstrable, provable, and repeatable. Anything else is a hypothesis rather than proven science.

If it turns out to be wrong, we change. From Newton to Einstein to Hawking, our knowledge grows and changes. Then the engineers get a hold of it and make fabulous things, like the phone in my purse.

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Given this, why do I love fantasy? Why do I have a character use a teleportation spell when I could use a transporter and the theory of quantum entanglement?

Here are six reasons I write fantasy:

 

  1. Dragons. You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you? No matter how hard I try to realistically wrap dragons into a science fiction world, it feels wonky at best. Even in a fantasy world, you have to be careful with how you use dragons, what limits on their power you put, and how to keep them from becoming the god-beings they already see themselves as being. Perhaps FTL dragon space travel…

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  1. The White Knight – This has always been a favorite trope of mine, so of course they feature in my work. Yet, the white knight doesn’t feel right in much of sci fi. While Star Trek, at least TNG, took the high road and showed humans in a more Utopian universe, most of my experience with science fiction doesn’t go this route. It tends to be gritty, filled with anti-heroes, and a very bleak outlook on our future.

 

  1. Aesthetics. – This is tougher to define, but there’s something more fun to me about horses, silk dresses, and castles. Yes, I know the smell was horrible, hygiene lacking, and the castles drafty. I know how women were treated since the advent of the plow. But that’s not what I’m writing about. This is a fantasy world with a different pantheon of gods and a different history. Once we add in magic, the benefit of brawn over brains diminishes. It allows me to experiment with good and evil in different ways.Which leads me to…

 

  1. Good Always Wins – I find this is easier to realistically achieve in fantasy world. Unless…

 

  1. Space Opera – Unless I am looking at writing Space Opera. Which, I have considered. I’ve had a few ideas floating around for alien words on the edge of the galaxy. I’d got he space opera route partially because a big portion of what interests me in Sci Fi is alien worlds, colonization, etc. That means FTL travel, and FTL travel doesn’t mesh with science as we know it. And yes, I do like space opera. Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly. Westerns aren’t my thing, but wow, I loved Firefly. Still mad as anything that they canceled that show.

 

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How about you? Do like sci fi or fantasy? Which do you prefer to read or write? Why?

Why Books?

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Why do I choose to spend my time reading and writing with everything else in this world that competes for my attention?

Television. Movies. Games. Twitter. Facebook.

Whatever is your choice of diversion. But I’ve chosen books. Why?

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For one, I read romance novels, fantasy, and then Sci Fi. I dislike most romantic comedies, so once you exclude those, you’re really not left with much to choose from in the romance category. I can only watch Pride & Prejudice so many times.

Only recently has fantasy and sci fi really gotten any Hollywood love. Even then, there’s only a handful of movies and unless they have huge budgets, they look awful.

At least compared to my imagination.

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Looks like these astronauts are on Triton. There’s a story here…

And then there are the characters. Books, good books, do characters right. I am ecstatic when the bad guy goes down, and I love it when the hero wins because I’m invested in them. It’s much easier to invest me in a character via a book than a movie. That’s just the nature of the genres. I can actually see what the character is thinking and feeling. A good actor can get some of that across, but not like a good author.

TV shows,far more than movies, have a lot of potential for character development, but oftentimes, networks beat their shows to death rather than giving them a graceful ending. I can think of several right now, but X-Files always comes to mind first.

While I love an immersive video game RPGs, so many of them do wrong by the characters. *cough* Danse in Fallout 4 *cough* I feel like video games could be so much more, but they’re not there yet. Maybe they’ll never be. But I can hope. They feel like the closest to books to me, and I love the interactive aspect.

My favorite past time other than reading and writing is playing table top RPGs run by a competent DM. For those not familiar, this means games likes Dungeons & Dragons. Sure, they’ve gotten a bad rap, but our group of friends are all quite respectable and many hold very highly-paid day jobs. No basement dwellers among us, and no one lives at home.

But tabletop RPGs gets back to characters again. A good DM sets up the world and then turns the characters you’ve made loose in it. Yes, they keep the story going, but they never railroad you or force you to do dumb things to keep their plot going. They improvise to keep the players happy and interested. To keep them focused on what’s going on and engaged in the world.

Characters are what keeps me reading and writing.

How about you? What makes you read when you could be doing something else?