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A space to chat fandom! Anon!

Got a WIP you're excited about? Want to rave about your fave? Or is your fandom absolutely in love with a character who detracts from every scene they bumble into, and you need somewhere to vent? You're in the right place!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

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From: (Anonymous)

The main character is a wizard (women and men are wizards in this book) with a natural affinity for dark magic, who is trying very hard not to be a dark wizard (ie: one who sucks out people's lifeforce for her power). This is another that feels a bit like videogame meta; I'm reminded of the character who has skills that sound great on paper-- summon an army of meteor skeletons!-- but whom you never use because their powers cost too much mp and are usually overkill. There's generally the occasional bossfight they're useful for, and that's her career plan-- be the person a group of wizards keeps in reserve in case they need to fight a rare boss like that. That way she gets the protection of the group the rest of the time, because her skills are verging on useless day-to-day.

Unfortunately for her, this career plan depends on a reputation for powerful destructive magic, but there aren't many opportunities to demonstrate that safely, because destructive magic and all that. And there's a guy in her year who keeps saving everyone from certain death, and now she's getting an unwanted reputation as someone he saves, when *she* wants to be the person with the reputation for saving everybody.

It's a fun premise, even if I don't believe for one solitary second that the character is welsh. xD

From: (Anonymous)

Enjoying the character's rather stupid approach to getting allies-- she approaches it the way I would approach coursework, intending to do it all in a rush in a set window instead of steadily building up over time. So she's like "I'll just wait for a big event where I can impress everyone by killing monsters and then they'll all want to hire me".

Also, is there any joy as pure of that of an American author relishing the opportunity to use the word "twat"? The slang is as incongruous as ever ("properly tidy" really stuck out, idk if that's a thing somewhere, but it really didn't feel right in the context), but you can tell she is thrilled to write "wanker" and that joy is infectious. Though every so often I'm like "calm down" because the slang never quite fits and it's distracting. Still, small gripe to have.

It's also nice to read characters who talk like actual people, since the last couple of books I read fucked the dialogue in different ways. The main character is still a bit YA ott sarcasm, but she is in a shit situation so I do feel sympathetic toward her.

From: (Anonymous)

Something I like about Novik's fiction: she's very good at creating the sense that something in-universe is feared by all, and a sense of what's normal power vs what's super super powerful. Conveying the internal rules to the audience, I guess? I liked it in Spinning Silver, with the townsfolk's reaction to the Staryk, and I like it here, with the drama around Maw-Mouths. Although for some reason I can't help picturing them as a smiley malboros.

From: (Anonymous)

The premise of this one seemed so fun, but I bounced off Uprooted and Spinning Silver so hard, that I'm quite reluctant to try again. Are the weird, cold, awful romance vibes kept to a minimum?

From: (Anonymous)

I wouldn't say there's a cold romance, though the subplot that seems like it's going to become a romance doesn't do it for me, it's very high school so far (in fairness, is set in a high school). It's very different to Spinning Silver, so I'm not sure what you'd make of it. Involves female characters arguing over a male character because only one of them sees him as a *person* instead of as a *hero*. For me, that's the weakest element of the book so far. The male character is friendly and a bit oblivious; the female character is grouchy and takes her anger out on other people who don't deserve it. I was thinking earlier that an underrated quality of Harry Potter is that the characters tend to treat each other quite decently by default. That said, the friendships between female characters have been cozy so far. Not sure if that helps! I liked Spinning Silver a *lot* so I'm probably a bad judge for this one. You do want the protagonist to get close to other people because she's always been a lonely outcast, so I have found I'm invested in her having some kind of positive relationship with others without much caring about the details of who.

From: (Anonymous)

Finished! Mostly enjoyed, did find the politics heavy-handed. I liked the idea behind it, and if she'd stuck to just presenting things and letting the reader judge for themselves, I think it would have worked better; it just sometimes got lecturey and I was like "I get the picture".

From: (Anonymous)

Also I must have missed a line because I'm still not clear on why there were no adults at the school.

But I did enjoy it more than the last couple of books I read, even if I didn't like it as much as Spinning Silver. I am curious about how the main mystery plays out (though annoyed that she didn't answer it in this book. Ok so it's a trilogy but still, could do *some* of it!). As with Spinning Silver, I think my fave thing was the worldbuilding around the rules for the magic. The world felt less real than the world of Spinning Silver, but some details of the magic felt solid.