Amy 
fantasy
Agnieszka is selected by “the Dragon” (he’s not a real
dragon, it’s just a nickname), out of all the young women in the village, to
come live in his castle. He is a wizard
and he protects the village from The Wood.
But no one knows what happens to the women who are taken every ten years
while they are in his custody. As
readers, we find out.
I was strongly encouraged by a few people to read Uprooted
after loving Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver. (I should also note that I had read
His Majesty’s Dragon several years ago and thought it was good but not
compelling enough to read more of the series.)
Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy Uprooted nearly as much as I’d hoped. There were so many long slogs about
Agnieska’s lengthy travels and way too many battle scenes for my taste. And
then, just when I thought the ending might make up for the long, boring
sections through which I’d suffered, it became completely bizarre. And I don’t mean good bizarre but “WTF is
happening?” bizarre. I believe this
story suffered most because, instead of being character-based like Spinning
Silver, it’s more about the slow-paced journey.
The narrator of the audiobook, Julia Emelin, did not
help. She read slowly and paused to
break just about every 3 seconds, instead of pausing at conversational breaks and
commas. She broke up the sentences… too
frequently and non-sensically… which slowed down… the already slow pace… even
more. She is Russian so, perhaps, she
was speaking slowly so that the English-speaking listener could understand
better? Perhaps she added so many breaks because of cultural differences or her
lack of understanding American speech patterns?
Whatever the case, she was more annoying than enjoyable. She also did
not do much in the way of acting and sounded like she was reading a book. I
give her a C-.
No comments:
Post a Comment